What is Emotional Availability?
In today's episode, we're talking all about emotional availability. Emotional availability is one of those terms that is thrown around a lot on social media - and it seems like everybody is on the lookout for the "emotionally unavailable" people that are to be avoided at all costs. But as always, I think it's important to approach these conversations with nuance and curiosity, before slapping labels on others and declaring them to be the problem. As we discuss in this episode, our focus on others' emotional unavailability can often mask the parts of us that are hiding behind inauthenticity.
Emotional availability is a crucial concept in modern relationships, especially in an era dominated by social media. It refers to an individual's emotional maturity, ability to articulate feelings, openness to honest conversations, and capacity to express themselves authentically without resorting to games or misleading behaviors. This definition underscores the importance of authenticity, emotional maturity, and genuine connections in relationships.
What is Emotional Availability?
Emotional availability is often discussed in the context of dating and relationships. It's a term that encapsulates the ability to be present and engaged in a relationship emotionally. An emotionally available person is someone who is capable of sharing their feelings, understands and respects their partner's emotional needs, and is willing to be vulnerable. This characteristic is essential for building a deep, meaningful connection with others.
The Importance of Self-Reflection
It's critical to consider your own emotional availability. Self-reflection helps in understanding why one might be attracted to individuals who exhibit traits of emotional unavailability. By exploring our behaviors and tendencies, especially in the context of anxious attachment patterns, we can identify and address issues like people-pleasing and approval-seeking. This awareness is vital for personal growth and healthier relationships.
Recognising Emotional Unavailability in Anxious Attachment Patterns
Emotional unavailability can often manifest in anxious attachment patterns. This might involve performing, shapeshifting, and constantly seeking validation, driven by a fear of being unlovable. Such behaviors often lead to presenting a curated persona, hindering the ability to form genuine connections. Emotional unavailability, in this context, stems from a lack of authenticity and honesty.
Accepting Authenticity and Vulnerability
Embracing authenticity and vulnerability is fundamental in relationships. Genuine connections require individuals to be true to themselves, without resorting to a curated version for validation or control. This approach fosters meaningful connections and establishes trust, leading to more fulfilling and sustainable relationships.
Embracing Change and Growth
Showing up as your true self, even at the risk of rejection, is essential for attracting and cultivating relationships with emotionally available partners. It's about embracing your entirety without the need for performance or inauthenticity. In summary, understanding and embracing emotional availability is key to developing genuine, meaningful relationships. Through self-reflection, embracing authenticity and vulnerability, and being open to change and growth, individuals can foster deeper connections based on mutual emotional availability. This journey towards emotional maturity not only enhances personal well-being but also enriches our relationships with others.
Questions for Reflection & Discussion
1. What do you think emotional availability means to you after listening to the episode? How does it differ from your previous understanding, if at all?
2. Stephanie mentions the importance of emotional authenticity and maturity in relationships. Do you think you are emotionally available to your partners or friends? Why or why not?
3. How do you think emotional availability impacts the dynamics of a relationship? Do you agree with Stephanie's perspective that it's more fruitful to start within ourselves when it comes to emotional availability?
4. Is there a particular instance in your life where you found yourself attracted to emotionally unavailable people?
5. Stephanie talks about anxious attachment patterns and the tendency to shapeshift in relationships. Have you ever experienced this behaviour in yourself or others?
6. How do you feel about the concept of "performing" in relationships? Do you think this is a common behavior, and if so, how does it affect emotional availability?
7. Stephanie talks about the inherent discomfort in receiving emotional availability when one is accustomed to not receiving it. Have you ever experienced a similar discomfort in your own life? How did you handle it?
8. Stephanie discusses the toll of inauthenticity and its impact on relationships. Can you identify instances in your life where inauthenticity affected your relationships, and if so, how did you navigate this?
9. Stephanie emphasises the importance of trust and being fully oneself in a relationship. What steps do you think you can take to build this trust and authenticity in your own relationships?
Further Links & Resources
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
In today's episode, we're talking all about emotional availability or emotional unavailability. I think that this is one of those terms and one of those concepts that's thrown around a lot, particularly in the world of instagram and social media more broadly when we're talking about dating and red flags and what to look for and building healthy relationships. And I think that's with good reason. But I also think it's really important, as always, to approach these sorts of big labels with a level of nuance and articulating.
[00:01:06]:
What does it really mean when we're talking about emotional availability? What are we looking for in other people? And I would argue, more importantly, what does that look like within us? Because I think it's really easy to focus on the ways in which someone else might be, quote unquote, emotionally unavailable and almost distract ourselves with all of their shortcomings and everything that we want them to change, while overlooking the ways in which we might be exhibiting certain signs of emotional unavailability, albeit maybe taking a different form. I think that a lot of the time the trope of the unavailable person is someone who is more avoidant and aloof and hot and cold and you can't really seem to crack them and you don't know what's what. And so while if you're more anxious leaning, you might not fit that description, I think there are some less obvious ways that we can ourselves be emotionally unavailable and in so doing can prevent the kind of deeper, more authentic connection that we really crave. So I'm going to be sharing some thoughts on that today. Before we dive into that, a quick announcement that Healing Anxious Attachment is still open for registration. We had the Black Friday sale over the weekend, which has now ended, but you are still able to join at the usual early bird price. All of that is on my website. For those who are interested, we've got just shy of 300 people in the past week or so, which is just amazing.
[00:02:33]:
And it's always so gratifying for me to see people coming into the programme and feeling so much optimism and so much commitment to really making some changes in their blueprint when it comes to relationship to self and others. So if that feels like something that you would like to take steps towards, I'd love to see you inside the programme. And as I said, all of that should be relatively easy to find on my website. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around emotional availability. So I think it's useful to frame the discussion by asking, what do we mean when we talk about emotional availability, I think it probably means different things to different people, as I said, because it's a term that's tossed around so liberally. I think everyone's probably got their own version of what that means when they are talking about emotional availability or unavailability. But what I think of this term as meaning is someone who is mature emotionally, who's able to articulate themselves, who's open to having conversations with other people when it comes to not only emotions but anything else that might arise concerns, boundaries, those sorts of things. Someone who is authentically themselves, who isn't playing games, who isn't misleading, who isn't performing.
[00:03:54]:
Someone who you feel really comfortable with because you feel like you're connecting with that person in their true expression, rather than feeling like there's facades and there's masks and tricks and games which are not always coming from a place of malice or an intention to manipulate. But I think when we lack internal security, we resort to all sorts of tactics to try and win over people's approval or present a certain version of ourselves. And as I'll come to shortly, I think that we can fall prey to those sorts of tactics no matter where we sit on the spectrum. We can engage in those things as a way to create a semblance of comfort, confidence, safety for ourselves, even if ultimately it's kind of trapping us in something that isn't truly authentic. So I think that that's really the essence of it for me is that emotional availability is authenticity and emotional maturity. So I think that when we have this conception of the person, I think it's most often used in the context of dating. Although of course, emotional availability is relevant and important in any relationship, romantic or not. I think that it most often comes up in the context of dating.
[00:05:15]:
And it's like, how do I spot someone who's emotionally unavailable so I can avoid them like the plague and save myself the trouble? And I think that again, I understand the desire to steer clear of people who maybe aren't in the same place as you or don't want the same things as you or don't have the capacity that you seek in. A partner in terms of having that deeper connection and that emotionality and vulnerability between you that allows you to really feel like you can trust them. But what I think is much more interesting than listing out traits of things to avoid in other people, as you guys would know if you've followed my work for a while and listened to the podcast. I think the much more illuminating analysis is what is it within me that feels attracted to that in the first place? Because it's really easy. I've done an episode on this before and the reasons we might be attracted to unavailable people. And I think that it's really easy to kind of throw up our hands and say everyone's so emotionally unavailable. And I'm not. The problem doesn't lie with me.
[00:06:23]:
It's everyone else in the dating pool who's the problem. And I just need to sharpen my tools in terms of avoiding the bad people and then all my problems will be solved. And if only it were that simple. I think that what we really need to get honest about is there's something within me that is attracted to that or that feels some sense of comfort in the dynamic of chasing the unavailable person, of performing, of gameplaying, of tiptoeing around that, of trying to earn the love and approval of someone. And I think that we have to see that within ourselves and get really curious about it because that comes with its own form of emotional unavailability, right? This is really speaking more to the anxious experience because as I said, I think that the stereotype of the emotionally unavailable person is someone who's more kind of classically, typically avoidant. But I think emotional unavailability in the context of more anxious attachment patterns tends to manifest as performing as shapeshifting, like being a mirror for someone else. If they say that they like something, you quickly agree and say you like it too. Or if they want to do something, you agree and you acquiesce and you just follow someone else's lead all the time and kind of lose yourself in the process.
[00:07:47]:
And of course we know that that can come from a lot of different things of really just wanting to be chosen or feeling like being low maintenance is the way to be loved. And that to be difficult is to be unlovable. All of those things that we've talked about before on the show. But the reality is that when we conceal so much of ourselves, when we bury so much of ourselves or subdue certain parts of us that we fear are unworthy of love or unacceptable or make us difficult, we're not being emotionally available either because we're not being authentic, we're not being honest. We're presenting a very carefully crafted, curated view of us that we think is going to be the ticket to kind of controlling for an outcome. And oftentimes that outcome is being chosen and having someone love us and not doing anything that could possibly jeopardise the connection. But when we do that, we are inadvertently jeopardising the connection because we're not authentically being there. We're not showing up as our true selves, we're not maybe advocating for ourselves, we're not just being forthcoming with how we're feeling something that might be bothering us.
[00:08:54]:
All of that is part of emotional availability as well. And so I think it's really important to see how these things interface with each other and that while it is really much easier to just point the finger at someone who's unavailable in more obvious ways, we can say, what do you mean? I'm available all the time. I'm always available if you want to hang out with me, how could you be calling me emotionally unavailable? I have big emotions. I think there's a little more to it than that. And I think that if we return to at least how I think of emotional availability as being honesty, authenticity and emotional maturity and all the things that flow from that, I think we can see that maybe we are attracted to and attracting people who maybe mirror where we are at in terms of our own emotional availability. And so it might be useful and enlightening to kind of reflect on that and go okay, maybe I'm getting back what I'm putting out and start there. Always starting there I think is a good idea, starting with ourselves because it can be. We were having a conversation in my small group coaching programme earlier today and someone was sharing that their partner is really showing up and it's quite daunting because she is really accustomed to burying needs or working really, really hard to just get scraps of attention from someone or scraps of validation.
[00:10:27]:
And it can actually be quite disconcerting or quite foreign to your system. When you are met with someone's availability and consistency and care and attention and support, all of a sudden your system might sort of reject it and push it away and go I don't know how to receive that because I'm so accustomed to not receiving that and to fighting for it only to be disappointed. And there's some sort of weird familiarity in that dynamic and it leaves me feeling really out of my depths when all of a sudden someone is available. And I think that often it's in those situations that we are shown our own work because we might all of a sudden feel a lot of resistance coming up, feel that all of a sudden we have nowhere to hide. And that's really scary. If we've always blamed the other person for the lack of connection or the lack of depth or the lack of commitment and all of a sudden they're showing up with depth and connection and commitment and then we're pushed to go okay, well, who am I going to be in response to that? Am I ready for those things? Am I ready to be seen and known? Because when we haven't had that in the past, it's a really, really scary thing and it really raises the stakes. It's, as I said, in a weird sort of way, much more comfortable to just sit in the dissatisfaction and kind of lament the fact that someone won't change but all the while being comforted by the fact that they're the problem and it's not us. So all of that to say, I think that in this conversation around emotional availability, it helps to broaden the lens on what that means and what that can look like and what the converse emotional unavailability.
[00:12:13]:
How that can show up in ways that we might not typically associate with emotional unavailability in the more common sense of avoidance and associated behaviours. And going, oh, is my lack of authenticity in terms of my people pleasing and my approval seeking and my tiptoeing and my strategizing and all of those little things that I do behind the scenes to try and control for the outcome that I want. Maybe that's emotional unavailability too, and maybe that's blocking some of the connection that I really crave. So maybe my freedom and my relief and a new way of being in relationships requires me to change the inputs on my side of the equation and to kind of lay down some of those old strategies and take the brave steps towards showing up more authentically and trusting that if that does yield to the worst case scenario that our fear would have us believe, if we show up authentically and honestly and we stop curating this perfect version of ourselves that we think will be the lovable version, and we just allow ourselves to be enough. If someone leaves in response to that, well, I think that that's kind of a blessing in disguise, because otherwise you're locked into a lifetime of performance and a lifetime of inauthenticity, and that's a really, really tiring game to play. So I think that there's a lot to be said for just trusting that for the right person or people, you, all of you, it's going to be enough. In fact, it's going to be delightful and lovable and wonderful and that someone who is themselves emotionally available and who has done that work is going to be ready for all of it and is going to have realistic expectations about what it means to be in a relationship. And you don't have to bury parts of yourself or feelings or fears or insecurities, you don't have to try and hide that from someone in order to trick them into loving you.
[00:14:23]:
As I said, that's a really exhausting way to be in relationship and I think it's one that sooner or later really catches up with us and tends not to give us what we really desire, which is safety in relationships. So I hope that that has been helpful given you something to think about when it comes to emotional availability. And as I said, of course we can look out for that in other people, but I think it's always more fruitful to start within and start with ourselves and the way we're showing up and watch that ripple out. So thank you so much for joining me, I'm so grateful for all of your support. The spotify wrapped, year in review stuff has come out today and I'm being tagged by so many beautiful people who have been staunch supporters of the show and I've seen some amazing statistics on my side, people listening all over the world and I'm just eternally grateful always for your support. So thanks for being here and I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks guys. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment.
[00:15:29]:
If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon. It's.
Embracing Change and Growth
attachment, emotional availability, emotional unavailability, relationships, insecurity, healthy relationships, dating, red flags, authenticity, emotional maturity, boundaries, self-esteem, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, emotional connection, vulnerability, self-discovery, personal growth, relationship coaching, self-acceptance, self-reflection, personal development, people-pleasing, approval seeking, fear of rejection, intimacy, emotional intelligence, authenticity in relationships, self-awareness, resilience.