You crave connection, but you keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners. Why?
Does this sound familiar? You crave connection, but you keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners. Why?
Here’s what might be happening beneath the surface:
- Familiarity – If you grew up with inconsistent love, your nervous system recognizes distance as normal—even if it’s painful.
- Your own avoidant part – Many anxiously attached people also have an avoidant part that pulls away when intimacy feels too close.
- Unprocessed relationship trauma – Past heartbreaks can train us to expect emotional distance, leading us to partners who mirror that.
- Childhood wounds – If love felt unpredictable in childhood, a part of you may believe it has to “earn” affection, keeping you stuck in these patterns.
The good news? Awareness is the first step to healing. In all of the work I teach, we work with these parts to unburden old wounds and build internal security.
This podcast explores why this happens through the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) or parts work and how we can heal.
Have you noticed this pattern in your relationships? What has helped you shift it?
Love, Jen
