Here's the thing about unrequited love: we think it's about wanting someone we can't have, but it's actually about wanting something we're terrified to receive. I had a powerful conversation with Melanie Curtin on her show Dear Men about a pattern that used to run my life called the Super Crush. You know that woman you obsess over for months, maybe years, who clearly isn't available or interested, but you can't seem to let go? Yeah, that was my specialty.
Looking back now, I can see how those crushes were actually keeping me safe. Safe from having to face my real edges around intimacy and touch. Safe from having to deal with the awkwardness of actual connection. I could stay in fantasy, or get rejected in ways that confirmed what I already believed about myself, without ever having to risk real vulnerability with someone who was actually available.
What shifted everything for me was working with a somatic therapist who helped me understand what was happening in my nervous system. She was the first person to point out how I'd tense up just from eye contact, how my body would freeze at simple closeness. That freeze response, that inability to self regulate, it came from never learning how to regulate as a kid. I never got attuned to. So my nervous system learned to seek out unavailable women because that's what intimacy felt like to me growing up. distant, unpredictable, just out of reach.
The real work was learning to distinguish between that hyper-electric pull toward unavailable partners and genuine electricity with someone who can actually show up. Moving from falling into love (chaotic, disorienting, out of control) to walking into love. That shift changed everything about my dating life and eventually led me to my wife.
If you're caught in a pattern of pursuing women who don't want you back, there's probably something in your nervous system worth exploring. Check out my work at evolutionarymen.com if you want support navigating this territory.
