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You know they're your type.
You also know, historically, your type has perhaps not been particularly good for you.
Maybe they're emotionally unavailable. Maybe you find yourself doing all the emotional labour in the relationship. Maybe you're always trying to figure out where you stand, waiting for a text back, reading into changes in tone, or convincing yourself that if you can just be a little less needy, a little more accommodating, a little easier to love, eventually you'll feel secure.
You can know all of this.
And unfortunately, knowing your type is terrible for you does not automatically make your nervous system stop finding them hot.
This is one of the frustrating things about attachment work: insight is important, but insight alone doesn't necessarily change attraction.
Why do I keep being attracted to emotionally unavailable people?
Our attraction doesn't develop in a vacuum.
Long before we have language for concepts like attachment, emotional availability, boundaries, or relational safety, we're learning what relationships feel like.
Our earliest relationships can teach us what to expect from closeness. We learn whether our needs will be responded to consistently, whether vulnerability feels safe, whether love requires us to perform or accommodate, and what we might need to do to maintain connection.
These experiences don't create a simple formula where one childhood experience inevitably leads to one type of adult relationship. Human beings—and attachment—are much more complicated than that.
Sorry, Sabrina Carpenter—we can't blame manchild behaviour on moms.
But our early relationships can create powerful templates for what connection feels like.
And sometimes, familiarity can feel a lot like chemistry.
When your nervous system recognizes something familiar
Imagine you've spent years learning, consciously or unconsciously, that connection involves uncertainty.
Maybe closeness came with unpredictability. Maybe affection had to be earned. Maybe you became highly attuned to other people's moods because understanding what was happening around you helped you feel safe.
Then you meet someone as an adult who creates some of those same sensations.
You don't necessarily think:
Ah yes, this interpersonal dynamic resembles an attachment strategy I developed during childhood.
You might think:
Oh my God. The chemistry.
Your attachment system isn't trying to sabotage you. Your nervous system is responding to patterns it recognizes.
Familiar doesn't necessarily mean healthy.
But familiar can feel compelling.
Chemistry, activation and emotional safety aren't the same thing
One of the most useful things we can begin to explore in attachment-focused therapy is the difference between attraction and activation.
Intensity can feel exciting.
Uncertainty can create anticipation.
Someone pulling away can make us want to move closer.
A relationship that keeps shifting between connection and disconnection can occupy an enormous amount of mental and emotional space.
None of that means the attraction isn't real.
But it can be useful to become curious about what else might be happening underneath it.
What happens in your body when this person becomes unavailable?
Do you feel compelled to restore the connection?
Do you start questioning yourself?
Do you become preoccupied with what they're thinking or feeling?
Do you abandon your own boundaries because maintaining the relationship suddenly feels more important?
These questions aren't about judging yourself for who you're attracted to. They're about developing enough awareness to notice when attraction and attachment activation are happening at the same time.
“But I know this pattern already. Why do I keep doing it?”
This can be one of the most challenging parts.
You've read the books.
You've listened to the podcasts.
You know your attachment style.
Maybe you can identify the red flags approximately eleven seconds after they appear.
And somehow, your body is still saying:
Yes. This one.
Understanding a pattern intellectually and experiencing something differently relationally are not the same process.
Attachment wounds happen in relationships, which means healing often needs to involve new relational experiences too.
That can include experiencing boundaries without abandonment.
Expressing a need and discovering the relationship can survive it.
Allowing someone else to care for you without immediately feeling responsible for caring for them.
Noticing when you're people-pleasing instead of automatically doing it.
Experiencing conflict followed by genuine repair.
Learning that intimacy doesn't require you to disappear.
Over time, experiences like these can begin to expand what your nervous system understands as possible in relationships.
Therapy can be a really helpful relational space to begin practising new ways of connecting. Neuroplasticity means our brains can continue to learn and form new patterns through experience. But new doesn't always feel comfortable right away. Sometimes growth means tolerating the unfamiliar long enough to discover that unfamiliar can also be safe.
Secure attachment isn't supposed to mean “boring”
There's a version of attachment discourse online that can make secure relationships sound like the emotional equivalent of watching paint dry.
Apparently, if you're healing, you're supposed to stop wanting chemistry entirely and select whichever human being produces the lowest possible heart rate.
That's not what secure attachment means.
You can have desire.
You can have excitement.
You can have incredible sex, butterflies, passion, playfulness and depth.
The goal isn't to eliminate intensity from relationships.
The goal is developing enough self-trust that intensity doesn't automatically override the information your body, boundaries and experiences are giving you.
Instead of asking only:
Do they like me?
We can begin asking:
Do I like who I am when I'm with them?
Can I have needs here?
Can I disagree?
Can I set a boundary without fearing that everything will disappear?
Is this person actually emotionally available to me?
Does this relationship allow me to remain connected to myself?
Those questions tell us something chemistry alone cannot.
Attachment healing is not about blaming your parents
Talking about childhood and family-of-origin experiences can sometimes sound like we're trying to locate the person responsible for everything that's ever gone wrong in our lives.
That's not how I understand attachment work.
Understanding our histories gives us context.
Parents and caregivers have their own attachment histories, trauma, cultural experiences, relationships, resources and limitations. Many were doing the best they could with what was available to them.
We can hold compassion for that reality while also acknowledging the impact our experiences had on us.
Those things can coexist.
The purpose isn't blame.
It's understanding what you learned about relationships—and deciding which parts of that learning you still want to carry.
Radical self-compassion can grow from being able to look back at past versions of ourselves with love and acceptance, recognizing that many of these patterns once helped us protect ourselves and navigate circumstances in which we had far less power.
The work isn't about shaming those patterns out of existence. It's about understanding them, honouring what they once did for us, and recognizing that we have choices now that we may not have had then.
In therapy, we can begin rewriting those patterns—building the self-trust to recognize what no longer serves us and becoming more attuned to what we actually need now.
You don't have to stop being attracted to your “type” before something has changed
One of the quieter signs of healing can simply be noticing sooner.
Maybe you're still attracted to the emotionally unavailable person.
But now you recognize what is happening.
Maybe you don't spend six months trying to convince them to choose you.
Maybe you notice yourself abandoning a boundary and come back to it.
Maybe you recognize nervous-system activation without immediately interpreting it as evidence that you've met your soulmate.
Maybe attraction is still there, but you trust yourself enough not to let attraction make every decision.
That matters.
Secure attachment isn't about becoming a completely different person.
It's about having more choice.
And sometimes healing looks less like:
I'm never attracted to this kind of person anymore.
And more like:
Oh. I know this feeling.
And I know what I want to do with it now.
Watch: Attachment, Chemistry & Why We Keep Dating the Same Person
In the companion video to this article, I talk more about attachment patterns, nervous-system activation, emotionally unavailable partners, family-of-origin experiences, and why knowing your relationship patterns doesn't automatically change who you're attracted to.
Attachment-Focused Therapy in Toronto & Across Ontario
I'm Ferris Amaro, MA, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), Certified Clinical Trauma Professional, and founder of Psyche Health.
I provide attachment-focused, trauma-informed psychotherapy for women across Ontario through virtual therapy, with in-person therapy available in Toronto.
My work focuses on attachment and relationship patterns, developmental and relational trauma, family-of-origin wounds, anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, boundaries, self-worth and the ways we've learned to survive within relationships.
Therapy isn't about convincing you that there's something wrong with the way you learned to connect.
It's about becoming curious about where those patterns came from, honouring what they may have once done for you, and creating enough safety and self-trust to decide what you want your relationships to look like now.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for psychotherapy, medical care, diagnosis or individualized mental health advice.