Reprogramming the conclusion about emotionally unavailable women

Part of my work with the self-defeating behavior (SDB) about chasing emotionally unavailable women and rejecting the women who are interested in me.

It’s important to distill the learnings from the work into sentences which are easy to stick into your mind, therefore my wrong (life-taking) and right (life-giving) conclusions are listed below.

They key driver in my behavior is this fear of being in a relationship without boundaries. Which is correct! It’s the right thing be afraid of a relationship without boundaries (enmeshed relationship). A lot of pain can come out from these.  

The behavior to search out emotionally unavailable women, who set external boundaries by default (!) is WRONG however – it will lead to repeated pain. I will thus avoid the “relationships without boundaries”, but I will NOT avoid the pain (which is the actual thing I want to avoid!)

The right behavior is to SET boundaries with emotionally available women in a healthy way, and to AVOID people who don’t accept healthy boundaries.

This way I am in control, and can keep myself safe. External boundaries don’t work – it’s relying on someone else to show up for you 100 % in the way you need – not going to happen. It’s simply unrealistic.

And it’s safe and necessary to set boundaries. With the right people, the relationship will improve. With the wrong people, the relationship will implode over time (as they are not able to deal with healthy boundaries).

Untrue

“With emotionally unavailable women, there will be built-in boundaries, and therefore these women are safe.”

Accurate promise

“By actively setting my boundaries I can have safe relationships with many women. My own boundaries will keep me safe.”

Mythical fear

All relationships are boundaryless, and therefore scary.

Real fear

“Relying on external boundaries will cause pain.”