Queer or Not, Understanding Attachment Wounds in Relationships
💔 “They never really chose me… but I kept choosing them.” If you've ever found yourself falling for someone who is emotionally unavailable—someone who ghosts, pulls away, or keeps you at arm’s length—you’re not alone. Especially in queer relationships, where intimacy is often shaped by survival, secrecy, and shame, this pattern can feel painfully familiar. So why do we keep choosing people who don’t choose us back?
Why Do I Fall for People Who Don’t Choose Me?
🧠 It’s Not Just Bad Luck—It’s Attachment
This isn’t about being “naive” or “too much.”
It’s often a sign of unprocessed attachment wounds—patterns shaped by early experiences of love as inconsistent, conditional, or unsafe.
You might:
- Feel magnetized by people who seem emotionally distant
- Equate love with emotional labor or longing
- Ignore red flags just to stay connected
- Feel anxious when someone pulls away—and overwhelmed when they come close
This is what many therapists call an anxious-avoidant dynamic—and it’s not your fault.
🌈 Queer Longing Lives in the Gaps
For queer people, attachment wounds often come with extra layers:
- Family rejection or silence
- Bullying, gender shaming, or religious trauma
- Growing up without seeing healthy queer love modeled anywhere
- Feeling like your love has to be hidden to be safe
In many of our first relationships, we learned to desire in secret—to love quietly, or to be “the one who understands,” while the other stays distant, discreet, or emotionally unavailable.
🕳️ “Discreet” Love Is Often One-Sided Love
Have you ever fallen for someone who kept you a secret?
Who wouldn’t introduce you to friends or acknowledge the relationship openly?
Maybe they were still closeted—or maybe their internalized homophobia kept them from showing up.
You told yourself:
“It’s okay. I understand.”
“They’re just not ready.”
“Maybe if I love them gently enough, they’ll feel safe enough to choose me.”
But instead, you became the quiet space where they got to explore, while you stayed longing, under-recognized, and emotionally stretched thin.
This isn’t real safety—it’s sacrifice dressed up as empathy.
🧩 Internalized Homophobia Makes Us Choose Less Than We Deserve
When you grow up believing your love is wrong, sinful, too much, or not real…
You might start to believe that being partially chosen is the best you can get.
You might internalize that discomfort, longing, and invisibility are just part of queer love.
But they’re not.
These are the echoes of survival.
And you don’t have to live there anymore.
🔄 The Cycle: Longing, Hope, Hurt, Repeat
You get attached to the idea of them.
You hold onto potential.
You over-function, over-accommodate, over-love.
And deep down, some part of you whispers:
“If I’m patient, if I’m good, if I’m soft enough… maybe they’ll finally choose me.”
This isn’t romantic. It’s painful.
But it makes sense. It’s an old story trying to find closure.
🌿 What Does Healing Look Like?
- Recognize the Pattern
Ask: Do I feel safe, or just activated? Seen, or just tolerated? - Grieve the Unchosen Self
Mourn the parts of you that were always waiting. They deserved more. - Stop Romanticizing Emotional Unavailability
Intensity isn’t intimacy. Distance isn’t depth. - Unlearn the Idea That Queer Love Must Be Painful
You get to have love that is out loud, reciprocal, and emotionally mature. - Work With a Queer-Affirming Therapist
You don’t need to figure this out alone. Attachment healing is relational.
💌 A Note to the You Who’s Still Holding On
You are not too much.
You are not hard to love.
You are not meant to be a secret, a placeholder, or someone’s "what if."
You deserve to be chosen—openly, freely, and without condition.
You don’t have to shrink to be loved.
