One of the most painful questions many people ask themselves is: “Why do I keep falling for people who don’t want me back?” The circumstances may differ, but the experience is often remarkably similar. We become intensely attracted to somebody who is emotionally distant, inconsistent, already attached, unwilling to commit, or simply unable to meet us in the way we need. We spend months, sometimes years, thinking about them. We analyse text messages, replay conversations, search for hidden meanings, and convince ourselves that perhaps, if we just hold on a little longer, something might change.

When it eventually becomes clear that the relationship isn’t going to happen, the heartbreak can feel overwhelming. Not only are we grieving the person, but often the future we imagined with them.

Looking back over my own life, I can see that this was a pattern I repeated many times. As a teenager, I spent years fantasising about a boy called Graham. I barely spoke to him, yet I created an entire relationship in my imagination. I would think about him constantly, imagining conversations, shared experiences, and a future together. At the time, it felt like love. Looking back now, I can see that what I was really attached to was possibility.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can also see that those fantasies served an important purpose. Growing up in an environment that often felt unsafe, lonely, and rejecting, fantasy gave me somewhere else to go. It offered hope when there didn’t seem to be much of it in my everyday life. It allowed me to imagine a future where I was loved, accepted, and understood. In many ways, those fantasies helped me survive adolescence.

The challenge is that survival strategies that help us cope as children don’t always serve us well as adults. What protected me from loneliness at fifteen sometimes kept me disconnected from reality at twenty five, thirty five, and beyond. Rather than seeing people as they actually were, I often found myself becoming attached to who I hoped they might become. The fantasy that once helped me survive was now preventing me from building the genuine intimacy and connection I was searching for.

That distinction matters because possibility and reality are very different things.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND LONGING

For many years, I confused longing with love. Love develops through mutuality. It grows when two people choose one another, invest in one another, and gradually build trust and intimacy. Love exists in reality. It requires us to see another person as they truly are rather than as we wish them to be.

Longing operates differently. Longing often thrives in uncertainty. It grows in the space between what is and what could be. The less available somebody is, the more room there is for fantasy to take hold.

When I look back at some of the people I became most attached to, there was often very little actual relationship taking place. What existed instead was a powerful emotional investment in what might happen someday. The fantasy became more significant than the reality. This isn’t unusual. Many of us spend far more time relating to our ideas about people than we do relating to the people themselves.

Sometimes what we call love is actually longing, and sometimes what we call chemistry is simply familiarity.

As a gay man growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, fantasy became a survival strategy. I experienced years of bullying, isolation, shame, and loneliness. Like many LGBTQ+ people, I learned to keep important parts of myself hidden. Fantasy offered escape. It allowed me to imagine a future where I was accepted, loved, and understood. In many ways it helped me survive.

The challenge is that survival strategies don’t automatically disappear when we become adults. They often follow us into our relationships.

WHY EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE PEOPLE CAN FEEL SO ATTRACTIVE

Many people assume attraction is random. We meet someone, experience chemistry, and conclude that we have found the right person. In reality, attraction is often shaped by our earlier experiences. If we grew up feeling that acceptance had to be earned, we may find ourselves attracted to people whose affection feels difficult to obtain. If we learned that love was inconsistent, we may unconsciously seek out relationships that recreate that inconsistency. If we spent years feeling unseen or unwanted, we may become drawn towards people whose attention feels just out of reach.

The relationship gradually becomes less about connection and more about validation.

This was certainly true for me at different points in my life. Looking back, I can see that I often wanted somebody to choose me because I struggled to choose myself, I wanted external proof that I was lovable, I wanted somebody else’s affection to quiet the doubts I carried about my own worth.

The difficulty is that emotionally unavailable people are uniquely positioned to keep that hope alive. Every small sign of interest feels meaningful. Every message feels important. Every moment of connection feels like evidence that perhaps the relationship is finally moving forward.

Unfortunately, it rarely does.

WHEN CHEMISTRY IS REALLY FAMILIARITY

One of the most important lessons I have learned, both personally and professionally, is that familiarity and health are not the same thing. Many people are drawn towards what feels familiar, even when it causes them pain.

If somebody grows up having to work hard for approval, they may feel comfortable working hard for affection. If somebody experiences rejection early in life, they may unconsciously gravitate towards relationships where rejection remains a possibility. The dynamic feels familiar, and familiarity can easily be mistaken for attraction. This is one reason why genuinely available people can sometimes feel surprisingly unexciting. Healthy relationships are often calmer. There is less uncertainty, less drama, and fewer emotional highs and lows. For somebody accustomed to chasing validation, this stability can initially feel unfamiliar.

The irony is that what we often describe as chemistry may sometimes be the activation of old wounds rather than the presence of genuine compatibility.

The more unavailable somebody was, the more room there was for fantasy.

When I think about some of the strongest attractions I experienced, many involved people who couldn’t fully show up. Some were straight, some were emotionally unavailable, some lived far away, some had already demonstrated that they were unable to offer the relationship I wanted. Yet rather than discouraging me, their unavailability often intensified my investment.

The fantasy remained alive because reality never had the chance to challenge it.

LEARNING TO CHOOSE DIFFERENTLY

One of the hardest lessons in healing is recognising that another person’s availability is not a measure of our worth. For many years, I experienced rejection as evidence that there was something wrong with me. If somebody wasn’t interested, I assumed I needed to improve myself. I needed to be more attractive, more successful, more confident, or somehow more deserving.

Therapy helped me understand that somebody else’s inability to choose me doesn’t diminish my value. Some people are emotionally unavailable, some aren’t looking for a relationship, and some simply aren’t the right fit, but none of these realities mean we are unlovable.

As my self awareness has grown, the questions I ask myself have changed. Rather than focusing solely on chemistry, I pay much more attention to availability. Can this person communicate openly? Are they capable of intimacy? Do their actions match their words? Are they genuinely interested in building a relationship? These questions tell us far more about the potential of a relationship than intensity ever will.

Learning to choose differently doesn’t mean we stop feeling attracted to emotionally unavailable people overnight. It means we become more curious about the patterns beneath our attraction. We begin recognising the difference between longing and love, between fantasy and reality, and between validation and genuine connection.

If you recognise yourself in these patterns, you’re not alone. Many of us find ourselves repeatedly investing in people who can’t fully meet us, often without understanding why. These relationship patterns rarely appear out of nowhere. They’re usually connected to earlier experiences of love, acceptance, rejection, and belonging. Exploring them with curiosity and compassion can help us move away from chasing validation and towards relationships that offer genuine connection. You don’t have to work through these challenges on your own.