Relationships: Why women love and lust after unavailable men

32-year-old Titus Munalo is puzzled by the sudden show of interest from a woman he has chased for years. For the longest time, even when he was seeing other women, he tried his luck with her. She turned him down every time down and he concluded that she was out of his league.

Then, at the beginning of the year, before Covd-19 turned our lives upside down, Titus Said ‘I do’ to his now wife. Suddenly, this woman from his past has warmed up to him, sending him messages, calling him even at odd hours something that his wife is not very happy about.

“I’m still the same guy that she didn’t want but now that I am with someone else, she wants me. It’s like I have become more attractive to her,” he says.

Titus is not the only unavailable man around warding off attention from women he doesn’t want. Women seeking men who are unavailable whether emotionally physically or both isn’t new at all.

There is the woman who unknowingly gets untangled with a married man or a man who just won’t emotionally commit and only realises her blunder when she is far too gone and decides to stay.

Then there is the other lot who are drawn by this sense of unavailability. They will not get with a man unless he is in a relationship or otherwise unavailable. This is the woman we are discussing today.

Doesn’t she want a man to herself?

The common assumption is that the ‘man snatcher’, as we like to call this woman, is wicked or thinks very little of herself to want exclusivity in a relationship. The truth is that the woman who is constantly singling out unavailable men could have deeper issues than this.

“I know I have a fear of commitment and I am uncomfortable with emotional intimacy,” shares Dolly Gitu, 33.

For a long time, Dolly was having fights with women over their men. She has always preferred her men taken and the longest relationships she’s had were with men who were either married or clearly otherwise occupied and not looking to settle down.

“People called me wicked and for a while there I agreed with them. But I went into therapy three years ago for depression and I now know that my relationship patterns stem from my abandonment issues,” she says.

Her father walked out of her life when she was a baby and as an adult, she has subconsciously sought men who didn’t wat to commit so she could enjoy some benefits of being in a relationship without the risk of abandonment that comes with commitment.

“I have been running from my past.”

Psychologist Dr Seth Meyers in his book Overcome Relationship Repetition Syndrome writes that women who fall for unavailable men are driven by the sub conscious need to recreate the past to make a happier ending.

The way he sees it, this woman will have insecurities and rejections in her past. When she sets her sights on an unavailable man and this man gives her attention or commits to her, this is validation. She finally sees herself as worthy.

For the thrill of it

Often, a woman will have a deep seated issue. Sometimes though, the woman who is constantly chasing taken men is just hooked to the thrill. Obviously, seeing as society always has something to say about a woman’s dating choices, this woman thinks little of the opinions others have of her.

“It’s exciting, the running around, the danger of being caught and being chosen over another woman,” Diana Serah, 28, shares why she sometimes opts to date men who are taken or who have busy lives.

The lingerie business owner shares that in the future, she does want to have a husband and children but in the present, it’s easier to be with a man who isn’t commanding all of your time and attention.

“It’s less of a hustle,” she says.

Whether it’s because she has issues she needs to deal with or if she’s just out to have a good time, the woman who chases the unavailable man shouldn’t try to tame him as this is a near impossible task that will lead to hurt and disappointment.

While she might be able to bond with him to some degree, a man only becomes available to a woman either physically or emotionally by choice. So chase him if you want to but don’t turn around and expect him to commit to you halfway through your ‘relationship’.

How to spot Mr Unavailable

His being married, engaged or in a committed relationship is the most glaring sign that a man is both physically and emotionally out of bounds for you.

A man who can’t be yours will be vague when it comes to your relationship status. This means that despite being intimate with you, he never refers to you as his girlfriend or any other form of significant other. Sometimes a woman will not know whether he is in a relationship with her or not.

A man who admits that he isn’t ready for a relationship for various reasons ranging from the wrong timing to him not being over a previous relationship, but still wants to be with you is unavailable.

When a man is able and willing to be wholly in a relationship, he makes an effort to keep the communication lines open. Mr. Unavailable on the other hand tends to have periods when he vanishes and then resurfaces without any explanations. Be wary of the man who mainly relies on technology with text messaging, emails and wall posts being his major forms of communication.

If your love interest openly admits to dating multiple women at the same time, it could be a pointer towards his emotional unavailability. He is not with you exclusively and neither is he with the other women.