by Susan Peabody

Created on: May 04, 2009   Last Updated: May 06, 2009

Many women find they have a history of falling in love with an unavailable man and they wonder why this keeps happening over and over again. The following is a list of the most common reasons women keep falling into this trap.

Reminders of our first love: We are always attracted to people who remind us of our first love. If a woman's first love was an absent or emotionally unavailable father, then she is only attracted to unavailable men. She does this out of habit, despite the pain it will cause her later on.

Looking for the happy ending: Many women are not only attracted to unavailable men, they choose them as partners in order to recreate the past and change the ending. They often become obsessed trying to gain, through their current partner, the love they never got as a child. They do this unconsciously over and over again. It is a form of insanity. It is their inner child forcing his or her will on them despite the painful consequences.

Miscalculations: Many women do not choose an unavailable man. They just fall in love before they find out the man is unavailable. Then, out of stubbornness, and because they have become so dependent, they refuse to give up and move on.

Unrequited Love: Some women can only fall in love with the man of their dreams. Since no such man really exists, they project their fantasies onto someone and then see in that person only what they want to see. These completely unavailable men are a good target for this kind of projection because the woman never really gets to know them. They are always who the woman wants them to be. Women, who are also addicted to fantasizing, are drawn to the phenomenon of unrequited love.

Excitement: Chasing after someone who is unavailable can be exciting. It can really get the adrenalin going, not to mention the libido. Romance addicts often go after unavailable people because they are addicted to the chase.

Unconscious Fear of Intimacy: While women consciously obsess about love, they often have an underlying fear of intimacy. Choosing to fall in love with someone who is unavailable (to one degree or another) is one way to avoid facing this fear.

As we are growing up we create a fantasy person in our head that Harville Hendrix calls the Imago. This fantasy person becomes hardened like a statute toward the end of adolescence. If a woman's imago is an unavailable man then she must create a new imago. This new fantasy person must be available, honest, a good communicator and compatible. However, he will never be as exciting as the original imago. Women attracted to unavailable men must give up the thrill in exchange for a happy and fulling life.

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