How to stop choosing emotionally unavailable partners and friends?

In relationships, we often end up choosing people who are emotionally unavailable. This can happen due to the behavioral patterns that we have been exposed to since childhood. When we are brought up in dysfunctional homes where we did not receive enough attention and love from our parents and caregivers, we tend to look for similar people with similar patterns later in life because it feels familiar to us. However, being with emotionally unavailable people, be it in a relationship or friendship, can be extremely draining. Addressing this, Therapist Sadaf Siddiqi wrote, "To be transparent, it’s not a quick (or easy!) process, but it is always worth it when they find themselves choosing healthier people."

ALSO READ: Reasons why you keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners

However, with time, we need to learn to stop choosing emotionally unavailable people. Here ar a few steps that we can take:

Identify our emotional wounds: We tend to go for emotionally unavailable people because we have similar emotional wounds to address. The first step is to identify and acknowledge those wounds and introspect about us.

Identify the emotionally unavailable behaviors: We need to understand the emotionally unavailable behaviors of others that we keep tolerating. When we can list them down, we will know how to address them.

Set clear intentions: This is the step when we need to gather ourselves and set boundaries for ourselves. We should identify the behaviors that we no longer want to accept from others and set clear intentions for ourselves to follow.

Sense of self: Sometimes we keep tolerating emotionally unavailable behaviors only because we have extremely low self-esteem and we think we are not good enough. We need to strengthen our sense of self to lead a better life.

Seek professional help: When we are not able to get out of this pattern, we can always seek professional help on this to stop choosing emotionally unavailable partners and friends for ourselves.