Emotionally unavailable people struggle to connect on a deep emotional level. They can avoid intimacy, resist vulnerability, or keep others at a distance.
It can be hard to have deeper conversations about anything more than surface level.
Emotionally unavailable people can turn serious matters into a joke often at inappropriate times. It makes it challenging to have any form of connection with depth.
Understanding emotional availability helps you to identify whether someone can meet your emotional needs for a healthy fulfilling relationship. Knowing these traits early on can save you from investing in lacklustre relationships that leave you feeling lonely, unfulfilled or disconnected.
The ‘Joker’
The person who can never take things seriously. They have to make a joke to lighten the mood because they don’t know how to cope with other emotions. They can often trivialise the things or situations that are important to you. Often they hide their own hurt by making a joke out of it, that way, they hope to eliminate the deeper sense of shame they often tend to feel.
The ‘Avoider’
Acts like everything is fine and avoids the elephant in the room. They think they’re easy going but really they don’t know how to deal with or manage conflict. This means they can often resort to stonewalling and would rather not speak for days or in extreme cases, weeks or months, instead of just dealing with the issue. This often causes problems to escalate and get worse or to never get resolved.
The ‘Minimiser’
Invalidates how you feel and dismisses your experience as not important because it’s not important to THEM. They are unable to empathise and can only see the value of understanding things from their own perspective. It can feel as though they are trying to go out of their way to not understand you. They can prioritise their own needs and feelings but find it incredibly difficult to do the same for others.
The ‘Gaslighter’
Tries to distort the truth and makes you question your reality. They say things didn’t happen or that you said and did things that never happened. They outwardly lie about things that you know to be true to avoid taking accountability and to shift the blame and focus. They often say ‘you’re crazy’ as a way to manipulate you. You can find yourself replaying conversations in your head or trying to keep evidence to prove yourself later. You can start to feel on edge around them like you’re walking on eggshells. You become worried that you might say or do the wrong thing, which is part of the point of gaslighting. It’s used as a form of control.
The ‘Defensive One’
Their first response is to get defensive and deflect what you have to say because they cannot admit to being wrong. Before they are able to fully listen and comprehend someone else’s perspective, they are already looking for ways to say they’re wrong. Constructive feedback is taken as criticism and they take things very personally. They try to justify unacceptable behaviour by saying the reason they did it was because of something or someone else. They can only blame others for their actions and don’t like being held accountable. They often believe if their actions are unintentional then it shouldn’t cause hurt or upset, and if it does, it’s not their fault.
Knowing the types of emotional unavailability helps you to stop spending time on one-sided relationships.
It also helps you to identify the ways in which you might be emotionally unavailable in your relationships. Without deeper connections, it often leads to superficial and unsatisfying relationships. You might be wondering if emotionally unavailable people can change, and the simple answer is yes, if they have the self awareness and will, they can learn to develop emotional awareness and it is a skill you can build over time.
I’m Lizandra, a therapist in St Albans, Hertfordshire and online offering short term counselling and long term psychotherapy. I specialise in working with childhood trauma in adults and attachment in relationships. Get in touch if this blog has resonated with you and you’d like to book in a free call.
