The Fallback Girl is Mr Unavailable’s Disgruntled Customer

In another excerpt from new ebook, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, I explain another example of how we fit in with the behaviour of emotionally unavailable men so well, which actually enables their poor relationship behaviour.

This excerpt is from the section ‘He can’t commit/won’t commit – You’re a disgruntled customer that won’t accept’

If you imagine that you’re Mr Unavailable’s customer, he’s selling and you’re buying. But you’re an unhappy customer. He has shown you the product, given it a whole load of bells and whistles that aren’t actually sold with that particular product, and then sold it to you and told you that you’ll be getting the pared down version because the one you want was a limited edition, that’s no longer in stock, and the one in his hand has already been reserved.

You feel confused. Why go to the trouble of making a song and dance about the product if he wasn’t going to sell it to you? Yes you know you felt a bit awkward when you were listening to his sales patter and you did wonder why he was showing you this particular product when it didn’t look anything like the one on the box. But he seemed to really want to wow you, show you a good time and make sure that you’re shopping experience was unforgettable. You remember feeling a bit uncomfortable around him, a little distrusting, wondering if this was all too good to be true. He assures you that what you have, is just fine and that you’ll love it. But you don’t love it when you get home because you keep thinking back to that amazing product. You know it’s out there, you just need to get your hands on it, but each time you ask him, he says that what you have is what you’re going to get, but then confuses you by alluding to the possibility of getting the one you really want.

Sound familiar? It should do. You, the Fallback Girl are the disgruntled customer who wants an exchange.

You feel violated by the Trade Descriptions Act but you’re also a victim to your own inflated expectations that are based more in what you perceive the product can do in your capable hands as opposed to what it’s actually capable of doing based on the specification. You’re like someone who doesn’t read the instructions, sets up the product blindly and then wonders what went wrong. You want more than Mr Unavailable can deliver, and even though he has in many respects misled you to believe that there is more on offer, you have had more than enough tangible proof in his contradictory actions and words, to know that what you want and what you’re going to end up with, are two totally different things.

Sometimes we fall in love and give our heart before we know who it is we are dealing with, and then we do. In my case he plain blatantly lied to my face and well, I believed him. He wanted this and he wanted that and all of that with me. I asked him if all this was too much for him to handle, he went Nooooooooo….and then when I ask him to step up to his word, he gives me this look and goes “Things change” and then goes “Lets Break Up” just like that, without batting an eyelid. One minute you are idealised then discarded like trash. And the worse is this, even as we know this is more to do with him, we end up feeling like we did something wrong.
Indra, Baggage Reclaim reader comment

You have to remember that like attracts like so he masks his fear of commitment by just refusing to commit to an outcome and seeing whatever free sex and ego stroking he can get along the way, and you mask your fear of commitment by taking up with men who are the least likely candidate for giving you commitment and then spending a lot of time thinking and talking about it, but rarely actually doing anything.

The one thing you are both doing right is finding people who are most likely to give the relationship that you want, knowingly or unknowingly. Most Mr Unavailable’s know upfront or have a pretty major inkling that they are limited in what they have to offer. Many are well meaning and have some good intentions, but habitual Mr Unavailable’s have been around the block a few times so they know the drill. Likewise, so do you, so you do get the relationship that you want with him, it’s just that you don’t know that it’s the relationship that you want, because aside from most of us being programmed to expect to find someone and fall in love, you have self-esteem issues that have you catering to unhealthy relationship patterns that you’re probably not fully aware of.

You’re out of sync with what you profess to want.

This makes you ideal for either type of commitment dodger; The Upfront or The Undercover Commitment Dodgers.

If he tells you upfront that he cannot give you what you want, you decide that you know better, or that he just needs time, or that you’ll be less ‘needy’ and see if that changes things. He then lets himself off the hook because he’s been ‘honest’ with you and you on the other hand, decide that he’s still there, so he must want more.

On the flipside, if he’s on the down low, he will still be giving off plenty of red flags even though he won’t come straight out and admit that he can’t give you what you want, but you make his problems your responsibility or even assume the blame for his behaviour and inability to commit.

Either way, you become focused on extracting commitment from these men because you feel so attracted and connected to them that it must be love and you know you can help them and that you’re destined to be together and all that jazz, and next thing you know, you’re living in Inertiaville.

The trouble with Fallback Girl’s is that you can commit, it’s just that you’ll commit to anything that comes in the package of Mr Unavailable! If he comes in the package of say a Half Decent Guy that’s emotionally available, you can barely commit to an evening out with him, never mind a relationship! The scary reality for Fallback Girl’s is that you commit at these crucial points:

Some of you commit pretty much as soon as you meet the guy. You see so much potential, you’re straight out the gate, into the future. You may not even see that much potential but you’re gagging for companionship and affection. You’re the Fallback Girl that doesn’t like to be alone and thinks every guy she ‘connects’ with might be the one.

Some of you commit when you realise that he has issues because you feel comfortable around wounded souls, guys who scream hard work, drama, and you feel that you can be the one to make him better. You’re the Fallback Girl that’s a sucker for a sob story and a sucker for baggage.

Some of you commit when you realise that he’s not going to leave his wife or his girlfriend, or make that separation official by becoming divorced because you think that if you show him how committed you are, that you’ll be rewarded. You’re the Fallback Girl that commits when it becomes clear that he’s definitely not going to commit.

Some of you commit to the cycle of drama. You’re not that sure about him until he starts catering to your pattern of fear of abandonment and making you jump through hoops, and after a while, you’re not really going out with him’; you’re going out with the high created by Relationship Crack. You’re the Fallback Girl that commits even though you weren’t really that interested until he started messing you around and got your attention.

Women who take the time to research into emotional unavailability are giving themselves a fighting chance to change their lives for the better and empower themselves and the sad reality is, that unless a woman gets wise about who she is engaging with and what she is doing to facilitate these relationships, she can spend a whole lifetime being a Fallback Girl, committing to men who just don’t commit to her.

Yes it’s committing out of dysfunctionality and it’s not healthy, but this is how women who live by the sword and die by the sword of Mr Unavailable operate – sacrificing themselves for their men.

Being with Mr Unavailable’s is very uncomfortable for you but not as uncomfortable as it would be if you were in the unknown territory of being involved with a man who actually offered a strong possibility of commitment and didn’t mess you around. Yet, if you are ever going to break free of this pattern, you are going to have to get out your uncomfortable comfort zone and go into the uncomfortable unknown and it starts, with committing to do the best by yourself which means that you can only commit to men that add value to you, not detract.

This excerpt is taken from the chapter The Other Woman from my new eBook Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl. Find out more and download.

Related Posts

• Dating with fear and obsessing about your ex and no contact
• Living in Denial with your Relationships
• Do emotionally unavailable men change?
• Does emotionally unavailable equal ‘He’s just not that into you’? Why do we care?
• Why you’ll always be a Yo-Yo Girl if you don’t maintain the No Contact Rule
• Understanding the The Cheater
• Overestimating Yourself:The Consequence of Change vs Inertia in Dating and Relationships
• Relationship Advice Guest Post: Am I wasting my time with my mixed signals guy?
• Relationship Advice: Should I stick by emotionally unavailable army guy?
• Singing Your Way to Emotional Unavailability

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!