By Javinne J. McCoy

Have you ever wondered why you may seem to have a string of unhealthy relationships with the same person but different package?

You know the drill :

• They do the Hot Pursuit then Withdraw Routine – leaving YOU now to be chasing them (when before you couldn’t get them to stop showering you with attention)
• They make you work hard for their love
• They only seem to want you when you are hard to attain (once you become vulnerable they shut down and discard you)
• There is the Push-me-Pull me dynamic. Close but not too close. Then far and further away.
• They only want you when you don’t want them (only because they start to panic when you are gone).
• They talk a good talk and spit that good relationship game (but that is all it is-a game).

……and the list goes on….

Do you notice a pattern in your life of choosing partners/dates that seem to have eerily similar behavioral patterns that signal to your gut EMOTIONALLY UNAVAIALABLE?  Yet, you may persist in “trying to make it work”, and totally chuck your gut out the window.

Or maybe, you actually have the knowledge about your own unhealthy relationship patterns, took some time away from the dating/relationship arena to heal, work on you, and grow, yet when you “put yourself back out there”, you find yourself in the same pain or greater pain,  that is triggered by the same kind of EUP (Emotionally Unavailable Partner) and unhealthy relationship patterns – Over, and Over, and Over, and Over, and Over, and Over again.

You started off in what seemed like to be relationship bliss. “In the beginning”, they couldn’t get enough of you.  They showered you with compliments, attention, affection, conversations about the future, and saying the “I miss you’s”, “I Love you” ,“You are amazing” , “You are beautiful” “I can’t believe our paths crossed”.

Then all of sudden WHAM! There is a total shift and role reversal. You find yourself chasing them, begging them to give you what you both had “in the beginning”, working hard for the both of you in the relationship, and doing back flips for their love and approval. Chasing the unavailable.

If this is your pattern, and it keeps happening, but you’re not sure why, you need to take a step back and understand how emotionally unavailable relationships work and WHAT they are trying to show you about YOU through the EUP (Emotionally Unavailable Partner). Remember that although EUPs are unhealthy individuals, if you see past the pain (and get past the details of the drama and trauma), you can view them as a messenger and teacher sending you signals about the wounds you still need to heal (They got in your heart through your wounded inner parts that are unhealed and that you have avoided).

When the EUP reappears in your life like a bad nightmare there is something happening and it is called Reactivation.

This concept is introduced in Part 1 of this Series-Click Here. 

For a quick recap, Reactivation is an event and/or a person, who when they show up in your life and energy field, brings about a revival of your Unfinished Business (Unhealed Parts- the things you have been ignoring, the hurts you have buried, the deep seated fears about love in the core of your heart that you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge).

When a Reactivation with an EUP happens, this person will tap into your core unhealthy relationship fears and beliefs, and MAKE THEM A PAINFUL REALITY.

The pain they cause may not be fair, but seeing the experience as a test, them as a teacher (to show you what you need to heal-the healing must be done away from their shady ass), and an opportunity for you to look at WHAT IN YOU may have drawn this experience to you (your unhealthy core beliefs and deep seated feelings), can ultimately help you heal, change the pattern, and learn to CREATE the relationships that you want.

Creating healthier relationships happens through changing your beliefs about love, changing your unhealthy behaviors, and deciding to feel your feelings fully, without unhealthy vices or crutches to numb out.

The process of reactivation: How to understand what is happening when you sense “a repeat” of the pain about to occur?

Puuuullllease understand this. Although relationships with EUPs are always painful, it is NOT YOUR FAULT. However, you ARE RESPONSIBLE for healing your wounds, changing the pattern, and creating healthier relationships by relearning what true love is (if you want better relationships and life experiences). Your REAL issues are NOT even about the EUP or EUPs you are dealing with or have dealt with.

I commonly use the phrase “digging deep”. You have got to dig deep for this one and understand where emotional unavailability started in your life, mourn the loss of what you didn’t have(a healthy love template), refuse to settle for less than what you deserve, do the work to re-parent yourself, and move toward creating healthy love in your life.

We first learn vital messages about love through our early attachments with our caregivers or any other person/s who stepped in to substitute the role of caregiver during our formative (childhood) years. Have you ever noticed how an EUP may freakishly represent one or both of your parents (usually the really unhealthy parts of them)? This can also apply to the adult/s you were closest to when you were growing up-any caregivers, attachment figures etc. that raised you.

If those initial experiences in our formative years conveyed messages about love that were unconditional (i.e. no matter what the child did, or didn’t do, they were loved), the child will generally grow up forming a secure attachment style. If the child’s relationships with caregivers were filled with mixed signals about love…

• “I love you only if you do this”

• “I am displeased with what you have done so now I will withdraw and withhold approval/praise”

• “You did something bad that made me unhappy now it is your responsibility to make me happy”

….The child will most likely grow up to form an insecure attachment style-and choose partners to compliment and reflect this style of conditional love which breeds an insecure form of attachment in the child.  With insecure forms of attachment the two general responses are to either cling or to throw away and avoid.

This usually ends up wreaking havoc on the child’s future adult relationships and results in choosing unhealthy partners that mimic those initial effed up experiences. That is why if you step back, and compare all of your EUP relationship experiences, the following usually sums it up:

The same person.

The same pattern.

In a different package.

This is what Reactivation is all about.

As we move on in life, what happens is that we often mature in age and physical development, but we carry around that little hurt, rejected, inner child. Sadly, we then attempt to heal it through relationships with EUPS-this is called loving unconsciously. The EUP ALWAYS represents the unhealthy messages we received about love but have not done the work to change –THEY WILL ALWAYS represent your deep seated negative feelings and self-sabotaging core beliefs about yourself, love, and relationship and IT WILL NEVER WORK OUT WITH THEM. Remember, square pegs into circular slots do not fit. You can’t force them to.

So in a sense, you now will seek out adult relationships, insert your hurt unhealed inner child into them, and hold someone else responsible for healing your hurts (usually a messy ass adult-child who won’t address their own inner wounds).

In this case, it is always an emotionally unavailable partner who is ALWAYS the wrong choice because they will confirm the negative messages, and beliefs, you have acquired from your initial unhealthy attachment experiences.

Take a moment to digest this Rhema Truth (If you accept this Rhema Truth it can really put you back in the driving seat from  victim mode to victor mode and put you in  place of healthy relationship creation).

Here is the Rhema (Word) Real-T (Truth) so take a sip of this Real-T:

It is rarely ever about the person. Yes they may indeed be a Jerk, jJrkette, or Dipstick, and yes a lot of times they are playing games, and they don’t have your best intentions at heart.  However, this is not the bigger panoramic life picture that will help you truly heal.

The bigger picture is that, it is about your inner wounded child and its unfinished business. You are trying to get the EUP to heal your pain.  Somewhere in your initial “love experiences” you were given messages of emotional unavailability.  Later in life, you have gone on to convince yourself that choosing partners with the same familiar pattern as you grew up with (emotional unavailability), is the key to “fixing it”. Essentially, you are attempting to make the wrongs of the past right with the EUP. By doing this, you think you will make peace with the past, and bring yourself happiness.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

By choosing EUPS you are actually trying to repair this unfinished business by loving unconsciously from the negative rooted messages you have received about love-that is why you may choose EUPS-because they represent all of the effed up SHITE you believe about men, women, love, and relationships.

Do you know what happens? The unconscious knows only how to be on automatic autopilot. So if your core thoughts about relationships are unhealthy, the unconscious will go on autopilot to confirm all of your core beliefs and make your fears a grave reality.

For example, instead of challenging a deep seated fear of abandonment (feeling the feelings fully, coping and self-soothing in healthy ways, and changing the belief), you choose to believe it, and then here comes EUP, after EUP, to confirm that thought. You will choose someone who has a HIGH probability of abandoning you (the EUP) but yet try to stick it out in hopes that it will be “fixed” this time and you won’t be abandon by someone you let close to you. It all is a painful self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fact, as I look back at all of the past EUPS that littered my life, ALL of them have abandoned me, walked away, and never did the “come back” thing (except for one-Mr. SMS. But then he ultimately abandoned me after I took him back). None of them ever circled back around or made a peep to contact me.

They disappeared as if I or the relationship did not exist. I learned the lesson that they don’t all “come back” and that you can’t seek validation from broken men. What’s the connection to my early child hood “love” experiences? Well, I realized that in my formative years I learned that “love” was about building you up, only to tear you down, making false promises, and emotionally and physically abandoning you. I learned love was about epic pain. Years into my adulthood I made my home seat on a Pity Pot of Pain.

Therefore in an attempt to “fix” the abandonment issues, I would get involved with EUP, after EUP, after EUP. However, it was NEVER the EUP I really loved (because they never provided genuine love, respect, stability, and authenticity). Instead it was my unfinished business with the fear of abandonment that I was trying to get them to fix, heal, and prevent from happening-they always did the opposite and made my fear a reality. It was never about love but about fear. Furthermore where fear is, love cannot exist. So the truth of the matter is that I never truly loved any of the EUPS I shacked up with.  I am here to tell you that you don’t really love them either. It is never about real love in emotionally unavailable relationships. These relationships are the antithesis of love.

Now back to the unhealthy beliefs component of Reactivation…

The EUP will swoop in and confirm your worst fears about relationships.

This can apply to any unhealthy relationship belief and fear that you have learned and accepted about love while growing up. Insert your fear. It could be anything. If you haven’t healed it, you can rest assure you will seek out an EUP to try and “fix” it with, and EUPS ALWAYS have a high probability of making your deepest unhealthy beliefs and fears a reality- and they ALWAYS do make them a heart shattering reality. It’s the EUPs job.

Loving consciously and changing our deep seated FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS is the only way to go about truly healing emotional unavailability in your life. It is not about getting the EUP to love us, care for us, desire us, or come back to us. This is not the true pathway to healing a pattern of emotionally unavailable relationships (remember the EUP is not equipped to love you).

When the EUP appears, and keeps on coming back like a bad rash, you need to H.A.L.T and pump your breaks.

They are NOT in your life to bring you love, but to test you, and to see if you have grown, and healed your inner childhood wounds.

So, don’t think it is love this time. It is definitely not love. They are NOT here to save you and reward you with healthy love for all of the failed relationships you have experienced.  They only show up in your life and reappear to test you. If you don’t acknowledge your unhealthy patterns, love yourself, and choose a different course of action, they will rock your heart with more pain.

Don’t do it to yourself! Also, as you go on in life avoiding your unhealed parts and giving them up to the EUP to heal (which they never can do anyway), the EUPs you deal with will get more cunning, and the situations will get more difficult to let go of- that’s Real T(Truth).

No, things won’t be different this time.

Remember, it is only a Reactivation of your wounded unhealed inner parts. They are showing you that your inner child has yet to be healed.

If you have that nagging feeling he or she is an EUP, then they probably are. STOP questioning it and rationalizing the antics. I don’t care how “nice” they are, or how much you have a grand old time, or how “off-the-chain” the vibe” is between you both. Decide to open up your mind and love consciously-not unconsciously-or you will fail the test and be doing many painful repeats, with the same person,  but different package, for years to come.

What are the components of Reactivation?

When Unhealthy Relationship Reactivation occurs it is almost always about a revival of your unhealed wounds. It is always about a pattern (or patterns) reappearing and taking you backward. EUPs are the agent of this Reactivation. They show up in your life to test you and remind you that you need to do some more soul work and healing work.

Reactivation has key components and features -in no particular order here they are:

Recapitulation of Family of Origin Wounds

It is all about a Recap of unhealthy love first learned in childhood. Recapturing the unhealthy messages and behaviors you learned about love. That is why we may primarily choose EUPs who “remind” of us of our early attachment figures (i.e. Mom, Dad, Auntie, Uncle, or whomever raised you or whomever didn’t step in to help raise and support you). The EUP (Emotionally Unavailable Partner) will represent characters from your past upbringing that DID NOT SHOW UP in a healthy and loving way in your life.

Keep in mind that it is not about blaming your parents but about understanding what makes you tick, and making peace with your past, so you can stop repeating it through Reactivations with romantic partners (or friends). Yes parents tried their best (and all that good stuff)  but that still doesn’t mean they were not responsible.

In order to make peace with yourself you need to understand the pattern, assign responsibility where it belongs  (to the people who taught you faulty love), let it go, and make peace with your past through loving yourself and closing up those wounds (not trying to heal by choosing relationships with EUPs).

Here are some common EUP characters you may find that reappear from your Family or Origin wounds:

Replicas of Dad

In essence, you will seek out replicas of the Father figure that was or wasn’t present. If your love template had a Father who was absentee, broke promises, who made appearances in your life only to disappear, then you may find yourself choosing partners who do the same thing. They will represent that pattern. For me, it was always partners whom abandon me physically and emotionally after coming on strong, pursuing me hard, making false promises, creating false hope, until I was “hooked”- then they would withdraw like a clam, and emotionally and physically disconnect. This would always leave me to always think I did something wrong or did something to mess things up

They all walked away and never provided answers or closure (The gift? I learned to bring my own closure and validate my own experiences). Guess who originally walked away and abandon me?- my biological, absentee Father (whom happened to be a cheater, seductive liar, and a huge avoider of feelings, responsibility, and reality-just like all of the EUPs I chose.  ALL of the EUPs I came across filled his pattern to the TEE.

Replicas of Mom

You will also seek out replicas of your initial experiences that may mimic the Mother figure whom was or wasn’t present. If your love template had a Mother whom was physically present but sent you mixed signals about love-sometimes they loved you and if they were in a bad mood you were unlovable, or they were busy providing material things instead of positive healthy emotional strokes and connection-you will seek out people to replicate and recapture these experiences. IF you experienced a mother who avoided her own emotions and problems, you may find that you choose EUPs who do the same.

Let’s say mom had to play both roles and worked all the time and became good at providing external things, but when it came down to the emotional nurturing, she just couldn’t cut it and lacked the tools to emotionally nurture. You may find that you deal with EUPs who can only connect on a surface level so things don’t get “too deep”. You may also find that you choose partners who are always Busier Than Beyoncé-too busy to make you and the relationship a priority-maybe they work too much, drink too much, spend all their time with other people. Now in the present you may choose an EUP who mirrors the same dynamic.

The EUP may be good for a fling, good for a night out, good for doing fun things with, good for temporary moments of fun, and they may even say superficial things to make you believe they want a relationship (EUPs are good at pretending and only say things for the moment) . However when it comes down to emotionally connecting they will withdraw and disconnect, because they are wired to AVOID AVOID AVOID feelings and problems. If you love unconsciously you will try to “fix” what you couldn’t fix with your mother through the EUP who will be an unhealthy carbon copy of that love experience.

Replicas of Unconscious Love Messages and Patterns learned from early caregivers (or lack thereof)

As mentioned before the EUP always will confirm your worst fears by reactivating and replicating the unhealthy love patterns you experienced growing up. EUPs are also individuals who serve as agents that always show up in life to cause you pain by confirming the unhealthy junk you have AVOIDED about YOU. This happens when you have not healed your unconscious belief systems and the wounded parts of your heart.

Here is a list of common unconscious love messages and how the EUP will usually confirm them in the relationship:

• “I am afraid of abandonment. Everyone I have let close always leaves me. People are disappointing and will inevitably leave me.”
  • How the EUP will confirm this core thought and belief:
    • The EUP will usually swoop in and idealize you and the relationship. You will be the greatest thing to them in the beginning stages-all that and a bag of chips. They will shower you with attention, affection, phone calls and texts to constantly remind you of their existence, and they will tell you what you want to hear. Inside you will be thinking “This is too good to be true.” Trust your gut. If they are coming on strong in the beginning, you need to be slowing them down. Healthy people don’t move that fast. The EUP will move you through the beginning, middle, and end stages of a relationship fast if you let them (that is why whirlwind romances with EUPS feel like full-fledged relationships. They move quickly, set fire, and run). After you are idealized and hooked on them, they will devalue you by doing things like withdrawing their initial interest to make it seem like you are “needy” or you are the one moving too fast. Then, they will discard They had a hidden agenda and like to manipulate to fulfill temporary selfish needs. That is why they can chuck you to the side so easily. You fulfilled your purpose. When they discard you like you don’t exist, they just confirmed your worst fear-abandonment. Remember the relationship was designed to match your unconscious belief
      
• • How the EUP will confirm this core thought and belief:
    • The EUP will partner up with you with their own set of unhealthy love beliefs and patterns. When your belief is that you are unworthy of love the EUP assists you in setting the stage for a relationship that will be less then what you deserve, have you taking tolerance for shady behaviors to the outer-limits, have you loosen your boundaries, and have you working really hard for their love. EUPs by default confirm that you are unworthy of love by being unable to provide a genuine and healthy emotional connection to you. They will only be able to “connect” with you out of fear, or because they want something (i.e. sex, to stop their own loneliness, to use you for any of their selfish needs). This will confirm the belief that you are not worthy of love just for being who you are. This also set the stage for you to be objectified in emotionally unavailable relationships. The EUP knows how to do one thing really well-USE people like objects and then toss them away.
• “I am unworthy of love. All of my relationships have failed there must be something wrong with me”

• How the EUP will confirm this core thought and belief:
  • The EUP will partner up with you with their own set of unhealthy love beliefs and patterns. When your belief is that you are unworthy of love the EUP assists you in setting the stage for a relationship that will be less then what you deserve, have you taking tolerance for shady behaviors to the outer-limits, have you loosen your boundaries, and have you working really hard for their love. EUPs by default confirm that you are unworthy of love by being unable to provide a genuine and healthy emotional connection to you. They will only be able to “connect” with you out of fear, or because they want something (i.e. sex, to stop their own loneliness, to use you for any of their selfish needs). This will confirm the belief that you are not worthy of love just for being who you are. This also set the stage for you to be objectified in emotionally unavailable relationships. The EUP knows how to do one thing really well-USE people like objects and then toss them away.

• “Love is conditional. I must do something to get it, work hard to get it, love is about “making it work”.
  • How The EUP confirms this core thought and belief:
    • If you believe you must do “something for love” and that just being your authentic self is not enough, you will unconsciously align yourself with an EUP. Why? Because the very dynamic of emotionally unavailability is about conditional love. So what happens? You will find yourself in love/relationship situations that will have you traversing great mountains and crossing great seas to have a relationship-and it will be any kind of relationship. It will be one where you are set up to work for the EUPs love, or your happiness and the relationships’ success, becomes based on them fixing some deep character flaw they have in order to make YOU happy. You will find yourself trying to change their effed up behavior. You will find yourself throwing away your boundaries to “make it work” with them.  With the EUP the “love” is always conditional. That is why these relationships are so painful.

Here are a few examples of  Unhealthy Relationship Set Ups You may experience when this is your core belief:

• You choose an someone (EUP) who just got out of a relationship.

Now you can be the one to show them something “different” and convince yourself you can love them better.

• You choose an someone (EUP) who is on the fence about their sexuality (yet you are well defined in yours). Now you can be the one they “choose”.

For me it was choosing “Bi guys” who would almost always be fresh out of a relationship with a girl (or had a relationship with a chick somewhere lingering in their history). I then would date them, and try to get them to choose me, and hope they would integrate me into their lives and introduce me to family and friends. If they went to these great lengths that meant I had “won” their love. That would mean they chose me (a guy) over a girl, and that I really made some kind of impact on them to get them to “change”.

• They are “separated” and have been for years but never got that divorce, so legally they are still bound to that other relationship. However, you still stick in there and because your belief about love is conditional you will try to be the exceptional to the rule and hope for the best.

Next time the EUP reappears in your life understand that it is a Reactivation. Remember that it is chance and opportunity to do something different. The EUP does not symbolize love but a message about what in you still needs to be healed. If you understand what is happening, then half of the battle is won.

Part 3 will discuss Regression. In between Reactivation (the EUP reappearing in your life to test you) is a choice point – a decision you get to make as to whether you Regress (respond the way you always do and have in the past, go back to old patterns, do the same thing expecting different results etc.). Stay tuned for Part 3 of The EUP an Angel in Disguise: Passing Your Spiritual Test (Understanding Reactivation, Regression, Revelation, Reformation, and Renewal)

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