The Flirt Who Doesn’t Want Love

There is a person who, ostensibly, wants love very much. When they go out in the evening, they dress very finely indeed. They spend a lot of time working on their appearance. Their eyes are sparkling. Their manner is tender, funny, self-deprecating and agile. They find out what you like – and refer back to it artfully. They remember what you said last time about orange juice or electricity pylons or Renaissance art; they zero in on your vulnerabilities. To the untrained eye, none of this looks like emotionally unavailable partner signs at all. They know how much it hurt when you had to go to school and when your parents got divorced. They send the sweetest messages – very regularly indeed (for a while).

But there’s a problem. They do this a little too widely. You’re in fact one of nine people they’re talking to at the moment. They have six parties to go to this week. They were in a bar in Covent Garden last night; they’ll be at the Dorchester hotel tomorrow; at the weekend, it’s Newmarket, then Gstaad. You last saw them ten days ago.

The Illusion of Intensity

When, briefly, you have them with you, it is very gratifying. They focus on you very intently. They tell you how pleased they are to see you. They look beautiful in their sleep. But in the morning, the mood is a little grouchy and they scroll through their phone at the kitchen island, and you know you will never possess them.

A long time ago, back in the little apartment they grew up in, this person wasn’t thought very desirable at all. That’s how this pattern began. The parents liked their sibling more; they were laughing together in the living room and the person was left sobbing alone in their tiny bedroom. They derived no impression of their physical appeal. They lacked friends at school. They definitely had no sense of having been chosen. They’re so good at making you feel seen because they know everything about invisibility and humiliation (in time, they’ll destroy you too, the same way they were destroyed; it makes them feel momentarily stronger to know that you are the weak one).

Emotionally Unavailable Partner Signs

Being chosen matters above all else. It doesn’t really matter who is doing the choosing. They just need a lot of voices. The digital world obliges. There may be 100 messages waiting for them at the end of an evening. They might have had a partner a few years ago who loved them a lot. For a time, marriage might have been on the cards. But it all began to feel too dangerous: why trust deeply in one person when you could be admired by hundreds and so mitigate the risks of any one person imploding? No one ever chose them; they aren’t going to choose you.

The lesson of childhood was always: you aren’t good enough. This is the wound they are permanently pushing up against. This is what drives them to climb the very steep steps of the private members’ club in Mayfair at 1 a.m. Now I am OK, because seven people are waiting for me on a plush velvet banquette.

The Terror of Being Seen

None of this has anything to do with a relationship, and it’s extremely lonely (though the loneliness is easier to ignore when there’s always a phone and some antidepressants and a party). Relationships are terrifying. One person, one witness, someone to tell you about your faults, someone who might get angry (like father). Someone who might criticise you. Or even worse, foster dependence and then leave you.

The flirt is at the threshold of love – and gives us an insight into the scale of its terror for those who have been ignored and bullied early on. Arrested at this particular juncture, they speak of a universal fear of what we ostensibly all want.

For some of us, all we can manage of love’s challenge is the very first step: that of being wanted. We should be sorry for them – and, when we recognise these emotionally unavailable partner signs in ourselves or others, scared for ourselves too.