Maybe you’re not ready either
What we get wrong (and, sometimes, very, very right) about emotional unavailability
There is a moment early on Marguerite Duras’s The Lover (an autobiographical novel that is slim, impossibly French, and devastating in the way it makes you feel like you’ve been wandering through your love life in clown shoes) where the narrator describes a man she’s been sleeping with who seemingly cannot, will not, will never love her.
She doesn’t try to fight it or fix him or gather evidence against his non-love dressed up as melancholic solitude—she just states it plainly, as if reporting the weather:
“He says he’s lonely, horribly lonely because of this love he feels for her. She says she’s lonely too. She doesn’t say why.”
I was sat on the terrace of a café across from the Église Saint-Sulpice when I first read that line. It was a bright day in Paris and I had been there the entire afternoon, turning The Lover’s pages between forced, inelegant sips of the café long I had ordered but did not particularly want, its bitterness drying the corners of my mouth.
As I re-read the line over and over, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, its wicker finding new parts of my thighs in which it could dig. For a second, it felt like I’d just been personally addressed, as if my own thoughts had leaked from my ear and dripped onto the page.
It’s been some years since that especially sunny afternoon when I first read The Lovers. I’ve moved flats, lived in different cities, grown out an accidental wolf cut, entered and exited relationships—yet still, I’ve never stopped thinking about that book. About that line.
Because here’s the thing: I have loved that man. Maybe you have too.
Well, I have not loved Duras’s man specifically, but I have loved that kind of man: the one who vanishes in real time. The one who is already halfway out the door even as he tells you you’re everything you want. The one who doesn’t just fear commitment but fears feeling things too much, or feeling them too soon, or—God forbid—feeling them at the same time as you. The one who always seems to be handling your emotions with tongs. The one who feels “lonely, horribly lonely” because, in spite of himself, he loves you too much.
TWENTY SECONDS OF STORY AND TWO MINUTES OF ANALYSIS (OR, A CLOSE READ OF A SHORT STORY BASED ON REAL EVENTS)
Let me tell you a story. It’s a short one—just two sentences connected by a colon.
Once, I loved a man who looked me in the eye and said:
“I think you’re perfect, I love you, and it’s all a bit too good—that’s the problem.”
If we were to analyse this brief story in the way a high schooler is forced to ‘close read’ The Great Gatsby or Macbeth or that one chapter with the field and the children and Holden Caulfield, we would say that the man’s statement is one of those declarations that sounds profound in the moment and reveals itself, in retrospect, to be incredibly loopy and falsely poetic—a way of saying, “Hello, I will now self-destruct and I am taking the entire future of this relationship with me. That said, I love you.”
From there, we would also feel comfortable making the literary hypothesis that this man is, for all intents and purposes, emotionally unavailable.
THE FAMILIARITY OF HEARTBREAK HAS LED ME TO WRITE THIS ESSAY
Much like the one I first read on that café terrace across from the Église Saint-Sulpice, the man’s sentence stuck.
It stuck because it felt familiar. Familiar in the way that heartbreak becomes a cracked mirror. Familiar in the way that anything vague and lightly self-sabotaging feels romantic when you’re falling in love—or, in this case, probably already in love—with someone who is emotionally unavailable.
And this is, I think, what this essay is about.
WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE LABEL, MEME, DIAGNOSE, AND PUNCH THE LINES OF EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY
Within the realms of modern romance and dating, emotional unavailability has become a label, a meme, a diagnosis, a punchline—and I’m not convinced we know what we mean when we say it.
(Or, worse, actually: I am pretty sure we do know what it means, yet we still practise it or engage with it anyway.)
To declare anyone—another man, another woman, yourself—“emotionally unavailable” is to participate in this kind of shared shorthand.
So, back to the essay: this is about him—Duras’s man, the man from the very short story, The Man as gender-neutral symbol of The Emotionally Unavailable Person.
And it’s about you.
And, unfortunately, it’s also about me.
THE LINGUA FRANCA (I.E., THE SEMANTIC FOOL’S GOLD) OF CONTEMPORARY COURTSHIP
To begin, I would like to provide a brief survey of common phrases in the lingua franca of contemporary courtship (i.e., texting between two people who have kissed more than once and still pretend they don’t know what they’re “looking for” despite ceaselessly throwing themselves onto the altar of romance):
“He has intimacy issues.”
“She’s got a disorganised attachment style. You know, because of that thing that happened when she was twelve.”
“He says he’s not ready for anything serious… right now. But maybe later?”
“She’s a serial monogamist.”
“He’s not over his ex. Yeah, the one he dated his first year of uni and hasn’t spoken to since 2019.”
“I think with us it’s more a timing thing, than a fundamental incompatibility thing.”
“He said he’s just really busy with work-slash-life-slash-therapy right now.”
And, of course:
“She suggested we ‘take a break’ because I am, quote, ‘emotionally unavailable.’ The irony is that she’s emotionally unavailable, too—at least, that’s what my online therapist told me. But I was like, whatever, bro. Anyway… another pint?”
These phrases and terms are rarely said plainly—oh, no—and they are usually invoked by people trying to sound simultaneously breezy, unattached and psychologically sound.
(Of course, they are frequently none of these things, largely due to the fact that they are circling the drain of romantic confusion at the moment they call into use any or all of the above terminology.)
They are whispered at dinners, in cafés and on park benches. They are screenshot and sent to a group chat. They are delivered via voice note over the tyre screeches and blaring horns of rush hour traffic.
Simply put, they are the semantic fool’s gold of contemporary courtship.
I AM SUFFERING FROM LEXICAL VERTIGO AND THE KNOWLEDGE THAT SOME PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO FEEL DEEPLY WITH ME
Now, let us return to the phrase in question, the one that’s been giving me lexical vertigo for years: emotionally unavailable.
A phrase so overused it now has the opaque, stretchy quality of a zodiac sign:
“You’re a Libra, so you know your love life’s bound to be dysfunctional. And I don’t care he’s 6’3”—he’s an Aquarius. Obviously he was going to ghost when you asked him ‘What are we?’ They’re all emotionally unavailable.”
What does it actually mean to be “emotionally unavailable”—As in: emotionally how? Unavailable to whom and for what and, frankly, in what way?
The definition of emotional unavailability rarely means what it sounds like, because a person who is classified as “emotionally unavailable” is rarely cold and robotic. They are not usually sociopathic or callous or cruel, either.
In fact, most emotionally unavailable people do feel things. Often quite a lot of things. They are not chrysalises, paper-thin and abandoned, nor are they love-averse lizard men. They might cry at the eulogy scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral. They probably read a lot of books. They try their hand at “processing.” Sometimes, even, they have a therapist (or at least made an appointment with one).
Emotionally unavailable people—they feel deeply, they just... don’t want to feel deeply with you.
Maybe they don’t want to feel deeply with anyone—don’t feel bad—but still, because it bears repeating: they do not want to feel deeply with you.
THINGS YOUR EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE LOVER OR PARTNER OR CRUSH WILL LIKELY TELL YOU WHEN THEY REMEMBER THAT THEY ARE INDEED STILL EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE
This is not to say that your emotionally unavailable lover or partner or crush has never flexed the tender muscles of their emotions in your presence. They do, albeit briefly, intensely, right up until the moment your relationship starts to resemble something real, something reciprocal, something with edges.
And then: POOF! There is a shift in tone, a fade in your newfound relational rhythm.
Then comes the long message or nervous conversation, the one that makes your heart sink into your spleen and your eyes burn. They type it or say it or laugh-sob it as if reading from a script, one that has at least one or all of the following lines:
“I’m just not in the right headspace right now, and, come to think of it, maybe I never was.”
“Maybe you were too much, or maybe the whole relationship was. Maybe it’s just me.”
“It’s bad timing.”
“It’s great timing, actually, but not great enough.”
“I really hope you’ll understand one day.”
THE SMALL DETAILS WHICH MAKE UP EXACTLY WHAT EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY LOOKS LIKE
The reason it’s so hard to define—that is, the state of emotional unavailability—is because it doesn’t look like avoidance.
Instead, here is what emotional availability does look like:
It looks like those first three dates that feel like the first few lines of a novel that make you buy it at the bookshop because they’re so good.
It looks like them brushing your hair back from your face.
It looks like them remembering how you take your coffee.
Emotional unavailability—it can look like affection. It also can look like being seen, right up until you realise they’ve already left the room.
BRIEF INTERVIEWS (AND SOME COMMENTARY) WITH PEOPLE WHO KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT EMOTIONAL AVAILABILITY OR LACK THEREOF
Because I’d never ask you to blindly agree with me and my diatribe essay, I’ve consulted a few people whose hearts and minds have also been affected by emotional availability (or, rather, a lack thereof):
Clara, 31, florist:
“He told me I was the best thing that ever happened to him. The next day, he told me he needed ‘some time’ to ‘figure out his priorities.’ I didn’t hear from him until, three months later, I got a postcard from Lisbon that said thinking of you x. No return address.”
Tim, 29, musician:
“I wasn’t unavailable. I just knew I would ruin her. I wasn’t in the right place. But I felt everything—I still do.”
(Author’s note: This sentence was delivered with the tone of someone who believes this is romantic and not completely insane.)
Francesa, 28, editor:
“‘Emotionally unavailable’ is just a cute way to say: I want the warmth of your love without the accountability of loving you back.”
Hugo, 29, artist:
“I once dated someone who texted me you’re the closest thing I’ve had to home in a long time and then didn’t invite me to her birthday. She did, however, send a voice note about how she’d been doing “a lot of thinking” and felt we were “emotionally misaligned”—a phrase that made me feel like I was being returned to sender.
Pamela, mid-50s, therapist:
“People often confuse emotional availability with emotional openness. You can share a trauma and still be completely unavailable. Real availability is about showing up consistently, being accountable for your impact, and letting someone matter to you.”
(Author’s note: Oh, Pamela—YES! Letting someone matter. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? And I don’t just mean missing someone when they’re gone, or caring when they cry, or liking their silly little stories about silly little days. I mean letting their presence restructure your life. I mean allowing your love to be legible. To become action. Not just a beautiful idea you revisit in private, but something real. Something that moves.)
THE MINDFUCKY PROBLEM WITH EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE PEOPLE
The problem with emotionally unavailable people—well, one of the problems—is that they often don’t look unavailable. They are not cagey or standoffish or distant in the ways that would make them easy to clock and avoid. They are not cartoon villains or amoral tech bro billionaires-turned-secret-dictators.
More often, they are warm, attentive, wildly articulate about their feelings—especially the ones they’re not ready to have. They’re fluent in vulnerability the way Parisians are fluent in English: elegantly, confidently, and only when it’s convenient for them. And as soon as they start to feel something in real time, they shut the door and blame it on things like “busyness” or “bad timing” or “just, like, being in a really weird place.”
Which is maybe the real issue here. That emotional unavailability often masquerades as something else—something beautiful, even cinematic. It’s not nothing because it’s almost everything. It’s someone building you a little house of mirrors and letting you move in, only to remind you, after you’ve unpacked, that they do not like looking at their reflection and, therefore, it was never meant to be permanent.
And the worst part isn’t even the leaving—it’s that they make you feel like it was never real to begin with. Like you misread the signs. Like you imagined the intimacy. Like you tricked yourself into thinking you mattered.
But you didn’t imagine it—you just loved someone who can’t hold what they start. Someone who confuses intensity with depth. Someone who wants to feel, but not to stay.
AN INEXACT TAXONOMY OF THE NONLINEAR, LOOPING SPECTRUM OF EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY
For argument’s sake—and also for the sake of organising something unknowably messy into something that seems manageably understandable (a very emotionally unavailable impulse, now that I think about it)—that there is a nonlinear, looping spectrum of emotional unavailability.
I have broken them down into types. Subcategories. Styles. Flavours. A lovelorn system of classification.
This taxonomy is incomplete, of course. It’s also probably wrong and incredibly gendered, but it’s given me something to do with my hands and all the thoughts I have about relationships with nowhere else to go.
1. The Aware and Ashamed
This one knows. That’s his whole thing. He’ll say things like “I’m just really scared of hurting you,” or “I want to be better but I don’t think I’m there yet,” or (my personal favourite) “you’re the kind of person I’d want to end up with… not now, of course—but LATER.”
How to spot the ‘Aware and Ashamed’:
He reads bell hooks.
He’s in therapy, or on the waitlist for therapy, or dated someone who was in therapy and picked up the jargon via osmosis.
He is emotionally articulate and emotionally immobilised.
He will tell you exactly why he can’t love you. It’ll sound evolved. It’s not.
He will expect you to thank him for the honesty. You will.
2. The Pseudo-Aware
Looks like the first type but isn’t. This one thinks he is self-aware because he can name the thing and treats emotional intelligence as a performance metric.
Things the ‘Pseudo-Aware’ might say:
“I’m definitely avoidant.”
“My last relationship messed me up.”
“I don’t really do labels.”
“I’m working on being more emotionally present” while actively not texting you back.
(Please note that, if pressed, he’ll explain that he’s “just in a weird place right now,” which is less a location and more a permanent timezone.)
3. The Situationally Unavailable
This one always has a reason. A legitimate, maddening, logistically watertight reason. A move. A job. A breakup that is still “fresh.” A period of deep personal transformation that seems to last the exact duration of your entanglement. “If this were a different time,” he says, “we’d be perfect.”
Things to understand about the ‘Situationally Unavailable’:
He is human equivalent of a train that never arrives, but you keep checking the schedule anyway because it should be here.
He keeps hope alive. He trades in hope.
You will write a poem or an essay or a book or, at the very least, a 2,000 word rant in your Notes App about him that you later delete. Or publish.
4. The Emotionally Swiss-Cheesed
This one feels everything, but selectively. He is emotionally unavailable in spurts and his behaviour will trick your nervous system into believing this is progress. Be warned: it is not. (If you must know, he is unconsciously practising ‘intermittent reinforcement,’ aka the most addictive psychological pattern known to man. Or woman. Or whoever still thinks the next text or call or date or Venus Retrograde will clarify everything.)
Example instances of the aforementioned spurts exercised by the ‘Emotionally Swiss-Cheesed’:
He tells you about his complicated relationship with one or both of his parents.
He openly cries in front of you while watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
When he touches your face or adjusts your hair, he will do so gently and while looking so deeply into your eyes you fear he can see your cervix.
He will disappear for no longer than four days and reappear just as suddenly. (He will never comment on said disappearance.)
5. The Faux-Available
The most dangerous of them all. He does everything right. Or at least, appears to. He will grant you the experience of having a boyfriend while simultaneously never being your boyfriend. It is a perfect simulation. You keep thinking if you just keep going and say nothing and make no sudden movements, he’ll stop being theoretical and start being real. He will not.
The personality traits, actions, and phrases employed by a ‘Faux-Available’:
He is kind.
He is present.
He will make an effort to meet your friends.
He will introduce you to at least one family member.
When he makes you breakfast (which he will), he will ask you how you like your eggs and butter your toast for you.
He says things like “I’m not seeing anyone else” and “I really like what we have,” and then casually drops that he “doesn’t believe in monogamy” or “just isn’t ready to define anything.”
6. You
Yes, you. Us. Me. The generally emotionally articulate, therapy-literate, boundary-setting, pattern-recognising protagonist of this entire narrative. (I’m half-kidding here.) The one who keeps falling for emotionally unavailable people because it allows us to remain safe inside the fantasy of love without ever having to experience the vulnerability of actually being loved.
The Maybes ‘We’ (also referred to as ‘You’ or ‘Us’ or ‘Me’) are or are doing:
Maybe we confuse longing with meaning.
Maybe we prefer the chase to the calm.
Maybe we’ve built our identities around being the person who tries, not the person who is chosen.
Maybe we are also, in our own tragic little ways, emotionally unavailable.
NICE TRY! IT’S NOT ME—IT’S YOU
At some point—probably around month two, or three, or maybe even six—you begin to suspect the problem isn’t just them, your emotionally unavailable parter. That yes, they’re avoidant or scared or broken or misaligned or capital-E Evolving or whatever euphemism they’ve supplied in lieu of a stable relationship, but also: you stayed.
And you’re still staying.
Not in spite of the ambiguity. Because of it.
There is something strangely seductive about being half-loved. About being kept close but not claimed. Desired but not held. There’s a kind of masochistic thrill to it, like tapping on a bruise just to make sure it still hurts. And it does. That’s how you know it’s real.
This is the part no one wants to admit: that emotional unavailability isn’t always something that happens to you. Sometimes it’s something you choose. Consciously, or semi-consciously, or in the blurry reflexive way that children of chaos learn to recognize unpredictability as intimacy.
Because if you fall for someone who can’t love you properly, you never have to find out what it would mean to be loved completely. To be seen. To be chosen. To be known on purpose.
So instead, you choose longing. You choose the almost. You date the emotionally unavailable guy like it’s your job. And, as it turns out, you’re very, very good at your job.
You stay in it because it lets you perform devotion without ever having to receive it. Because receiving it would mean opening a door you’ve spent your whole life guarding. It would mean softness. Stillness. Surrender.
And honestly? That’s terrifying.
Because if someone actually loves you, and you actually let them, and it actually ends, then that’s not a flaw in the system. That’s not bad timing or “emotionally misaligned” or one of those tragic little exceptions you collect like smooth pebbles on a beach. That’s real loss. Actual pain. Not the romantic kind—the kind that splits you.
So instead, you love the person who cannot love you back. And you make that love the story. And you convince yourself it’s brave.
Of course, you know it’s not brave—it’s just familiar. It’s also exhausting.
FOUR WORDS THAT FEW HAVE EVER SPOKEN HONESTLY: “I AM EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE”
The phrase emotionally unavailable is starting to collapse under its own weight. It’s become too flexible, like cheap jeans with too much elastane—it stretches to fit anything, so it means nothing.
So, what does it actually mean to be emotionally available?
Like, in practice. In broad daylight. In real, sometimes annoying, often unpoetic life.
To be emotionally available isn’t about how quickly you text back or if she likes your story or if he calls you “babe” in front of his friends. And it’s not about trauma-dumping on the second date or the fact she told you that she “feels really safe with you.” It’s all performance and cues and set dressing—the theatre of intimacy—but not intimacy itself.
Being emotionally available, I think, is much more boring and much more brave. It means showing up when it’s not convenient. It means choosing someone even when not in an oxytocin-fuelled, unbearably loved-up state. It means letting feelings dictate behaviour, not just exist inside some sealed-off, elegantly worded monologue.
It’s about staying in the room when things get murky. It’s about having the hard conversation before the silence. It’s about letting someone matter.
Which sounds simple until you realise how many people are terrified of doing it. How many people would rather feel everything privately than feel one thing with someone else.
Because to be emotionally available means to risk being disappointed. It means surrendering control. It means letting go of the narrative where you’re the broken one, or the brave one, or the tragically too-much one, and just being a person in a room with another person who could leave.
And maybe that’s what makes it so hard. Because once you open the door to real connection, you also open the door to real pain. There are no escape routes. No fantasy to retreat into. Just you, and them, and the chance that it might not work.
But also—the chance that it might.
UNSCIENTIFIC DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS TO TELL YOU IF: 1. THIS ONE IS INDEED DIFFERENT; AND, 2. YOU’RE NOT IN LIMBO
Let’s say you’re still unsure. Let’s say you’ve been sitting there reading this essay and you recognised your ex or yourself or that one certain person in a word or phrase or paragraph and you just said aloud and to no one in particular, “Okay, but what if this one is different? What if they’re just scared? Or slow? Or hasn’t yet realised I’m the exception?”
(Author’s note: You are, in all likelihood, not the exception. But let’s keep going.)
Here is a short diagnostic tool, adapted from nothing clinical but spiritually adjacent to every romantic trial and tribulation you’ve overanalysed:
Do they want you, or do they want to feel wanted?
Do they show up, or do they say things that sound like showing up?
Do you feel chosen, or just tolerated?
Are they confused, or are they making you confused?
Are you in a relationship, or a long-form audition for one?
If the answers make your stomach drop or your toes curl or your hair stand on end, there’s your answer.
Because someone who is emotionally available will not keep you guessing. They won’t make love feel like a puzzle or a project or a “vibe.” They won’t leave you dangling between possibility and performance.
And if you are dangling, if you are constantly trying to prove your worthiness to someone who cannot meet you, then I’m sorry—but you are not in love.
You’re in limbo.
And if you are the one doing this to someone else—if you’re the one vaguely withholding, charming and evasive, over-explaining your trauma while never quite asking theirs—then I say this with love: stop. Or don’t stop. But don’t pretend you don’t know what you’re doing or let yourself believe that this is “just who you are.”
Because, as we now know but are still terrified to say out loud:
Being emotionally available means being willing to be loved.
Not admired, not desired, not carefully managed from a safe emotional distance—loved.
IT’S HARD AND TRICKY AND NOT ALWAYS FUN TO LET YOURSELF BE LOVED
To be willing to be loved: that’s harder. That’s trickier.
And it’s not always fun, because it requires staying. Not forever, necessarily, but long enough for someone to see you, and for you to let them.
It means risking being wrong about someone. It means giving up the story you tell yourself about why this always happens to you. It means letting it happen differently.
OH, TO BE AVAILABLE, GLORIOUSLY AVAILABLE
Beneath the memes and the voice notes and the late-night spirals and the essays like this one written to make sense of the people we cannot stop wanting there exists an undercurrent so strong it makes us chase and hide and bury our emotions and unavailability.
And the undercurrent? It is a riptide of scary truths:
Love is not just something you fall into; it is something you allow.
Love is not something you only feel, either, because, ultimately, it is something you must choose.
And, listen, maybe you’re not ready to be rushed downstream. Maybe you never will be.
But, then again, wouldn’t it be gorgeous to not have to be lonely, horribly lonely because you love too much and, instead, be available, gloriously available because of it?
this piece is exactly what I've been scrolling the feed for, something on relationships that is deeply specific and takes me through familiar feelings, lovely lovely read 💗
this is a deeply introspective piece and incredibly thought provoking, thank you so much for this.