In our dating history, we may have encountered men who, after making you feel multiple possibilities, ghost you. They stop turning up and eventually disappear and leave, making you see how emotionally unavailable they were. If this continues to go on, you may not find yourself becoming committed soon. How then do you stop attracting emotionally unavailable men? Jaki has the answers as she takes us to look from the inside out. She asks us to look within ourselves and identify whether or not we are also emotionally unavailable, as she shares some signs of emotional unavailability that you can figure out and address with your partner.

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Watch the episode here:

Dating Advice On How To Stop Attracting Emotionally Unavailable Men

I wanted to talk about how to stop attracting emotionally unavailable men. I hear this a lot. These men are emotionally unavailable and it seems to be a big complaint with women and I get it. In fact, I used to say that quite a bit in my own life and in my own experiences. I was constantly thinking that men are emotionally unavailable. In fact, I wanted to share a little story with you because it’s going to help make it more “relatable” to you. I don’t know if you’ve ever been ghosted or even know what that term means. It means when the man disappears and doesn’t bother to let you know that he left the relationship and that can be painful. He leaves you to feel that he wasn’t emotionally available. That happened to me. What happened was I was seeing somebody for a couple of months and we were having a wonderful time. I was thinking that this could be something special and we had spent the weekend together.

What happened was after that weekend that I thought was wonderful, I never heard from him again. That really stung. I was thinking I cannot believe that I got ghosted that this guy just disappeared because I didn’t see that coming. I was trying to draw my conclusions around him being emotionally unavailable and why would anyone do that to another person. When I started to examine what was behind that, I did that by the process of asking myself some questions. After I got out of blaming him, I started to look at a deeper connection to what I was doing and how I was showing up. I want you to ask yourself this question, “What are the ways that I’m being unavailable in this relationship?” I want you to ask yourself a question, “What are the ways that you’re being unavailable in your dating experience? What beliefs are keeping you from fully committing to the process?” There are a lot of things that you can be doing that are causing you to be emotionally unavailable. When you’re emotionally unavailable, you’re not going to be connecting with these men because you’re not available to make that connection.

For example, I have a client that is dating a nice guy. She’s been on about six dates with him and she had told me that she’s going to stop seeing him because all he does is talk about himself. She said he’s a good guy. He’s very nice but he goes on and on and on. I was listening to her and she’s complaining that he’s not emotionally available because he’s so preoccupied with his own story and what’s going on in his life that he never asked her anything. I started to ask her, “What patterns do you see repeating in this experience?” I asked her about her history and she went to share with me about her history but here’s the thing that she meant. I said, “What’s the common denominator in these previous relationships?” She started to go into the details and I said, “You’re missing the point. The common denominator in the relationships is you. You’re the consistent theme in the relationship so I want you to look at what pattern is repeating itself in this relationship.”

She wanted to withdraw and stopped dating him and that’s her coping mechanism. Instead of being able to address the fact that he was not listening to her, she’s going to withdraw. In that moment and in these relationships, she’s the one who’s being emotionally unavailable. I would say they both are but here’s a golden opportunity. It’s an opportunity for her to reverse that pattern, to stop the pattern and turn it around. What that is going to require is for her to become emotionally available. She’s going to have to be vulnerable and intimate at that moment with that man, emotionally speaking, and give him an opportunity to step up into being more emotionally available. I would encourage all of you to take a deep look at how you’re showing up and check in with the pattern that you have in your past. Here’s what I told her to do. I told her when he starts talking and he’s going on and on, I told her to lean forward, put your hand on his forearm and just say his name over and over until he stops talking.

Intervene and lean in and say, “Are you open to hearing what I want to share? I’ve enjoyed hearing about what you’ve been talking about but I’d like the opportunity to share a little bit.” Then pause. Lean and put your hand. If the man’s talking and he’s going on and on, a part of that is nervousness, part of that is that he isn’t emotionally available. You have this golden opportunity to create this emotional intimate moment where at that moment he can step into it so you can lead the way. You do that by holding a boundary around what it is that you want. What she was doing is she was putting his needs before hers and in an attempt to fill the need, she’s going to withdraw. That’s what she’s been doing all along and that’s getting her the same thing that she’s been getting, which is no relationships which is emotional unavailability.

By her addressing it at that moment and by leaning in and saying, “I love what you’re saying but I would like the opportunity to share a little bit. Are you open to hearing what I have to say?” You do that again with the feather. Everything that I teach is about being very gentle about how you present things because it’s not what you say, it’s how you’re saying it and how it’s being perceived that gets people to shut down. If she was to be more assertive, he’ll back up and stop telling her anything altogether but you don’t want that. You want him to notice that he’s going on his monologue and be able to stop and focus on what you have to say and believe me, he will realize. That’s like with anyone if someone does that to you at that moment, you’re going to go, “Yes, of course. I want to hear what you have to say.” Inside, he’s going to be, “Yeah, I was talking. I was rambling.” It’s a golden opportunity to address these unconscious patterns that are sabotaging you.

Emotionally Unavailable Men: It’s not what you say, it’s how you’re saying it and how it’s being perceived.

Another big one is fear. Here’s a big fear that I had and it especially happens when you’re single for a long time, is the fear of commitment or fear of being found out. I realized looking back on that relationship that I had, I was the one that was emotionally unavailable. I had been watching the signs all along. He was sending me signs. He wasn’t doing certain things that I wanted to do but I was ignoring those because I was afraid that one, I wouldn’t meet anybody else and two, that it was a little too intimate. I wasn’t ready to be that intimate with someone, so I wasn’t willing to address what he was doing and letting him know what my needs were because I was too afraid to do that. Subsequently what that did for him is it turned him off. I turned myself into a pretzel for him and it wasn’t attractive. He abandoned the relationship. I was the one who was emotionally unavailable and so was he because he didn’t go to me. It isn’t a very mature thing to do but it’s one way to solve the problem. What was coming up for me was ahead of all this fear around he’s going to find out. You may not be connecting to this in a conscious way but sometimes we have a deep fear to be accepted.

We don’t want anyone to see those deep fears, so we have this protection in place that all the good men are taken. These rational lies that we tell ourselves to keep us safe but to keep us stuck because looking at the truth or maybe I’m not lovable or I’m not good enough is much harder to look at. It’s going deeper and getting behind what’s going on. Looking at your pattern that’s repeating in your relationships and looking at what belief or fear about the relationship that’s keeping you stuck in a pattern. Also looking at what you need to do and to believe in order to change this experience you’re having because experiences come from your beliefs. You have a belief and then you created an experience that aligns with it. In order for you to change the experience, you got to back up. You’ve got to examine your unconscious beliefs that are running this experience. For me, I had an unconscious belief that I wasn’t good enough and I had a lot of fear. When I analyzed it and got in there and did this deep work that I’ve done is, I was afraid that someone would discover that it was true. That I’m not good enough. I had to do that work to repair that relationship with myself that was keeping me from being emotionally available.

I had so much fear around someone seeing me and accepting me for who I was because I hadn’t accepted myself for who I was. Everything that I talk about is interrelated. It’s all connected. It all goes back to these approvals and us hiding behind these patterns in an attempt to stay safe and to not be hurt. In the process of staying safe and not being hurt, we’re keeping out the love that we long for. I know that one of the biggest regrets that you will ever have in life is to not have love in your life and recognizing that you could be the problem. In recognizing that you could be the problem, you also are the solution. That’s why this is so exciting for you to have this awareness because healing accompanies awareness. The more awareness that you bring to these patterns, to this emotional unavailability and skills so that you can address it on a date across from this man and present it in a way that he can hear it is going to help you rapidly change. You’re going to start seeing a different type of man show up because you’ve shifted.

When you shift, others can shift. It just takes recognizing, bringing awareness to it and then using some different skills. Having more boundaries around what it is that you want and being able to articulate that to the man that you’re sitting across from but you are doing it in a way that invites more trust. You’re not going to hammer him with like, “You know what would make me really happy? I would love it if we could have another appetizer. I’m starving.” You can ask for that or, “I don’t like salad. I like some pasta.” Just letting your needs be known, putting your needs above his and then seeing if he will step up and meet that need. You have to present it and you have to present it in a way that it gives him an opportunity.

If you think about when you’re online and you’re like, “I’m not attracting any good men online.” You have to look at how you’re showing up and how you’re presenting it. When your profile talks all about yourself and all the things you’ve done and everything you want, it’s like a, “Me, me, me,” story. You got to look at it from a man’s perspective. He sees that he doesn’t know where he’s going to fit in your life because you haven’t given him a vision of what role he would play. It starts by looking at your profile. Is it speaking to the men in a way that he’s like, “She loves men and she’s interested in making me a priority and making me her biggest fan.” You want to lead with what that looks like for him and adding in those pieces about yourself but you do need to get his attention. Some of your profiles are showing up emotionally unavailable because it’s all about you and he doesn’t see where he fits into that. Taking another look at how you’re showing up, what you’re saying in those emails and those instant messages that are causing some disconnect and creating a little more intimacy. Go ahead and take some more risks because the bigger the risk, the bigger the game.

Take more risks emotionally speaking so that you will have the experience of stepping out of that. It always helps to have support to do that. You’re going to be getting a lot of support from me because I’m launching my next interview series. We’re going to be talking at a much deeper level about all these topics, about sabotaging, about the fears that are associated with dating, and about the fear of commitment. That’s a big one. You wouldn’t think that when you go to get committed, you would have all this fear. Much fear comes up because you’re confronted with changing your life and merging your life with the man. All of these fear-based thinking is going to surface so that you can heal it. A lot of times what happened is so much fear surfaces that you push back and you sabotage it. We’re going to be diving into all of that in that interview series. Make sure you’re signed up for that and also, I love getting your questions and comments and the emails. A lot of you have been sending me a lot of emails and comments and I would love to continue to get those so that I can answer these questions. It was so great to connect with all of you.

Don’t forget that life is so much better when you have love in it. Don’t give up on your dreams. Never ever give up on your dreams because love happens fast. One minute you’re single and the next minute you’re planning your honeymoon and your weekend retreat. You’ve got to be diligent. You have to be consistent and you have to be deliberate in everything you do. You have to be consistent with that so you can start to get some traction here and you can start to shift and things will start to show up in your life. Thank you for being here. Lots of love to you.