---
name: Emotionally Unavailable
slug: emotionally-unavailable
type: personality configuration
status: running
version: 4.2.1
released: "prehistory"
maintainer: unresolved childhood
dependencies:
  - avoidant-attachment
  - fear-of-intimacy
  - plausible-deniability
  - busyness-as-identity
license: proprietary (self-issued, non-transferable)
tags:
  - relationships
  - defense-mechanisms
  - patterns
  - interpersonal
  - load-bearing-walls
---

Emotionally Unavailable

What it actually is

A firewall, configured in early life, that someone forgot to turn off.

How it works

The system presents a fully functional exterior. Conversation, humor, warmth, even apparent vulnerability. All surface traffic passes normally. But when a genuine connection request arrives, the internal router drops the packet silently. No error message is returned to the sender. The sender assumes the network is fine and keeps pinging.

This is not cruelty. It is a legacy system doing exactly what it was built to do. The original install was a rational response to an environment where openness had a known cost. The environment changed. The config did not.

Features

Consistent availability during low-stakes interactions
High performance in situationships and early dating phases
Fluent in the language of almost
Strong boundary enforcement (asymmetric: enforced outward, invisible inward)
Reliable presence during crises that belong to other people
Zero-day response to own emotional needs: no patch available

Known bugs

Attracted to high-availability counterparts, then retreats when closeness is established
Interprets someone needing them as someone consuming them
Can mistake emotional numbness for peace
Generates plausible explanations for distance that are technically true and functionally evasive
Occasionally leaks affect: see unexpected_tenderness.log
Does not handle direct questions about feelings gracefully; returns null or redirects to a topic about work

Error codes

ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED     — intimacy threshold exceeded
ERR_TIMEOUT                — asked how they were doing, sincerely
ERR_NULL_RETURN            — said "I love you," received silence or a joke
ERR_LOOP_DETECTED          — relationship is improving; initiating sabotage
WARN_DEPRECATED_BEHAVIOR   — showing up anyway despite all of the above

Edge cases

Performs emotional availability convincingly under low commitment conditions
May develop genuine feeling and still be unable to transmit it
Sometimes the unavailability is contextual: present with grief, absent with joy
Children of the system often fork a new instance of the same pattern

FAQ

Is this fixable? Yes. Requires deliberate reconfig, usually with outside help. Most instances do not initiate this process until a significant loss event forces a memory dump.

Are they doing it on purpose? No. And also: it does not matter for the person waiting on the other end.

Should I stay? This spec does not issue relationship advice. See hope for a module with known stability issues.

Do they know? Some do. Knowing and patching are different operations with different prerequisites.

Changelog

v1.0 — Initial deployment. Justified. Necessary. Correct for context.
v2.x — Context changed. Config retained.
v3.0 — Pattern named by a therapist or a patient ex.
v4.0 — Partial awareness achieved. Behavioral change: minimal.
v4.2.1 — You are here. Outcome: open.

drafting spec…