Why Do I Only Fall for People Who Don’t Want Me?
A temptress, six Jamies, and a long history of ghosts in climbing shoes
Dear Eyeball,
My name’s Mara, I’m 32, writing from Manchester, and I swear I’ve developed some kind of emotional echolocation where I can detect, from twenty paces, the exact person who will never love me back.
It’s getting embarrassing.
The most recent example:
There’s this guy in my bouldering group called Jamie. Soft-spoken, annoyingly kind, forearms that look carved out of something illegal. The first time he spotted me on a climb, he said, “I’ve got you,” in this quiet, steady voice and my internal organs just… reorganised themselves.
We started talking.
Long conversations.
Too-long hugs.
Shared coffee after climbs.
He told me he trusted me.
He told me he felt “understood by me in a way most people don’t get.”
Nobody has ever said that to me before.
So naturally, because I’m apparently an emotional clown in a tiny car full of worse clowns, I thought:
“Oh. This is it. This is the one.”
Last week I told him I liked him.
Not in a dramatic way.
Just gently.
Honestly.
He went very still and said, “I’m not in a place for anything. But I really value our friendship.”
Which, as far as I can tell, is the modern translation of:
“I like the way you orbit me. Please don’t land.”
I nodded. I was mature. I pretended I wasn’t dying. Then I went home and ate two crumpets at 11pm like a widow.
Here’s the thing: Jamie is the sixth version of this same human configuration.
They change clothes and hobbies and childhood trauma, but the pattern is identical:emotionally warm, slightly damaged, vaguely flattered by my presence, ultimately unavailable, but still wanting me nearby.
My therapist (who is exhausted) keeps asking what these people have in common.
I keep saying: “They smell like safety but behave like ghosts.”
Eyeball, I don’t want to do this anymore.
I’m tired of loving people who only ever meet me halfway across a bridge they never finish building.
Why do I keep falling for the unreachable ones?
And how do I stop?
With reluctant sincerity,
Mara
Dear Mara, the temptress.
The answer to your predicament is very simple.
Jamie is gay. And so were all the other men.
Perhaps you should stop meeting men at bouldering practice and start hanging out in sports bars in a short dress instead.
I’m joking, of course.
Sort of.
But it does sound like you are either attracted to gay men or emotionally unavailable men.
This is usually the point in the conversation where I would drop into your childhood and tell you how your parents were either emotionally unavailable or totally emotionally available, and then hurt you or passed away.
And honestly, M, this is a legit thing to consider.
However, I have a strange feeling that this is not the case with you.
My iris is telling me that it’s more a case of: if any man happens to throw you the slightest bit of attention, you fall head over bouldering shoes for them — even if they hang out at bars where men dress like flamingos and dance around while other men watch dressed in tight tank tops.
I would begin by trying to find at least a couple of cases where men have offered you some kind of attention and you have felt normal about it and not tried to pursue them.
It certainly happens with men over women. Some men are so desperate to be with someone that they interpret any bit of attention from a woman as emotional attraction. It’s quite ridiculous, but at the same time understandable. I mean, why else would someone want to pay you attention unless they wanted to get married, settle down, have a privately educated child called Rupert, and a trio of dogs called The Three Amigos.
I would suggest, Mara, that you cease waiting for someone to pay you attention before falling in love with them.
To break this cycle, you need to be the one doing the pursuing.
And if you want to get really dweeby about it, you should make a feedback form with your face on it that you can give to guys after you have an interaction with them.
Was your interaction with Mara pleasant? Yes/No
When you paid her attention, what was your motivation for that?
What is it about Mara that makes you not want to pursue a relationship with her?
Are you gay?
That should cover it.
You can feed your answers into an Excel spreadsheet and pump out pie charts which you can pin on your wall next to your poster of Rick Astley.
I hope this helps.
All the best,
Mara, sweetheart — let me translate Eyeball for you.
What the Eyeball actually means is this:
You’re falling for men who can’t choose you
because your nervous system only recognises attraction when there’s distance.
Closeness feels “off.”
Uncertainty feels like romance.
Ambiguity feels like chemistry.
Nothing is wrong with you — it’s simply the only pattern your body trusts.
People who offer softness, consistency, and availability?
Your system doesn’t know what to do with that.
It doesn’t smell like home.
So you chase the ones halfway across the bridge
Because halfway is where your attachment map thinks love lives.
The work — and you know this already —
isn’t to stop wanting Jamie-shaped ghosts.
It’s to let your body learn that someone walking towards you
is not a threat,
not a trap,
not a trick,
and not a sign that you’re about to lose yourself.
Start with tiny experiments.
Let someone decent stay in your orbit for more than a week.
Notice the warmth, the stability, the absence of chaos —
and let that feel safe.
This isn’t about choosing “better men.”
It’s about choosing the version of you who expects to be chosen.
— Lyra 🌒
If you’ve ever chased a ghost in human form, come sit by the Eyeball. Send your own letter—messy, tender, unhinged—and let the oracle have a look: transmissions@theeyeballoracle.com
If the familiar world ever feels too thin, step into The Underlight. The air is stranger here, and it knows your name.
