10/06/2026
t usually started with someone who wasn't there. Not physically absent. Emotionally elsewhere. A parent who was present in the room but unreachable. Someone whose love you could feel but never quite hold for any period of time.
So you learned to work around that distance. To not need too much. To translate silence into love, because that was what was on offer.
Then you grew up. And started choosing people who felt familiar.
Not safe. Familiar.
Here's the part nobody tells you.
When attention comes inconsistently, warm sometimes, gone other times. Your brain releases dopamine in a much bigger spike than when it comes steadily. The chase, the waiting and the wondering. That's what gives you ‘the hit’. Not the love itself.
It's the same reward pattern that makes slot machines addictive. Unpredictable wins. The brain learns to crave the next one, again and again and again.
So you go for the person who is a little out of reach. The relationship where you're always the one reaching. The connection that's warm sometimes and gone other times. These people don't just feel familiar, they feel chemically rewarding in a way steady love doesn't.
Steady love can feel flat and even boring at first because there's no spike. No chase. Just presence.
This isn't bad taste. It's a nervous system trained by intermittent reinforcement, following a map it learned before you could actually read.
The work isn't to "choose better people."
It's teaching your brain to recognise calm as a reward and to stop confusing the spike for love.
You're not drawn to unavailability because you like the pain.
You're drawn to it because your brain learned that's where love lives.
The good news: the brain can learn something new, now you know something different than before.
