Loved by a woman you have but moderate feelings for is one of the more frustratingly difficult places a man can find himself. It is even more frustrating when you’ve specifically told this person not to fall and when you’ve given them ample opportunity to avoid falling. I was reminded of what it feels like to be in this place a couple weeks back when I came across TheWeeknd’s song “The Birds pt. 1” on his latest mixtape “Thursday.” The song is an anthem for the man who is available – as far as his technical relationship status is concerned – but unavailable emotionally and not trying to hide that from the women he engages. Zone out to this joint while you read today’s post:
"Hope you see, It won’t mean a thing to me, I’ve been doing this too long. Baby girl, I’ve felt it all. So watch out, if you try to play your luck. Aint nobody gonna care enough to catch you fall."
The concept of being emotionally unavailable is pretty natural for most men. Every guy I know has, at some point decided to check out and withdraw from the spiritual, emotional, and physical commitment that comes with “falling in love.” We do this for various reasons: sometimes it’s because we want to focus on our careers, sometimes we’ve been hurt and are not interested in feeling that again, sometimes we have obligations and responsibilities that for a time will supersede our own feelings and sometimes we just know that for the moment … we ain’t about sh*t. Whatever the reason, being emotionally unavailable is a pretty natural phase that comes and goes for most men. Now the fact that we are emotionally unavailable doesn’t mean that we’re no longer desirous of a woman’s attention and affection. It also doesn’t mean we’ve lost the ability to perceive attractiveness and beauty and it most definitely doesn’t mean we’re no longer interested in sex. We will want all of those things, and we’re still going to work toward getting all of those things. Understanding this is essential to understanding the emotionally unavailable man.
" So don’t you fall in love. Don’t make me make you fall in love. Don’t make me make you fall in love with a n*gga like me, nobody needs to fall in love. I swear I’m just a bird. Girl, I’m just another bird. Don’t make me make you fall in love with a n*gga like me. Like me."
One of the biggest sources of confusion around emotionally unavailable men is this myth that emotionally unavailable men are, by nature of their existence, flawed. Women often seem to assume that because a man is single, educated, employed, handsome, possessed with great taste, a great wardrobe and is a generally good guy, he is automatically on the market. This is an absolute fallacy. Good guys check out too – as often, if not more often than not so good guys. As I said in the previous paragraph, just because a guy is emotionally unavailable doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in certain things only found in femininity.
So what are we to do? What’s a good guy to do when he finds himself interested in a woman despite knowing he’s also not ready for something serious? Communicate! The good guy’s answer to everything is effective communication. If we communicate to you, in no uncertain terms, that we’re very interested in you, but not interested in anything serious with anyone, and you choose to proceed, we see that as the green light to be the naturally great guys we’ve always been. This means we’re going to be thoughtful, we’re going to be charming and we’re going to make your friends laugh when you introduce us to them. We’re going to check on you when you’re sick, send you good morning emails and good night text messages. When we go out together, we’re going to do everything we’re supposed to do to make sure you have a good time and if you let us, we’re going to do everything in our power to please you sexually. Why? Because a good guy takes pride in making sure a woman in his company has enjoyed her time with him. Despite our emotional unavailability, that’s still just who we are. And therein lies the rub …
"You tried, you tried to warn me. But baby I’m warning you, I’ll show you this is no game. You’ll be falling to the point of no return, no return."
One of the most problematic issues at the core of relationships between men and women is the enigmatic and unpredictable way in which women interpret verbal and non-verbal communication from men. If a douche-bag dude treats a woman like trash, but tells her he loves her ten times a day, she’ll ignore his actions and fall in love with his words. But if a good guy treats a woman the way she deserves to be treated while telling her he can’t love her right now, she’ll ignore his words and follow his actions to oblivion. This is the greatest problem faced by emotionally unavailable men and the women who love them. At the heart of this miscommunication of sorts is the fact that women view emotional unavailability as a sickness, a disease whose cure is undoubtedly – Her. They figure if they can determine why we’re emotionally unavailable, then they can just help us address that issue and all will be right with the world. Still though, no matter how stern our warnings, no matter how many times we tell you that our emotional unavailability is serious and not a game, you still find away to allow yourselves to fall to the point of no return.
"I know you’re rolling hard with it, don’t lie. I know it’s got a hold of you. I know you’re rolling with it, baby don’t you lie."
Emotional unavailability is real. Like it or not, it’s something we experience and it’s something our love interests will have to learn to deal with. Further, despite our strict adherence to logic and reason, and despite our perceived dominion over our feelings, the how and why of when we snap out of our emotional unavailability is often completely out of our control. It just happens. And when it does happen, we very rarely end up spending our lives with the woman who loved us throughout our stretch of unavailability. Nope, much to the collective chagrin of women who consistently love unavailable men, we snap out of it and run straight to a new chick. You want to know why don’t you? It’s because men use a formula to assign value to the women in their lives and a large part of that formula is derived from how much we believe that woman values herself. If you’ve been giving us all of you while requiring nothing more than our bare minimum then that negatively affects how much we believe you value yourself and we know in our heart we can never be with you. No matter how much we want to, we can’t build up the motivation to give you everything if we know you’ve been content with us giving you barely anything. We need to be challenged, we need to know that you’ll accept nothing less than everything. We need to believe that twenty, thirty, forty years from now we’ll still be compelled to be the best man we can possibly be by the simple act of you allowing us to continue to be in your presence.
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So here’s what I’m wondering now: What do women expect from emotionally unavailable men? What can an emotionally unavailable man do to prevent a woman he’s interested in from falling for him? Should he just lose your number and disappear, is that what you’d prefer? Should he treat you like trash so there’s no confusion about his intentions (or lack of intentions)? And for the fellas, have you been here before? Have you gone through a phase where you were emotionally unavailable. What caused it? What did you tell the women you became interested in during that time and how did those relationships turn out? Most importantly, when and if you came out of it, did you go back to her? Overshare in the comments.
. This honestly could have been put in a sentence or two. That whole piece was a long winded version of this "As I said in the previous paragraph, just because a guy is emotionally unavailable doesn’t mean he isn’t interested in certain things only found in femininity." aka that guy just want some sex and don't want to be with you seriously. All that other stuff throw all of that in the bushes 
. They get the point.
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