Turned On by the Unavailable? Good.

“What do I do about my attraction to people who are not emotionally available?”

This is one of the most common and honest questions I hear from clients. And while most traditional advice sounds something like, “Just stop dating emotionally unavailable people,” or “Work on your self-worth so you’re not attracted to them anymore,” - As a Somatic S*x and Relationship Coach I take a different approach.

We don’t assume you can—or should—override your attraction.

Because in this work, we recognize that your attraction is not random. It’s patterned. It’s meaningful. It’s often rooted in your “Core Desires”, which are deeply connected to your core wounds—those early experiences of love, loss, confusion, and yearning that shaped your emotional landscape.

You might be drawn to emotionally unavailable people not because you’re broken or addicted to suffering, but because on some level, you're still hoping to finally win the love you couldn’t get back then. That longing can be incredibly compelling. And even if you understand the pattern, that doesn’t necessarily mean the pull will just go away.

So instead of trying to erase the attraction, what if you could embrace it with awareness and agency?

Here are a couple of ways we work with this:

🔁 Repetition with Agency: You can consciously recreate these dynamics—with safety and choice—so you’re not just reenacting your trauma, but actively exploring it. For example, if you have a partner who’s emotionally available, you might ask them to *play* the role of being a little distant or aloof, while you get to practice feeling the feelings that come up and experimenting with new responses. This gives your nervous system a chance to *complete* something it never could before.

🔄 Creating Resourced Structures: If you’re open to multiple relationships, you might choose to have one or more stable, emotionally available partners who provide the security and support you crave, while also allowing yourself to explore the erotic or emotional charge of connections that are less consistent—without placing your full emotional weight on them.

In both cases, you’re not passively swept away by the same pattern again and again. You’re meeting it with curiosity, intention, and choice.

You’re no longer the child waiting by the door for love that never comes.

You’re the adult at the center of your own story, *playing* with your desires instead of being ruled by them.

And that changes everything.