Emotional unavailability is defined as the inability to form an emotional connection with another person. Emotional connection leads to emotional intimacy and is a big part of connecting with others. A lack of emotional connection in all kinds of relationships reduces the quality of those relationships, making a relationship breakdown more likely.
Emotional unavailability is characterized by not sharing one’s emotions and not being receptive to others’ emotions, both positive and negative.1Biringen, Z., Derscheid, D., Vliegen, N., Closson, L., & Easterbrooks, M. A. (2014). Emotional availability (EA): Theoretical background, empirical research using the EA Scales, and clinical applications. Developmental review, 34(2), 114-167. In contrast, those who are emotionally available express their emotions freely and are also responsive when others do the same. They’re likely to form deep, meaningful, and healthy relationships.
Signs of emotional unavailability
1. Avoiding deep conversations
Those who are emotionally unavailable tend to keep their conversations superficial, formal, and practical. They may see talking about feelings as a waste of time and tend to dismiss, minimize, or devalue emotions. They might change the subject or leave the conversation when you touch on deeper topics.
2. Superficial relationships
They are only able to form superficial relationships with people. Their relationships will either be non-existent, or they may have many connections, but none are deep. You’ll notice that they aren’t close to anyone.
3. Uninvested in relationships
Because they don’t invest much in relationships, they don’t get much out of them either. They’ll rarely or never initiate contact or make plans. You’ll find that you do all the relationship work if you’re in a relationship with them. Since relationships require a balance of give and take, you’ll soon get exhausted.
4. Emotionally unexpressive
They’re not the ones to wear their heart on their sleeve. Instead, they keep it guarded inside their chest. They don’t genuinely express their feelings, so getting to know and relate to them is challenging.
5. Mirroring your investment and emotions
You ask them, “How are you?” and they reply, “I’m good. How are you?” While this might seem like an everyday conversation to an outside observer, you know that’s not the case. Their “How are you?” isn’t a genuine “How are you?” They’re only saying that to mirror your investment. They’re only saying it out of reciprocity and politeness. You know that because they’ve never asked you how you are unless you asked first.
Similarly, they mirror your emotions by saying things like “I feel the same” to convince you they have an emotional bond with you and that they get along with you. They think it’s easier to mirror your emotions than to express how they truly feel.
6. Selecting emotionally unavailable partners
Those who are emotionally unavailable tend to choose an emotionally unavailable partner because that allows them to continue being emotionally unavailable. In contrast, an emotionally available partner will demand emotional availability, something that they can’t provide.
What causes emotional unavailability?
1. Insecure attachment
For children to grow up secure, emotionally available parents must raise them.2Saunders, H., Kraus, A., Barone, L., & Biringen, Z. (2015). Emotional availability: theory, research, and intervention. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1069. Those with an insecure attachment style are raised by parents who are emotionally unavailable and insecurely attached themselves. Both types of insecure attachment—anxious and avoidant—can lead to emotional unavailability.
a. Anxious attachment
Those who have an anxious attachment style fail to develop a strong sense of self. Because they don’t know who they are, they find it hard to express themselves authentically. Yet, they tend to have higher-than-normal connection needs, which they satisfy by seeking multiple but superficial connections.
Avoiding building deep, meaningful connections helps them avoid being fully seen. They’re afraid that people will find out that they don’t have a sense of self or that their real self is flawed. As a result, they tend to attract avoidant partners who seem uninterested in getting to know their true selves, or lack thereof.
b. Avoidant attachment
Individuals with an avoidant attachment style typically have lower-than-normal connection needs. They were raised by parents who emotionally neglected them. Healthy emotional expression wasn’t encouraged in the household. Emotional needs were ignored, rejected, or criticized.
As a result, avoidants learned to disconnect from their emotions:
“My emotions and emotional needs are unimportant.”
They hyper-focused on honing their rationality and becoming independent. They don’t like relying on others to meet their needs, especially emotional ones. So they don’t express their emotions and emotional needs. They tend to attract anxious partners who do all the work of connecting for them, so they don’t have to.
2. Masculinity
Masculinity is often associated with being unemotional and in control of one’s emotions. Masculinity is a desirable trait in men because it is attractive to women. Most men naturally want to be masculine. It’s not just societal conditioning. Society can’t program us into preferring something that we don’t already prefer, thanks to our biology.
The downside of being unemotional is a lack of deep emotional connections. If you’re a man and want to build genuine connections with people, you have to be willing to dial down your masculinity at times.3O’Neil, J. M. (2008). Summarizing 25 years of research on men’s gender role conflict using the Gender Role Conflict Scale: New research paradigms and clinical implications. The counseling psychologist, 36(3), 358-445.
3. Psychopathy
Psychopaths have a reduced ability to feel social emotions and form emotional attachments. Because they don’t want to get caught, they often fake emotions and emotional connections to appear ‘normal’ and hide in plain sight. But now and then, their psychopathy may leak out in their ruthless emotional unavailability and lack of remorse, disgust, and fear.
4. Lack of emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions and those of others. It can be developed with self-awareness and self-reflection. Many people haven’t taken the time to be more self-aware. Therefore, they lack insight into their own and, consequently, others’ emotions.
When you’re emotionally unintelligent, you can’t be fully emotionally available even if you want to.
5. Lack of emotional bandwidth
Our emotional bandwidth, like our cognitive bandwidth, is limited. That means it’s hard for us to be emotionally invested in multiple things. If you’re suffering from anxiety, depression, or PTSD, these conditions are likely taking up the bulk of your emotional bandwidth. So you don’t have any emotional resources left to invest in another person.
Downsides of emotional availability
Nothing in life is all good or all bad. Everything has pros and cons. Same for emotional availability. While it helps form deep, meaningful, and genuine connections, it has some downsides:
1. Opens you up to manipulation and deception
Emotional manipulation is the weapon of choice for manipulators. If you always genuinely express how you feel, manipulators will understand your emotional blueprint, making it easier for them to manipulate you emotionally. They’ll know about your triggers and weaknesses. They’ll know what buttons to press to make you act a certain way. You might reveal too much about yourself because you’re looking to form a genuine connection. You may put too much trust in people, allowing them to open up to you and trust you back.
Deceivers want nothing more than for you to trust them unquestioningly. It makes their work a piece of cake. Even if you’re seeing all the red flags, your desire for connection and emotional availability may lead you to give your deceivers too much benefit of the doubt.
2. Can lead to disappointment
It can be disappointing and heartbreaking when people don’t reciprocate your emotional availability, which is probably a good thing because it’ll teach you not to be so emotionally available all the time and with everyone.
On one end of the spectrum, we have emotionally unavailable people. They may successfully guard themselves, but they are unable to meet their connection needs. On the other hand, we have people who are overly emotionally available. They may meet their connection needs, but also open themselves up to a lot of hurt and disappointment.
As with everything in life, the ideal path is the middle path - being moderately emotionally available and discerning about who you choose to be emotionally available with.
3. Lowers your value
Over-availability reduces value, while scarcity increases it. This is an age-old principle of economics and human nature that also applies to emotional availability. If you’re emotionally available all the time, the person to whom you’re emotionally available values your emotional availability less. You should always strive for equal relationships that have a balance of power and value. You should value them as much as they value you.
So if you find that you’re being emotionally available and they’re not, you can rest assured that they’re taking your emotional availability for granted. If you withdraw your emotional availability, they might become more emotionally available and invest more in the relationship. It’s nice to reach a middle ground and some semblance of balance. Usually, that’s not the case. Usually, they’re only trying to increase your emotional availability so it can go back to earlier levels, and they can take it for granted again.
4. Can make you appear weak
This relates to the point about masculinity mentioned above. Masculinity equals physical and emotional strength. Emotional strength comes down to how well you control your emotions and resist being swayed by them. If you’re emotionally available and genuinely express your emotional self, you may come across as emotionally weak. Again, I suggest being emotionally open only with people who are the same way with you and respect your emotional availability. Not with people who say they want you to be emotionally open and then hypocritically judge you when you are.
