The “emotionally-unavailable man” is probably the biggest issue women deal with in the dating world. The term emotionally unavailable usually refers to those who create barriers between themselves and others in an effort to avoid emotional intimacy. Emotional unavailability in men stems from multiple causes and poses many issues in relationships.
Are you one of those rare breeds of men who are emotionally unavailable and find yourself running for the hills each time a woman comes along and tries to tame you? Here are 10 signs of an emotionally unavailable man.
1. You’re a serial dater
Men who are emotionally unavailable may have several women they are involved with be it a wife, girlfriend, an ex or “friends with benefits.” You often look for multiple people to have relationships with to avoid becoming emotionally intimate with any one woman.
2. You’re repulsed by available women
You pursue an attractive woman hard at the beginning, shower her with attention and lay it on thick in order to reel her in. But once she lets you know you’ve won her over, you back off and start making excuses about why you’re not into her. You pull away due to your fear of becoming lost in a relationship and losing your freedom.
3. You’re non-committal about everything
You begin answering yes and no questions with “maybe,” “I’ll get back to you on that,” and other various non-committal answers. Your schedule is always “up in the air” and when it comes to making plans you prefer to “live in the moment” almost a little too much, often arriving late if you show up at all.
4. You’re physically unavailable
You’re physically unavailable to your woman and always find a way to create distance from her. She talks to your voice mail more often than she talks to you, and when she sends you text messages, you get back to you hours or days later (if you respond at all). You’re hard to track down, hard to get a hold of, and disappear often for days or weeks with no excuse other than “I was busy” to explain your Houdini act.
5. You’re in love with a fantasy
You want a girlfriend. You have all these ideas about who she’s going to be, what she’s going to act like, and what it’s going to be like to date her. Then this normal woman appears in your life and wants to be your girlfriend. She doesn’t look exactly how you’d like her to look, isn’t the age you thought she’d be, and doesn’t have the job you wanted her to have. Even though this real person could be the one to offer you the love and companionship you’ve always wanted, you’re too busy clinging to the idea of this “Perfect Woman.”
6. You hate discussing the relationship
You have absolutely no interest in talking about “the relationship.” You meet any attempt from your woman to discuss the nature of the relationship with silence or a series of meaningless grunts. This can be tough for any woman to deal with because she’ll never know where she stands. Furthermore, this behavior is generally code for “I am not ready for a relationship, but I would love to have sex with you!”
7. You’re all about the sex
You consistently try and sleep with women on the first night and use sex as your only way of demonstrating your so-called ‘emotion.’
8. You’re full of excuses
You always seem to have justification or an explanation for doing the things you do, especially when it comes to anything that could even be remotely considered intimate.
9. Everything is about YOU
When you do manage to meet up with your lady, it’s usually on YOUR terms, when YOU decide, so as never to interrupt YOUR routine. And while we’re being honest, it’s usually only ever to serve YOUR baser needs.
10. You have negative self-emotions
Deep down, you feel inadequate and fear that you don’t measure up. You’re afraid that sooner or later your love interest will find out about you, agree that you’re not good enough, and eventually dump you. So you remain distant from her, aloof and disengaged so it won’t hurt as much when she tells you she’s going to leave you.
Can an emotionally unavailable man change? Well, in order to become a more emotionally available person, you will need to act trustworthy, develop a greater level of empathy and compassion for the feelings of others, and commit to being more of a giver than a taker.
