What Dating An Emotionally Unavailable Person Taught Me

All my life I thought I would never be capable of completely letting go and giving myself to someone else. I thought I would never be able to trust someone who wasn’t me. I had always been the one not giving others a chance, the one breaking other people’s hearts, the one ending relationships. Yes, I’ve fallen in love before, but never like this. This time I think I just fell. I fell hoping he’d catch me and I hit the ground…hard.

He turned me into someone I didn’t know I could be. He turned me upside down. He had me feeling things, saying things, thinking things I never had before. I jumped and did the one thing I never thought I’d do—I gave myself to him. All of me. I opened up my heart more than I had ever done before because I thought he was worth it. I gave him a chance but he never gave me one. He was too selfish to do that. He chose to remain closed off and he didn’t give me any of him in return. He left me there, stranded in a new land, all by myself. I wondered…what have I ever done to him to deserve that? Wasn’t I worth the shot? Why did he give up on me before even trying?

I had found the one person I could ever be myself with, that I could open up with about things I’d never said aloud before, that made me challenge everything I knew and made me think anything was possible. And it pains me to know that I’ll never mean to him what he means to me. That he’ll never love me like I love him. That he’ll never miss me like I miss him. That he’ll never lie awake at night with tears in his eyes writing all his feelings for me on paper.

I fear I will never find someone else like that. I fear he was my person. Maybe others will come, just like there were others before him. But just like those weren’t enough, I’m afraid the future ones won’t be either.

I just hope that one day he finds his person. The one that will make him jump. I hope she catches him. I hope she realizes just how amazing he is. A small part of me, however, doesn’t want her to. Not because I’d be jealous, but because I want him to know how this feels like. How it feels like to let go and hit the ground…hard. I want him to truly understand what I’m feeling. I want him to taste heartbreak, because only then will his apologies mean something.

He looked normal; he looked just like other guys. He was cool and calm and relaxed. He was comfortable in his own skin. For a while I even envied him. I wished I could be a little bit more like him.

But I didn’t know that behind all that was an extremely reserved human being. A guy who wouldn’t talk about himself, his family, or his dreams. For some time when we were just friends we talked. I think that’s what fooled me. I thought: He’s opening up, he’ll continue to do so. But no, the more serious we got, the more steps back he took. It wasn’t about the things he wouldn’t say anymore. It was about the things he wouldn’t allow himself to feel, the things he wouldn’t allow us to become.

He put in his head that he was just incapable of feeling love. Everyone is capable of that as long as everyone is open to the idea of falling in love. Maybe I just wasn’t IT for him. Maybe the other ones weren’t, either. There are many maybes. But he was emotionally closed off and refusing to open up to me, refusing to give himself to me while I was giving him my all.

Now, many months later, many shots of tequila later, many nights lost crying later, many weeks of depression later, I realize that this is just another lesson life is teaching me: don’t fall for an emotionally unavailable guy. No matter how great they are.

You might think like I thought, that you could be the one they’ll open up to. But if they are closed off, they won’t love you back. Only guys who are ready to commit will.

Today I know that we can’t make someone let go. People must do it themselves when they are ready. I know that if you must, then give only what they give you, never more. Because chances are, you’ll get hurt. And no guy is worth you feeling worthless. No guy is good enough to make you think you’re not good enough, because darling, YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Today I also know that those people can be the best ones. That those people are usually the ones that need more loving, more understanding. Unfortunately, they don’t know how to love back. And I have learned the most important lesson of them all…I AM WORTH LOVING. And you are, too. Today I know that unrequited love is the worst kind of love there is.

The sad part of all this is that this experience taught me to remain closed off myself. It taught me to be patient. To wait for love to knock on my door and not the other way around. To never say I love you first. To maybe strip my clothes, but never strip my soul.

But don’t you worry, my love! I learned that I’m a lot stronger that I thought, too. I learned that time and distance can heal. Things do get better. We just have to be strong and hold on.