What Does It Mean To Be Emotionally Unavailable?

Rosalía and Rauw Alejando’s joint interview with Ibai Llanos only lasted 40 seconds, but it was enough time for the singer to address two intergenerational and transoceanic issues: hegemonic masculinity and emotional availability. “I had lost faith in manhood, but when I met you that changed. The men around me were emotionally unavailable. The first time I didn’t feel that was with you. I felt like you weren’t afraid to love and be loved,” Rosalía said of the Puerto Rican singer.

A quick search for the term “emotionally unavailable” yields hundreds of pages of psychology on the subject. But what does it really mean? Several specialists in anthropology, psychology, and couples therapy help us unravel the term.

Isa Duque, a psychotherapist and educator specializing in romantic bonding based on good treatment, said that an emotionally unavailable person is one who “does not have the ability, desire, or tools necessary to commit to meaningful relationships way to connect emotionally with another person [to form] a more sincere, deeper connection.”

However, this inability or lack of desire to go deeper does not prevent such people from trying to find a partner or start a relationship. “We may think that emotional unavailability always implies a lack of commitment, but that’s not the case: it’s possible that we plan to be a couple, or even to be a couple and have the person we meet or Who we are with Who we don’t deepen a relationship with. They remain in the realm of action but do not allow us access to their inner world,” explains health psychologist Montse Cazcarra. “That’s why relationships with emotionally unavailable people create confusion: they want to connect, but they won’t allow it, resulting in a painful and confusing inconsistency,” she added.

Manu Palomo, a queer transfeminist sexologist, found that just because a person is emotionally unavailable at a certain point in time doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she will be emotionally unavailable throughout their lives. “The problems are usually related to a person’s biography; Difficulties may occur at a specific point in time, which may be repeated in a pattern of behavior that leads [the person] always relate [to others] In this way. You have to discover yourself [and gain] Knowing about yourself, how to love, how you learned to love and how to make that love available to others.”

Whether this emotional unavailability is temporary or lifelong depends on the origin of the pattern, according to Montse Cazcarra, “from what we had to protect ourselves from, because that’s what unavailability is really about: it’s a strategy to protect yourself from pain and suffering. “

Common characteristics of emotionally unavailable people

It’s hard to list the traits that define an emotionally unavailable person because every human being is complex and full of nuances. However, as Cazcarra pointed out, there are general patterns that can help us recognize this condition in others or in ourselves to avoid or reduce the confusion and suffering it causes us.

“First, [this] would be a person who avoids emotional intimacy, finds it difficult to express their feelings, to connect with their vulnerability, to express their emotions and to recognize their emotional needs. Everything could be simpler: we meet, but I’ll explain to you from the start that in my relationships I tend to reach that level of availability. But the truth is, knowing where we are and where the other person is is one of the most complex aspects of any relationship.

Penélope Guisasola, a body therapist, explains: “On the one hand, there is a lack of connection to yourself and what is happening to you, and so of course there is a gap between that and the ability to communicate it. On the other hand, there is the terrifying fear of rejection when ghosting comes into play, the often dangerous game of avoidance, sudden disappearance, or finger-pointing.”

American feminist author Vivian Gornick put it perfectly in a paragraph of her latest book, The End of the Novel of Love: “What matters is this. If you don’t understand your feelings, you will be dragged around by them all your life. If you understand them but are unable to integrate them, then years of pain are destined for you. If you deny and reject their power, you are doomed.”

Manu Palomo said that in order to be emotionally responsible people, it is essential to practice absolute honesty with oneself and others: “The practice of [looking at] and to understand how we are: what I like, what I want, what I don’t like, what hurts me… Being honest with yourself and then showing that honesty to the outside world. Only in this way is it possible to take on affective responsibility in relation to others.”

Another characteristic of the emotionally unavailable person, according to Cazcarra, would be that “they are more comfortable in shallow relationships because they keep them away from their fears and insecurities; At the same time, their need for connection can come in the form of small gestures that create confusion,” she explained. She also emphasized, “They have trust issues, maintain a certain emotional distance and keep their fears, insecurities and vulnerabilities to themselves.”

For Cazcarra, another important trait is that the person “avoids anything that could lead to conflict and denies the problems and difficulties that may arise in the relationship, to get away from the idea that there might be problems to be worked on has to work: “We’re okay, all couples have ups and downs.

A gendered pattern that intersects with everything else

Another point on which all the experts surveyed agree is that this lack of emotional availability intersects with gender stereotypes that make men more unavailable in relationships than women. “Gender socialization is a lot [a factor] in the way we have learned to connect,” stressed Isa Duque. “This has been studied a lot in all gender studies with all the feminist genealogy and seen how women were brought up to have love at the center of our lives, actually a very specific kind of love… (in a couple, heterosexual etc.), while for men this is not seen as a priority.”

Duque refers to the research of Mari Luz Esteban, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), a leading figure in the study of emotions. In Critique of Loving Thought, Esteban discusses women’s role as “guardians of affection”; You are responsible for taking care of emotions and love. “In this imposed role, we have to give all that love, but we can’t ask for anything in return, that means the reciprocity is broken to the detriment of women,” she said.

For Duque, “bonding as a couple is one of the most important things that can happen to you as a woman because it confers the value and legitimacy associated with the female gender; in men it is often the other way around [because] Commitment is viewed as a loss of freedom.” This imbalance, Duque says, causes many women (although, of course, many men, too) to become what she calls “love junkies,” that is, “what motivates them to commit or finding relationship is not the desire but the necessity to avoid failing in a forced commitment.”

If the ideal woman grows up devoted to supporting nurturing, feelings and love, the man is cut off from the opportunity to connect with the emotional world. “As the French anthropologist Elisabeth Badinter points out in her book On Masculine Identity, the construction of the ideal man is always based on what should not be, on prohibitions: if you are a man, you cannot be a child, you cannot be gay , you can’t be a woman,” added Duque. “Therefore, the hegemonic model of masculinity penalizes statements and behaviors that are more typical of femininity, such as

For her part, anthropologist and therapist Alessia Cartoni explained that “for boys, this emotional unavailability begins in childhood because they are being asked to project an image of self-preservation, success, and strength, they are being pushed to build relationships, to be empowered and not to show difficulties even in the most difficult situations.”

As Connor Beaton, founder of Men Talks, pointed out in one of his TED Talks, “What makes men vulnerable is precisely this requirement to be invulnerable.” Isa Duque said that all of this applies to the youth they meet in the high schools works, still very much true. “A lot of boys share that they’ve been emasculated by the opportunity to cry, to be scared, and all of that emasculation generally renders them unable to even connect to what they’re feeling… It also causes them expose themselves to very risky situations. [in] a constant attempt to hold [others] from thinking that [they are] afraid, vulnerable, that [they] don’t have eggs…so that’s all [they] will not be laughed at.”

When there are glaring red flags

However, these prescribed gender roles should never excuse one person’s lack of emotional responsibility towards another. According to psychologist Fran Jódar, you have to be careful when dealing with an “apparently sensitive man”. [who is] always the victim because he suffered and was hurt in the context of family and other relationships, which deprives him of emotional availability and responsibility.”

In this sense, Montse Cazcarra pointed out “that it is important to strike a balance between demonizing the unavailable person, because although his inconsistency may hurt us, it does not mean that we are dealing with someone who is us.” intentionally hurt; At the same time, we must ensure that he is not used [it] as an excuse”.

In her interview, Rosalia implied that before Rauw Alejandro, all the men she was romantically involved with were emotionally unavailable. This begs the question: Why do we continue to engage in this type of relationship despite the many red flags we often see?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer because, as the experts in this article have pointed out, it all depends on the person and their reality. However, Alessia Cartoni makes a controversial but absolutely crucial point: “There’s no denying that this type of emotionally unavailable persona is often quite intriguing. It’s because of narcissism [is typical of many of them]. They’re people who know how to take their place… they tell wonderful stories, they’re very flirty, they seem to have a sense of presence, but the presence is theirs alone.”

And she concluded: “It’s not easy to see that they aren’t [emotionally] available because everything they do creates confusion, and then you [start to make excuses for them]; you fill the gap because obviously this kind of relationship activates something; this is the archetype of the caring woman, the woman who loves too much (adapted from Robin Norwood’s bestseller Women Who Love Too Much). It prompts us to take care of what the other person is missing, “They need to be taken care of… I’m going to be the person who’s really going to listen to him because no one’s ever listened to him.”