Am I really Unavailable for Relationships?
This is a part of the “Ask Jane” Series,
in which Jane answers questions
you email to her that of concern to you.
(Names are changed to protect your privacy.)
Just go to the “Contact Jane” page
and ask your question in the contact form.
Fellow Healer in New York is questioning Jane’s response to Linda, in which Jane said it appears that Linda gets attracted to men who are unavailable. Fellow Healer’s question is in response to the last “Ask Jane” Q & A about Linda in San Diego’s Question “Why do I Keep Contacting my Ex-boyfriend?”
For the original Ask Jane Q & A from Linda, click here.
Fellow Healer: I know many people who are available in some situations and with some people and not others. Boundaries, likes, dislikes, who knows? Is someone 100% one or the other? I have been told by people in my life that they see me as unavailable and others see me as quite available. Maybe I was unavailable to just that person and for good reason!
Fellow Healer then relayed (in the context of an article he wrote) an experience where a woman (he’s calling Katie) contacted him from a dating service, but he had already started dating another woman (Lea). He went out with Katie just as friends, and felt more drawn to her than with Lea, the woman he was dating. But out of loyalty, he stayed with Lea. The relationship eventually didn’t work out. He kept up his friendship with Katie and when he wanted it to go deeper, and became open, vulnerable and available to her, she dropped out of the relationship.
Jane: The issue of whether you are or you aren’t really available is only significant in the context of whether or not your relationships are working well for you. If they aren’t, this could be a part of what’s not working well. Limiting decisions*, and the patterns resulting from them, can be very particular to the individual person; and what is apparent on the surface, may not ultimately be what the pivotal limiting decision* turns out to be. The limiting decisions* are generally covered over by an emotional defense system, meant to avoid the pain of the limiting decision*. The emotional defense system is the dysfunctional pattern that people get into. The pattern for you could, for instance, be that you are available when the woman is not, and you are not available when they are. And the underlying limiting decision* holding that in place could be something about fear of abandonment, resulting in avoiding relationships in which both of you are actually available for a committed intimate relationship, so that you never have to feel the pain of being left. (This is strictly a guess.) There always is a pattern in there if something isn’t working well, but it’s not always so easy to ferret out what it is.
Fellow Healer: I did consequently try some email exchange with Katie to understand her side. In response, I got an email lecture on my diet and the need to go within to heal. It was an intense preaching with angry undertones that I had no idea where it was coming from. No matter how you put a nice new age twist on it, or try turning the responsibility on me, her behavior toward me is plain ole strange. No matter how enlightened we get, our behavior can and will hurt others.”
Jane: From what you described, Katie is clearly functioning from an emotionally defended place, no matter what terminology it is couched in. But if there wasn’t an unhealed pattern in you in relation to her, and limiting decisions* holding that pattern in place, you would not have been in the pain you ended up being in, and the whole scenario with her wouldn’t have unfolded in the way it did. The pain you are feeling is the pain of the limiting decisions in you. All Katie did was trigger the pain that was already there, that comes to the surface when someone triggers it.
* For a description of “limiting decisions,” click here.
