A lot of very eligible, desirable people remain bereft of love because they are caught in a pattern of being attracted to the unavailable and losing interest when the person becomes fully available. When they are no longer pursuing a challenge, they lose the connection. They need to be in conquest mode in order to stay in love.

This causes many to utter regretfully and lamely, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

As most of my readers know, I call this dilemma abandoholism – and it is very prevalent. It sends long term relationships into the doldrums and keeps single people spinning in cycles of abandonment. Millions suffer from it. Millions remain alone because if it.

This pattern is difficult to break because it is governed by the reward system in the brain and mediated by dopamine – the same system that governs addictions.

Realizing you have this pattern – that it is akin to addiction – doesn’t help you overcome it. You are still attracted to whom you are attracted and not attracted to whom you are not. For instance, let’s say you use all of your willpower to stick it out with someone who has become very enamored with you, wants to get closer, become committed. You were initially attracted, but try as you might, you begin to

• feel bored
• become hypercritical of this person
• find yourself needing your own space
• feel pressured, resentful, engulfed as he or she tries to pull you back in.

The tools of abandonment recovery help you reverse self-abandonment. The fundamental change you are seeking – the emotional shift that will allow you to love and be loved – involves creating a new relationship with your emotional core – your inner child self. Learning to love yourself allows you to redirect the powerful human force of attachment to increase your capacity for love. You can learn how to incorporate the program of abandonment recovery through books, workshops, videos, articles on abandonment recovery. For additional support, seek help from therapists or join support groups, and self help programs, i.e. ACA (Adult Child Anonymous), Coda (Codependency Anonymous), Alanon, SLA (Sex and Lovers Anonymous), etc.

Recovering from the entrenched pattern of being attracted to the unavailable begins, like all recovery, with a personal reckoning. We must tap into the universal abandonment wound where our primal fear and shame reside, recognizing that the small child within you is lonely and scared, and of course angry with you for abandoning him or her – abandoning its need for the security and warmth of love. You have left the small child behind. You have been medicating its fear and shame with nuggets.   You have been engaged in self-abandonment.

It’s not easy, but as we see from their example, it is doable.

How do we cope when our system runs out of gas with no more nuggets to keep us spinning? Well, we follow the example of drug addicts and alcoholics in recovery. We see that they can and do recover. The vast majority may seek lots of help and support to get there (i.e. through NA, AA, therapists, clergy, friends, family, rehab, literature, etc.). They toil at filling their life with healthier alternative activities which at first do not have the nuggets that had fueled their drug life. They remain determined to form new habits, hoping to eventually replace the old. This takes time. They are in it for the long haul.

Again, you’re like the junky whose day used to have purpose because it was shaped by the anticipatory drama of seeking that elusive high. But once you abstain – get into recovery – there is no more “fix” to motivate your daily activities – nothing to propel you toward that goal, toward that nugget. Your day is no longer charged by an anticipated climax.

Can you imagine what life would feel like to stop spinning and come completely off of this wheel and stand on solid ground? That ground is flat, the landscape bleak, at least at first.

…Because, once you really have that love in a secure way – once you become completely sure of the person – it ends the anticipation. You no longer have to try for it. Instead, you are in a different biochemical state of having it, rather than trying for it. So after an initial period of contentment, the intensity starts to wane. You are no longer grabbing. Your sexual and emotional passions start to cool, and like a junky following a high, you begin to crash. To get yourself out of the doldrums, you may start “looking to trade up”, flirt, engage in new emotional challenges, pursue the attention of new conquests. Or you might decide to stay in the relationship but you become more emotionally removed.

Let’s deconstruct this highly motivational nugget a bit. We learn that it isn’t actually winning the favor of the hard-to-get lover, it is the anticipation of winning it – almost getting it, being on the brink of getting it, wanting it, trying for it – that is the nugget. Anticipating the nugget is what triggers the release of dopamine and reinforces the pattern to get you to keep doing it – to keep spinning for it.

A first step is to squarely face the mechanism that has been at play in your life – the actual mechanics of your reward system. Until now, being attracted to the unavailable means that you have been a lab rat on a training wheel, spinning for reward nuggets. When you were a kid, the nugget was most likely your parent’s attention, approval, or love, but now that you are an adult, the nugget involves trying to win someone’s favor. Being in “pursuit mode” is what spins your wheel, generates the right chemistry, fuels your passions. This is the nugget that makes you tick. It’s why you have been a slave for others’ approval and why you seek emotional challenges in your love life.

If you are like most, the reason that insight alone doesn’t help you overcome this pattern is the tendency to underestimate how deeply entrenched it is. You see it as something you should be able to control, subject to your conscious will, but it runs deeper than that. Breaking this pattern involves fundamental change – an emotional shift deep within your core self. The tools of abandonment recovery are on hand to facilitate that change.

These aversive responses are entirely involuntary.