Emotional Unavailability Doesn’t Care How Hot Or Not You Are
In mid 2009 my late 20s hit a crescendo when a debt collector started calling me at work. I’d been dodging phone calls from the 859 area code for months and now was the time of reckoning. “I really must do something about this (debt)” problem. I’d been walking around with a thunderstorm/natural disaster hovering over my head for years. People would not line up in back of me at the grocery store. This was no coincidence!
I filed for Chapter 13 Bankruptcy and the natural disaster hanging over my head was gone and I could afford to eat again! And did I. It got so notice-able that the CFO of the company I worked for at the time (who was also HR) said to me one day at work “Gee John, you’re really packing it on.” So how do you bring up a harassment thing with the person who signs your paycheck? Anybody know? The worst of it was just health related — falling asleep at 8p like my dad in his 70s, and waking up sweating profusely, etc. etc. I thought to myself that this isn’t right to be 29 and all of this going on.
In January 2010 I made a dramatic lifestyle change. Lowered sugar intake, ramped up the fat, keep grainy stuff to a very tiny amount, etc. etc. I could plug the book I read but I won’t because the author who wrote it needs no plugs at this point. I went from eating/drinking very poorly to not, cold turkey. Energy went up and the weight (I was around 235 and people couldn’t believe it) went to down to the tune of 65 pounds. I’ve mostly kept it off in the 11 years.
You would think going from 235 to 170 would make a huge difference in my dating life at age 30. It did! And it so didn’t! And here is the punchline to the whole experience: It just made me able to interact with more of the same unavailable people I’d interacted with before. I was no more appealing nor unappealing than before. Emotional unavailability cancels out everything else. I didn’t know what emotional availability was at that time but that’s really what I was experiencing.
And this led me down the path of becoming emotionally unavailable myself. Setting up dates within walking distance…because why put any effort if you’re just going to get the same results? People have offered the suggestion to abandon online dating — I’ve experienced this in the real world, too. But in 2013 I hit my low point when a woman who was really interested in me (and drove 50 miles for our second date! I totally BLEW that opportunity.) pointed out I wasn’t in a good state of being in life and deserved better than this. I have never forgotten that experience or her commentary.
Six months later in ’14 I was finally on track (I hadn’t actually been on track for a number of years) and sent Amy an email (person referenced above) saying I now understood what she told me. I understood it intellectually but I wasn’t self-aware when she told me originally. Today I have a much better grasp of people. If someone finds you attractive but they’re not emotionally available you’re dead in the water. I find it so ironic that Americans are hung up on looks (Anyone know when the phrase “dating out of your league” was coined?) and yet it turns out it doesn’t matter.
Emotional unavailability doesn’t care how hot or not you are.
