You meet someone, and something inside you lights up. They are exciting, but not fully present, not entirely clear, not fully attainable. One moment they are warm, the next they turn cold. They come close, then disappear. They send a moving message, then go silent for three days. And instead of making you lose interest, it pulls you in deeper. You think about them more, wait for them more, try harder to understand them and, above all, feel more.
Then someone else appears. Stable, present, generous, interested. They want you, they call, they show up. On paper, this is exactly what you said you were looking for. But something inside you shuts down. There is no tension, no hunger, no “chemistry.” You tell yourself: They are lovely, but this is not it.
One of the most painful and common romantic patterns I encounter in the clinic is attraction to emotionally unavailable people. Desire does not always develop on a foundation of full availability. But if you tend to pull away from people who choose you, while being drawn to those who are unattainable, noncommittal or unable to fully give themselves, then desire may not be the only force shaping your romantic life.
‘I will be the one who changes him’
Problems in romantic love often begin when we assume love is meant to help us obtain something missing in us, something we believe exists in the other person. We do not always want the person themselves, but rather what our psyche believes winning that person will prove about us.
Beneath the attraction to an emotionally unavailable person, there is often a deep belief: If I can win over someone who does not fully want me, it will prove that I am worthy of love. If I can make them choose me, turn their coldness into warmth and become the person who finally reaches them, then I will finally feel loved, worthy and special.
Attraction to the unattainable can therefore become an unconscious attempt to disprove the inner belief that we are not lovable as we are. The psyche tries to heal that wound through another person. But any relationship that grows out of the need to escape something inside us, or to fill ourselves through someone else, is likely to fail or become toxic.
This belief was not born on the third date or in your most recent relationship. Usually, it was formed much earlier, in our first relationships with parents who could not always see us, contain us, stay with us in difficult moments or respond to our needs consistently.
A child whose father leaves the room whenever pain is brought up learns that difficult conversations can end in abandonment. A girl whose mother is present only in brief, inconsistent moments learns that love comes in small, unpredictable doses. A child who receives warmth only when excelling, pleasing others or staying out of the way learns that love must be earned.
Then, in adulthood, a stable and emotionally available person may not necessarily feel like it's love. Sometimes they feel unfamiliar: too calm, too simple, almost suspicious. By contrast, someone who is hot and cold, inconsistent, distant or ambivalent activates the nervous system in an old, familiar way. They may not make us feel safe, but they feel recognizable.
A new ending to an old story
There is a strange sense of security in the familiar, even when the familiar hurts. That is why many people find themselves drawn again and again to the same type: someone who does not fully answer, does not fully choose, does not fully commit.
From the outside, it is easy to ask: Why do you stay? Why don’t you move on? But from the inside, this is not just a romantic choice. It is an old psychological drama trying to end differently.
The psyche seems to say: This time I will succeed. This time the distant person will come close. This time the one who does not see me will see me. This time the one who does not choose me will choose me. This time I will get a different ending to the old story.
But instead of repair, another painful reenactment is created. The dependent or longing partner is drawn to the avoidant partner because the avoidant embodies that same partial, elusive love that must be fought for. The avoidant partner, meanwhile, is drawn to the longing partner because they offer a sense of power, control and vitality. But when the relationship becomes too close, the avoidant partner begins to feel overwhelmed, suffocated or threatened.
The avoidant partner embodies that same partial, elusive love that must be fought for
(Photo: Shutterstock)
This creates a roller coaster of closeness and distance: one person pursues while the other pulls away; one asks for more while the other feels overwhelmed; one fears abandonment while the other fears being swallowed up. At a deeper level, however, both are afraid of the same thing: real intimacy. The fear of intimacy is a quiet internal conflict. We want to love, but we are also afraid of what closeness may demand of us.
When love becomes real, it also becomes dangerous. A person we truly depend on can hurt us. A person we truly surrender to can leave. So a wounded part of us prefers to remain on the fence: to want but not choose, to come close but not enter, to fantasize but not live.
Attraction to an unavailable person is not merely “bad taste” in partners. Sometimes it is a sophisticated way of staying near love without truly risking it. Sometimes it is easier to chase than to actually remain inside intimacy. After all, that way, it is always the other person’s fault.
What people often discover is that if the avoidant person truly did become fully available, met them where they were and offered from the start everything they had longed for, it might feel strange, frightening or even repelling. That is the essence of ambivalence in love.
For some people, when someone truly comes close, something inside shuts down. Desire fades, doubts surface and criticism goes into overdrive. Suddenly, “he is not attractive enough,” “she is not exactly right,” “maybe there is someone better suited to me,” or “maybe this is not real love.” Sometimes that is an important intuition worth listening to. But sometimes it is fear of intimacy disguised as emotional precision.
The problem is that a life built on longing and pursuit is not the same as a life built on love. Longing can be thrilling, addictive, even poetic, but it cannot sustain a healthy relationship over time. Mature love is not made of pursuit and retreat, constant pulse-checking, or small scraps of warmth followed by coldness. A good relationship should not feel like an endless withdrawal from someone who was never truly there.
This does not mean we should blame ourselves. On the contrary, it means we need to understand the emotional logic behind the attraction. We are not drawn to pain because we are foolish or broken. We are drawn to what our nervous system learned long ago to identify as love. At some point, that may have been the only way to feel closeness, receive attention or survive emotionally. But what once helped us survive can become a prison in adulthood.
The way out begins with the ability to ask honestly: Is this person truly right for me, or are they simply activating an old wound? Am I in love with them, or addicted to the possibility that one day they will choose me? Do I want a relationship, or do I want to finally win inside the familiar drama of the past?
Mature love requires us to learn to feel attraction even where there is no anxiety. To recognize calm not as boredom, but as safety. To come closer and develop real intimacy without assuming we will immediately be abandoned. To express a need without being ashamed of it. Above all, it requires us to believe that we do not need to earn love through pursuit.
An emotionally available person will not necessarily feel like a storm at first. Sometimes they will feel like solid ground. And to choose solid ground after years of highs and lows, we must be willing to give up the drama.
Because perhaps love is not where we finally succeed in making an unavailable person choose us. Love is where we stop choosing, again and again, people who make us prove that we are worthy of being chosen.
Roi Tzur is the founder of Derech Hakesher, a center for individual, couples and online relationship therapy.