Choosing Unavailable Partners | Family Constellation Healing

This guided meditation journey helps you discover and heal the ancestral patterns behind why you keep attracting people who can't fully meet you—whether romantic partners or friends.
In this practice: • Understand hidden family loyalties driving your choices • See how your parents' relationship shaped your template for love • Identify ancestral patterns of loss and unavailability • Speak healing sentences to release entanglements • Visualize your family system with clarity • Make new agreements about the love you deserve
Perfect for those who:
• Keep choosing partners who are hot and cold
• Find themselves always waiting and hoping
• Do all the emotional labor in relationships
• Feel trapped in inexplicable patterns
• Want to understand their relationship dynamics at a deeper level

Transcript

So welcome everyone and thank you for listening.

So today we are going to explore one of the most painful and persistent patterns that shows up in people's lives.

The pattern of choosing emotionally unavailable people,

Whether as romantic partners,

Close friends or both.

So if you're here,

You know this pattern intimately,

You've lived it.

Maybe you keep finding yourself attracted to people who can't fully commit,

Who keep you at arm's length,

Who are always just out of reach.

Or perhaps your closest friendships are with people who disappear when you need them,

Who never quite show up or who just take but don't really give back.

Now here's what's confusing about this pattern.

You are a good person,

You have so much love to give,

You show up,

You're loyal and you're there for others.

So why do you keep attracting people who can't meet you?

Why do you keep giving your heart and your energy to people who can't reciprocate?

So the answer,

As we'll discover today,

Lies not in your personal failings or bad luck,

But it may lie in your family system.

It lies in what Family Constellation work calls hidden loyalties,

Unconscious bonds to patterns that came before you,

Patterns that may be shaping your life and your choices without your awareness.

What we are going to do today is unlike traditional healing or therapy,

We are not going to analyze your childhood for hours,

We are not going to make you wrong for your choices.

Instead,

We are going to do something much more powerful.

We are going to see your family system as it truly is.

We are going to understand the invisible forces that have been guiding your relationship choices and we are going to give you a path to freedom.

Or we'll try at least.

Now this constellation work,

It was a method developed by a German psychotherapist,

Bert Hellinger,

That reveals the hidden dynamics in family systems.

In my years of working with constellations,

I have explored that your pattern of choosing unavailable people may not be random,

It's systemic,

It's meaningful and it can also be transformed.

So maybe find a comfortable position to sit,

Lie down or to receive and just give yourself the gift of time and attention.

Now let's begin by grounding yourself in the present moment.

If it feels comfortable,

You can close your eyes or you can keep them open.

There's no right or wrong way to do this.

Just feel the surface beneath you now.

The chair,

The cushion,

The floor.

Notice the weight of your body being held.

Bring your awareness to your breath.

Don't try to change it,

Just notice it.

The inhale,

The exhale,

The natural rhythm of your breathing.

Now place your hand on your heart.

And feel the warmth of your hand against your chest.

This simple gesture tells your system that you are here for yourself and you're witnessing yourself with compassion.

Now take a deep breath in and release it with a sigh.

Let your jaw soften and let your shoulders drop.

Now that you're here,

Now that you're present,

We can begin.

So let me teach you something fundamental from this work.

Your psyche doesn't choose partners and friends randomly.

There is a deep intelligence in your unconscious that draws you towards specific types of people.

But this intelligence isn't trying to make you happy.

It's trying to heal from something.

It's trying to complete something.

It's trying to solve something from your family system.

Bert Hellinger discovered that we are all part of what he called the family soul.

An invisible field that connects all members of a family across time.

And this field has its own needs,

Its own unfinished business.

And when there's unresolved pain or exclusion in the family soul,

Someone in a later generation,

Maybe you,

Will unconsciously try to heal or represent it.

So when you keep choosing emotionally unavailable people,

You're not being foolish or self-sabotaging.

You're actually following a hidden loyalty to someone in your family system.

Your psyche is saying,

This pattern feels like home.

This pattern feels like love.

This is what I know.

And the question we need to answer today is,

Whose pattern are you repeating?

Whose unavailability are you recreating?

And why?

I'll inquire,

Whose pattern am I repeating?

Whose unavailability am I recreating?

And why?

Now understand this,

In family constellation work,

We have found that the pattern of choosing unavailable people typically comes from three main sources in your family system.

And let me explain each one,

Just see what resonates with you.

So the first source is your relationship with your mother,

Or your primary maternal figure.

This creates your core template for receiving.

It shapes how you allow love to come to you,

How you open or close connections,

And how you feel worthy or unworthy.

If your mother experienced emotional unavailability in her own life,

Perhaps her father was distant,

Perhaps her partner was absent,

Perhaps she was alone,

You may have unconsciously absorbed that pattern.

Out of deep love and loyalty,

You might be saying to her through your choices,

Dear mother,

I see that you couldn't have the love you deserved.

I won't have it either.

I'll stay with you in this.

Dear mother,

I see you couldn't have the love that you deserved.

I won't have it either.

I'll stay with you in this.

Now this is what we call an entanglement in constellation work.

You became entangled with her fate,

With her destiny.

Living out her unresolved longing,

Her unmet needs.

Your psyche believes that if you let yourself receive fully available love,

You'd be betraying her and you're leaving her alone in your pain.

You're just letting these words settle.

Then the second source is your relationship with your father or your primary paternal figure.

This creates your template for what to expect from others in terms of presence,

Consistency and emotional availability.

So if your father was emotionally unavailable,

Whether he was physically absent,

Emotionally shut down or simply unable to meet you,

This becomes your unconscious norm.

Your system learned.

This is what relationships look like.

People I love are always out of reach.

I have to work hard for scrapes of attention.

I'm always waiting,

Always hoping and always disappointed.

And here is the heartbreaking truth.

You keep choosing unavailable people because you're still trying to win your father's love.

Every unavailable friend or partner becomes a stand in for him.

And you think,

Maybe if I try hard enough,

Maybe if I prove myself worthy enough,

Maybe if I'm patient enough,

They'll finally see me.

They'll choose me.

You're replaying the original wound,

Hoping this time it will end differently.

Fascinating.

Then the third source,

Sometimes the pattern goes back further.

It may not be connected to your mother or your father,

But it goes back even further.

To grandparents,

Great-grandparents or even earlier ancestors.

Perhaps your grandmother lost her husband in war.

Perhaps your great-grandfather was abandoned as a child.

Perhaps there's a history of broken bonds,

Premature deaths or forced separations in your lineage.

In constellation work,

We see and acknowledge how unresolved grief and loss create interrupted movements towards connection.

The family soul holds this unfinished reaching.

The family soul holds this longing that never got fulfilled.

And someone in a later generation,

Often you,

Unconsciously carries this reaching forward.

So you keep choosing people you can't quite have,

People who won't quite stay because you're living out of an ancestral wound,

An ancestral story that couldn't be completed.

So these three sources often overlap.

You might be carrying patterns from all three of them and that's okay.

We're simply going to bring them to light today.

Now,

I want you to bring to mind your pattern.

Think about emotionally unavailable people that you may have chosen in your own life.

Whether it's romantic partners,

Whether it's close friends or both.

Don't judge yourself,

Just notice.

What does emotional unavailability look like in your relationships?

And let me name some of the forms that it takes.

The person who's interested in you and then pulls away,

Hot and cold.

You never know where you stand in their lives.

Then the person who's always busy,

Who can't make time for you,

Who cancels plans and who keeps you waiting.

Then there is the person committed to someone else,

Emotionally,

Physically or both.

So you're always the second choice,

The dark secret and the option.

Then the person who shares your worries,

Or your time but won't share their heart,

Emotionally shut down,

Defended or walled off.

Then there's the person who takes and takes but can't really give back.

And you're always the one supporting,

Understanding and accommodating.

Then there's the person who's physically present but emotionally absent,

Looking at their phone,

Distracted,

Never really with you.

Then there's the person who disappears when you need them the most.

They are there for fun but gone when things get real.

Which of these feelings are familiar to you?

Maybe all of them?

Maybe you've experienced different forms with different people at different times in your life.

Just notice.

Now I want you to notice something important.

How does it feel in your body when you think about this pattern or these people?

In your body,

Where do you feel it?

Maybe there's a tightness in your chest,

That familiar ache for longing.

Maybe there is a knot in your stomach,

Anxiety and uncertainty.

Maybe there's a heaviness in your throat,

Words that you can't say,

Needs that you can't express.

Maybe there's a collapsed feeling in your whole body which is exhaustion from trying so hard.

Just notice where this pattern lives in you.

Place your hand there if you'd like and acknowledge it.

This is where I hold this pattern.

This is where I carry this pain.

This is where I hold this pattern.

This is where I carry this pain.

Now before we go any deeper into constellation work,

We need to acknowledge what this pattern has cost you.

Not to shame you,

Not to make you feel bad,

But because naming the truth sometimes creates space for change.

So I'm going to ask you some questions and I want you to answer them honestly,

Even if it hurts.

Has this pattern cost you years of your life?

Years that you spent waiting,

Hoping,

And trying to make it right?

Make unavailable people choose you.

Has it cost you your sense of worth?

Making you feel like you're not enough?

Like you have to earn love like you don't deserve better?

Has it cost you other relationships?

Available people who wanted to love you but you couldn't see them because you were fixated on someone unavailable?

Has it cost you your joy?

The ability to relax,

To trust,

And to feel safe in connection?

Has it cost you your energy?

Depleted by the constant effort of trying to bridge the gap trying to make it work and trying to get them to see you?

Just take a breath.

Your pain is real and it's not your fault.

You've been following an unconscious script written long before you were born.

And today we are going to rewrite that script.

We are going to find the source of this pattern in your family system and we are going to give it back.

We are now going to enter what is called the knowing field.

The invisible space where the truth of your family system can reveal itself.

We are going to use visualization but it's more of an imagination.

You are accessing a real field of information that exists beyond your conscious awareness.

And remember,

You don't have to visualize perfectly.

You don't have to see anything.

Simply listening to the words with an intention is enough.

Just be open to what shows up for you.

Take a deep breath with me now and I want you to feel yourself settling now even more deeply into the present moment.

And now in your mind's eye imagine that you're in a large open space.

It might be indoors.

It might be outdoors.

Trust whatever you feel.

Whatever comes.

And you're standing in this space.

Feel your feet on the ground.

You're here as the observer.

The witness to your own family system.

You're not caught in it right now.

You're just seeing it from the outside.

It's a place of clarity.

Now I'm going to invite your parents into this space.

Not as they are today necessarily but as they were when you were young.

When your templates for relationships were being formed.

See,

Sense or feel your mother appear in this space.

She's standing somewhere in front of you.

Notice where she stands.

Notice how she stands.

And notice what you feel as you see her.

Then see your father appear.

He's also standing somewhere in this space.

Notice where he stands.

Notice the distance between him and your mother.

Notice the distance between you and your mother.

Notice how he holds himself.

And notice what you feel as you see him.

Just observe both of them.

Don't change anything yet.

Just see them as they are.

Are they facing each other or facing away?

Are they close together or far apart?

Does one seem present and the other absent?

What's the energy between them?

Whatever you're being guided to right now.

A memory,

An image,

A vision,

Feeling in your body,

A knowing.

That may be the original template for relationship that was imprinted in your system.

This is the map you've been working on.

Following unconsciously in all your relationships without any conscious awareness whatsoever.

Now I'm going to ask you to notice something very specific.

In this space,

Look at your parents' relationship.

Look at how they are with each other and then ask yourself.

Was one of them unavailable to the other?

Was your father emotionally absent?

Was your mother closed off from your father?

Was there a reaching from one and a withdrawal from the other?

Do you see it?

The pattern you keep repeating over and over again?

Repeating it's right here in their relationship.

Do you see it?

You're not creating this pattern.

You are inheriting it.

You're living it out because it's what you know.

It's what you saw.

It's what your system learnt was normal.

I also want you to notice.

Which parent are you identified with in this dynamic?

Are you like the one who reaches out and doesn't receive?

Are you like the one who longs and waits?

Or you're caught between both of them?

Trying to bridge their separation through your own relationships.

Now sometimes the pattern goes further back.

So let's have a look.

Behind your mother.

Invite her mother.

Your maternal grandmother to appear.

And just sense her presence too.

And notice.

Was she also abandoned?

Alone?

Or with her?

Or in a relationship with somebody unavailable?

Behind your father.

Invite his father.

Your paternal grandfather.

Sense his presence now.

Was he absent?

Was he unable to be present?

Did he leave literally or emotionally?

And sometimes when we sit in a space like this.

You might see more people.

You might see a lineage of unavailability stretching back through generations.

War separated couples.

Immigration separated couples.

Economic hardship drove men away.

Illness,

Death,

Depression,

Addiction.

All creating patterns of absence and unavailability that repeat.

Ripple forward through time.

This is what you've been carrying.

This is the hidden loyalty.

You've been saying all this time to your family system.

I'll remember.

I'll hold this pattern.

I won't be different from you.

I'll stay loyal by repeating what you experienced.

See what this activates in your body.

I'll stay loyal by repeating what you experienced.

Now comes the transformative part of this work.

And this is what Hellinger called the healing sentences or resolution sentences.

They are very simple statements that reorder the family system.

That return what belongs to whom and that free your unconscious from entanglements.

We are going to speak directly to your parents.

You can simply receive my words.

Say these words silently or out loud.

What matters is your intention and that you let them land in your heart.

First,

We are going to acknowledge what you saw,

What you witnessed,

What you absorbed.

And then we are going to give it back.

Now,

Looking at both your mother and father,

I'm going to say the resolution statements now.

Dear mother,

Dear father.

I see what happened between you.

I see the distance.

I see the unavailability.

I see that you couldn't fully meet each other.

Couldn't fully be present to each other.

I see your pain.

I see your longing.

I see what you couldn't have.

Dear mother,

Dear father.

I see what happened between you.

I see the distance.

I see the unavailability.

I see that you couldn't fully meet each other.

Couldn't fully be present to each other.

I see your pain.

I see your longing.

I see what you couldn't have.

Notice what happens in your body as you receive these words.

Anger,

Sadness,

Compassion.

Whatever arises is welcome.

Just stay with it.

Now we are going to speak the most important sentence.

The one that breaks the unconscious loyalty.

Take a breath with me first.

Feel your feet on the ground.

And now say or receive.

But what happened between you is between you.

It's not my story.

It's not my fate.

I've been trying to heal your relationship through my relationships.

I've been choosing unavailable people because I thought that's what love looks like.

But I can see now.

That was your experience and not mine.

This might feel scary to you.

Your system might want to pull back.

No,

I can't separate from them.

But stay with me.

You're not rejecting anybody here.

You're not rejecting your parents.

You're simply claiming your own life back.

So when you're ready,

Continue.

I give this pattern back to you with love.

It's yours.

I honor that it's yours.

And I release it from my life now.

I am free to have something different.

I am free to choose people who can meet me,

Who can be present,

Who can love me back.

My life is my life.

Your life is your life.

My life is my life.

Your life is your life.

My life is my life.

Your life.

Is your life.

Is your life.

Breathing.

Feel what's moving through you.

This is profound work that you're doing.

You're unwinding something that's been with you for generations.

Breathing.

And just feel what's moving through you.

Now we need to complete the constellation by honoring your parents,

While also honoring yourself.

And this is the delicate balance.

We don't reject or balance or blame them.

But we also don't carry what's theirs.

Speaking to your mother first.

Receiving my words or repeating my words.

Meeting them.

Dear mother,

You are my mother and I am your child.

I honor you.

I honor your life,

Exactly as it was.

And I take from you what you can give me.

Life,

Breath in my body,

And my very existence.

And this is enough.

This is more than enough.

And I leave with you what is yours.

Your relationship struggles.

Your unmet longings.

Your unavailability.

I don't need to carry this to stay connected to you.

I can love you and live differently.

Feel these words in your whole system now.

I can love you and live differently.

Bringing in the energy of your father as well.

Repeating or receiving once again.

Dear father,

You are my father and I am your child.

I honor you.

I honor your life,

Exactly as it was.

Whatever your struggles.

Whatever your limitations.

Whatever kept you from being fully present.

I see them and I leave them with you.

I take from you what you can give me.

Your strength,

Your lineage,

And your place in this family.

And I release what is in mind to carry.

I can honor you,

Dear father,

And choose differently for myself.

I can honor you and choose differently for myself.

As you breathe now,

Something is moving out of you.

Something is shifting out of you.

Something is going back to where it belongs.

Whichever way it's being shown to you.

Place both your hands on your heart now for me.

And receive.

I am free to choose differently.

I am free to choose people who can truly see me.

Who can truly be present and who can truly meet me.

I am worthy of reciprocal love.

In romance,

In friendships,

And in relationships.

I don't have to prove myself.

I don't have to prove myself.

I don't have to earn connection.

I don't have to wait and hope and try to make unavailable people choose me.

I am enough exactly as I am.

And I now choose people who know that.

Feel the power of these words.

Feel them reshaping something deep in your system.

Your new template and your new possibility.

Now,

To complete this constellation,

I want you to bow to your parents in your visualization.

Just bow your head down to them.

They are not gone.

They are just at the right distance now.

And you now know you can love them without being entangled by them.

If there's anybody else present there,

An ancestor or a grandparent,

Or a grandparent,

Bow to them too.

All of them now give you their blessing to live your own life.

Make your own choices.

And to have the love that they couldn't have.

And as you breathe now,

Three,

Two,

One,

Everybody is leaving this space.

It's just you.

It's just you now.

Standing tall,

Standing free,

Your feet solid on the ground,

Your heart is open.

Your eyes are clear and you're not carrying the patterns anymore.

One deep breath again.

Thank you family members for showing up.

Thank you field for the ceiling.

And thank my own body's wisdom for guiding me.

Now,

Let me be honest with you about what to expect after this work.

The shift is real.

Something fundamental has changed in your system.

But it doesn't mean that the pattern will disappear and your life will immediately transform tomorrow.

What you've done today is plant a seed.

You've weakened the old pattern and created a new possibility.

But old patterns have momentum.

They are wired in your neural pathways.

So in the coming days and weeks,

You might notice the pattern trying to reassert itself.

You might find yourself drawn to something or someone unavailable.

Well,

This is just your system testing whether the new way is truly safe.

In those moments,

Remember today.

Remember what you saw about your family system.

I am free to choose differently.

This is the old pattern.

I don't have to follow it anymore.

And then make a different choice.

Even a tiny one.

Say no to someone who doesn't respect your time.

Walk away from a conversation.

Notice someone who is available and let yourself be seen by them.

And that can be you.

So every small choice strengthens this new pattern.

And of course,

You can always go back to this recording,

To this meditation and explore this again.

Now we are coming to the end of this journey together.

And let me leave you with some final reflections.

What you're experiencing,

This pattern of choosing unavailable people.

It's not a character flaw.

It's not proof that you're unlovable or damaged or broken.

It's a hidden loyalty your family system was carrying.

And this may have been your unconscious way of staying connected to them,

To your parents,

Your ancestors and your lineage.

Here is the beautiful truth.

You can honour your family without repeating their pain.

You can love your parents without living their limitations.

In fact,

When you break this pattern,

You're doing something sacred.

You're saying to the family soul,

The cycle ends here.

Whatever you brought in today,

Shift it today,

Trust it,

Honour it,

Return to it when you need to.

And just watch your life now as it begins to reflect this new truth in divine timing.

Once again,

I am free.

I choose people who can truly meet me and I'm worthy of reciprocal love.

And I walk forward in this truth now.

So thank you very much for trusting me to guide you today.

Thank you for your courage,

Your openness and your willingness to explore.

Until next time.

Namaste.