Warning: naughty language ahead!

We attract lovers and partners who are putting out what we are putting out into the world.

We essentially are dating ourselves.

We are big-ass mirrors—walking around dancing with others and ourselves at the same time.

I had a healer, a woman at the farmer’s market, call me on my heart shit this week. She shot from the hip to my heart with so much truth I stumbled.

She told me I was an “unavailable lover.”

But wait…me with the wide-open heart, no boundaries? How? ! I’m a tigress! I’m a strong woman and a strong lover—how can I be unavailable?

I’ll tell you how.

I initially will take a lover in, with the widest of hearts. Shit, you want to fall in love in 24 hours? I’m your girl, I got this. But once you’re in, you get in say, 70 percent, and it may take months or years and then—slam!

Wall.

Puzzled, my lovers may bash their fists against it and say, “Aren’t walls for the first half of love?! Where we are figuring each other out and deciding whether we are going to go all in? You chose me! I chose you! What is this wall? Janne, this is bullshit!”

That wall.

The available but unavailable lover.

Why? Where did this come from?

Let’s rewind.

I grew up with two gay moms. I had a nurturing and fabulous childhood. I didn’t grow up with a father.

I believe having male and female connection in our lives as children to learn how to receive affection is important in cultivating our “how to love” manuals. Our belief systems, baby.

As a little girl, I remember on some level wondering where my father was, or if he wanted to know me.

I didn’t feel chosen.

I felt left.

On some level I have battled my entire life to feel worthy of love from males.

I don’t know how to let a man all the way in. The belief of “I am not worthy of love” is something I took a bat to four years ago and am still keeping in check. I thought I had kicked it to the curb. I doused it with awareness, forgiveness and accountability.

However, maybe I’m not there yet.

I truthfully can say that in my 25 years of loving, I haven’t let anybody all the way in. No one has got through that door, and been enveloped in the abyss that is my heart. No one has penetrated that last 30 percent of my vulnerability.

I’ve loved, yes. But loved to an extent.

This belief of not being worthy of love surfaced in a relationship I had with a partner who worshipped the ground I walked on. I stared at him skeptically with his heart in my hands and rejected his love with my disbelief. I didn’t know how to let him all the way in, I didn’t know how to know his love was authentic. In my inability to receive his love I became insecure and jealous.

But he was there, loving me the whole damn time.

Nasty belief, hey?

So, we attract what we put out. Maybe the reason the last five men I dipped my heart’s toes in didn’t work out because we shared that element—unavailable lovers.

I blamed none of it ever developing more deeply on them being artists, transient musicians or men struggling with accountability.

In reality, I was the one to point a big fat finger at and blame, for not only choosing them as lovers in the first place, but continuing to exist with an unavailable heart.

I drew them in like bees to honey.

Musicians? Safe to love, and unavailable physically.

Long distance? Safe.

Men absorbed in their art, with work on the front burner? Safe. (another mirror…)

One of these recent five lovers was a man who had recently split with his fiancé after cheating on her. I caught his safe ass in my open heart.

Wounded? I got you, babe. Let’s focus on you, that’s safe.

The other musician, who left a long-term relationship, didn’t change his heart sheets, jumped into another woman, and then jumped directly into me. He jumped out of me and back into his past pretty quickly.

The other was a friend who repeated several times he was not desiring of a relationship, but in my head I was like, “Nah, I’m so awesome and we have so much fun—you’ll want to date me.”

Nope, he was as he claimed to be—unavailable.

The last man was a month out of a three year relationship and we both talked and agreed we were in no place to start a fire romantically, except somewhere along the lines we went, “Ahhhh fuck it, both of our hearts sheets aren’t changed. I like you! Let’s be messy together!”

That lasted a week and a half.

So, I continually spoke these men into existence in my heart, right?

I think it’s safe to say the mirror—and the lesson—is (gasp) my unavailable heart is just as much to blame for things not turning into happily ever after.

It’s much easier to point the finger at the you that caused things to fall apart than the me bits.

Now what? Well, the “me” bit.

I work on making this big beautiful heart more available and inevitably I will attract a partner who is also (more) available.

Relephant:

Women: How to Get an Unavailable Man to Want You.

How to Unhook from an Emotionally Unavailable Partner.

Author: Janne Robinson

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: IMDb