Afraid of Adopting a New Behavior

You remind me of the man who is attracted to sexy blonds who break his heart. One day he vows to only date dowdy matrons for whom he has no attraction, thinking that this plan will protect him from heartache.

Love isn't supposed to feel like swallowing a dose of laxative. In the end, all you can do is follow your heart not your prescription pad. I think you are frightened for more than one reason. First, so long as you continued to choose guys who weren't available, you felt safe and secure with a pattern that was as familiar and cozy as a well worn pair of slippers. When you vow to choose a lover who won't be inaccessible, you are entering treacherous waters. For one thing, you are might actually get close to someone. That is truly foreign. To chase after and yearn for someone you can't have is all that you know. You don't know how to be connected to a man.

What's more, until now you have been attached to the chase but not to an actual person. If you allow yourself to become attached to someone, you risk tremendous pain if the relationship ends through his death or as a result of his abandonment. There is more. What if your fear is warning you that your unconscious is going to trick you--that is make you believe that you have found a different type of man, an accessible one, when in reality you have simply found another unavailable type?

The bottom line is this: tricking yourself into a new behavior (forcing yourself to choose accessible men) before you have resolved the conflicts that are fueling your choice, will make you very afraid and probably will not be successful. The prime reason why this plan won't succeed is because unfinished business has a funny way of rearing its head. By this I mean that your unconscious mind is actually capable of inducing an accessible man to become an inaccessible one. How is this possible? Let me give you a couple of scenarios. Because you fall for unavailable men, you will surely expect every man you are with to be unavailable to you. This expectation will lead you to perhaps keep checking in with him for frequent reassurances that he still loves you, or maybe you may become clingy or demanding or possessive. Then what happens? He feels crowded and pulls away, and voila, you're dating Mr. Inaccessible all over again.

You could also go to the other extreme and behave distant and withdrawn (in order to protect yourself against the pain of his pulling away from you). Doing so would produce the same outcome as described above. If you are withdrawn, he will withdraw and become inaccessible in response. And, voila, Mr. Inaccessible reappears again. My point is, there are no tricks or shortcuts in the healing process.

You need to establish a therapeutic relationship with someone who can help you experience a relationship with a person who is accessible to you. In the safety of this dry run relationship, you can explore all the ways in which you may feel tempted to run from the connection, destroy it, become overly demanding, etc. . As your conflict comes to life in your therapeutic relationship, you will find a safe place to resolve all your feelings and fears. Then you will naturally choose an accessible man rather than try to trick yourself into such a relationship before you are truly ready for it.