93: Chemistry is Not Commitment - Why Emotionally Unavailable Men Keep You Hooked

You keep telling yourself the chemistry means something.

Because he CAN communicate.
He CAN be emotionally present.
He CAN show depth.
He CAN create connection.

But one good conversation does not erase a repeated pattern of inconsistency.

In Part 1 of the Standards With a Backbone series, Darla Ridilla breaks down why emotionally unavailable men stay emotionally relevant to women for far too long:
intermittent connection, false hope, emotional intensity, and confusing chemistry with commitment.

This episode will challenge the fantasy women are taught to trust:
that chemistry is the truth teller.

Because chemistry is a feeling.
Commitment is behavior over time.

And standards with a backbone means you stop evaluating isolated moments…
and start evaluating patterns.

If you’re exhausted from:
• overthinking him
• waiting for consistency
• explaining away withdrawal
• getting hooked by emotional breadcrumbs
• mistaking relief for safety

this episode is going to hit hard.

Because emotionally unavailable men aren’t confusing.

The pattern is.

And once you see the pattern clearly, you stop getting pulled back in by isolated moments of connection.

You start trusting patterns over promises.
 Behavior over chemistry.
 Reality over fantasy.

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Transcript

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Chemistry is a false flag. Chemistry is a feeling, but commitment is based on behavior and their patterns over time, not that initial spark. Chemistry tells you how to feel in the moment, but commitment reveals through time what his true behavior really is. Welcome to You Have the Power, The Road to Truth Freedom and Real Connection. This podcast is for women who are done asking why emotionally unavailable men keep showing up and are finally ready to change the way they relate. The chemistry is always there, the potential looks promising, but the consistency, death, and emotional presence just never fully arrive. It's about recognizing. Here we work through the magnetic connection pathway. Agency empowerment. Because emotionally unavailable men aren't the problem. They're the feedback. And when you stop managing relationships that require you to disappear, emotionally willing men are magnetized to you. Let's begin. One of the biggest reasons that women stay connected to men who are emotionally unavailable is because they have seen glimpses of what he's capable of. He can communicate, he can be thoughtful, he can be emotionally present. But that doesn't mean that he consistently will. Capability is not commitment. And having standards with a backbone means that you're going to stop evaluating the isolated moments and you're going to start evaluating his overall patterns. Welcome to part one of a new series on standards with a backbone. This episode is for that woman who's done confusing chemistry with connection and compatibility and is ready to start evaluating behavior instead of his potential. Many women assume that they got involved with an emotionally unavailable man simply because they ignored the red flags. But there's more to it than that. They use chemistry to explain away his inconsistency. And they do this because in the past they have seen evidence of emotional capacity. Maybe once or twice, maybe every once in a while. And they say things to themselves like, but I know he's capable. I've seen him communicate with other people. I have seen him have moments of death. And then she stays emotionally attached to those glimpses or those moments of capacity. I have seen examples of this in my own life and even in my most recent marriage. My ex-husband actually could be very emotionally intelligent and connected in moments. His main career was that he dealt with dementia patients and did hospice care. You have to have a very high level of empathy to be able to do it. And I know he did it well because there was a couple of times that we ran into previous clients and they approached us and just talked about how he really helped them through some of the worst moments of their life. I saw that he could care and be there for me as well in moments. But the problem was he wasn't always there. And I'm not talking about perfection. I'm talking about in moments where I really needed him in other circumstances, like protecting me from his abusive father, standing up for me consistently with his family. He did at times and then didn't at other times. And while I think he wanted to grow and move past his own childhood experiences, the reality at the end of the marriage was he wasn't able to. And in that marriage, I did it. I used the evidence of those moments of capacity to say that there was evidence of willingness. And what I had to realize is that potential is not the basis of a relationship. I had been dating his potential, but I had not been dating or married his reality. I have seen so many women get caught up in the moment of a good conversation and think that that is going to mean a pattern and long-term capability of commitment and emotional availability. This happens because the chemistry she's feeling creates a false hope inside of her. But really, what that is, is just false certainty. And she gets relief when she sees those moments of stability, kind of like the slot machine that I've talked about before. You're putting in the quarters, the dollars, and you see the money going down. And all of a sudden, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. You know, you see your balance on your slot machine go up. And this is what happens in our relationships. We get that initial dopamine hit, and then they aren't consistent, and you're living on hope. And then all of a sudden they show a moment of emotional availability, and the balance goes up, but then it goes back down. And one of the things I had to remember in my own dating experiences is that one emotionally connected conversation does not erase a repeated pattern of inconsistency. And this was so important for me to realize because emotionally unavailable men, they often maintain attachments through that intermittent emotional connection. They are depending on that occasional dopamine hit to keep you so they don't lose you. But the reality of being a man who's emotionally unavailable is that we experience distance, confusion, withdrawal, inconsistency. And when that one conversation does happen and the dopamine hit returns, we get excited. Hope returns. We lower our standards a little bit. We don't want to scare them off, right? But then reality comes back again when he withdraws, when the confusion starts all over again. I saw evidence of this in the last relationship I was in. He had moments where he seemed very grounded and connected and showed up well after there was an issue. But they became fewer and far between. And what I started to see more frequently was his lack of ability to have those difficult conversations. There were a couple of times when I tried to talk to him about something very important to me, and he just sat in a chair and fell asleep while I was talking to him. It was very degrading, it was um really confusing because he seemed to display to me that he cared and that he wanted to show up for the relationship. But at the end of the day, he just wasn't capable. And it doesn't mean an emotionally unavailable man is a bad person. It just means they're just not the right person for you. And the day that I left, I realized I had to stop letting those isolated moments of connection or what seemed like emotional availability to erase the reality and what his repeated patterns were really saying about him. Because in those moments where he showed up briefly, I thought he was creating safety. But the truth was it was only just a moment of relief. The difference with an emotionally willing man, he may not show up well at times, but he's gonna come back to you and he's gonna be accountable for his behavior. I was listening to another podcast a few months ago, and I heard a really good example of what an emotionally willing man looks like. There was a man being interviewed that was born with no legs. And so while he could do some things and had done incredible things, he wasn't able to go hiking with his wife. And this was something that she really enjoyed. And he shared about how he suddenly decided that he was gonna learn how to hike with her. He took her favorite backpack and stowed it away and decided it was his backpack, he was going to use it. After a period of time, he realized something that was a passive aggressive behavior, and there was something deeper behind it. He was afraid that if she went hiking or backpacking alone, that she would meet another man who was capable of doing that, and she would leave him and go be with the other man. So subconsciously, he told himself if she doesn't have her favorite backpack, she won't go hiking without me. And when he realized this, he came to her and he admitted all of this to her. And his apology wasn't just I'm sorry, it was this is what I did, this is what was wrong about it, and this is what I'm not gonna do in the future. He let her have her backpack, he let her go hiking by herself, and he accepted that if she decides to go with somebody else, there's absolutely nothing he can do to prevent that. And it's not his place to try to control that situation as scary as it is. This is what an emotionally willing man looks like. He makes a mistake, but he owns up to it, and then he takes action in the future to not do it again. This story really demonstrates that emotionally willing men aren't perfect, but they're accountable. And as women, we also have to adjust our expectations about what an emotionally willing man looks like. Because he's not perfect, but he is responsive. We need to stop looking for that the night on the white horse and remember we want the man that's responsive. We want the man that's willing to repair ruptures, and we want the man who's willing to be accountable for his own behavior. Because the contrast is an emotionally unavailable man, and he's gonna deflect. If you're upset about something, he's gonna make it you as the problem. He's gonna avoid accountability, he's gonna disappear when you set a standard or a boundary. He's gonna blame you and minimize your needs. When we have standards at the backbone, we are actually observing what their behavior tells us versus what our feelings are telling us. Because chemistry is a feeling, but it's a false flag. Because commitment is based on behavior and their patterns over time, not that initial spark. Chemistry tells you how to feel in a moment, but commitment that reveals through time what his true behavior really is. When we set standards and boundaries, this is not about punishing him for his behavior. It's just about only being with men who are aligned with what we're looking for and what we want. And our standards create the ability for us to be in observation mode. I recently said I would never get on a dating app again, but I did about two or three weeks ago. I looked at it not as the main way to try to meet men, but I'm in a small town and I've been working a lot. And so I thought it might be a different avenue. Like if you're creating different streams of income for your, you know, your financial stability, I thought maybe this could be a different avenue of a way to meet men. It's interesting. I haven't been on a dating app for a couple of years. And um my perception of that is so different. And I'm definitely in observation mode. What I like about it is it's creating the filter. I recently responded to someone who wanted access immediately, that maybe someday, and then came back with a question about him. I wanted to learn about him, and he never responded again. And while in the past I would have chased, I would have reached out, I would have sent another message, or I would have thought it was something that I did, I scared him off. Now I'm like, maybe I did scare him off, but oh, that's a good thing. Because you don't get access to me in the first message. Let's find out a little bit about each other first in the app, meet in person over coffee or lunch. And maybe over time we can do an activity that's less in um in a public area. But I'm not gonna do something with a man that's not in a public setting from an online dating app when I know nothing about him. And a man that can't respect that a woman wants to maintain her safety is not a man I really want to go out with. And this was disappointing because his profile really aligned with what I was looking for. I had to remember that his profile was just words on a screen. It wasn't about who he was and what his emotional capacity really was either. And this goes back to that I stopped letting my emotional negotiations get in the way of the reality. And I let behavior determine what access he gets or he doesn't get. Because standards with a backbone, they stop you from making those excuses when you see the inconsistency. Access is earned through the behavior and the woman that you're becoming, she doesn't build relationships from potential, she builds them based on reality. And when we base our relationships on reality, we feel it in our body. We're not feeling that anxiety and confusion where our heart's racing, our mind is racing, and we're attached to the intensity we initially felt, we're grounded in I want to feel emotionally safe. And sometimes emotionally safe means I'm gonna be by myself for a while, or I'm not going to go out with him. And remember the glimpses of moments of what he could be that are not examples of what he is. I also think that the movie industry has really clouded our judgment when it comes to chemistry over reality. You have these crazy lines of you complete me, and the illusion of fantasy, of emotional intensity and chemistry and great sex means great connection, great commitment, and a bright future of a healthy relationship. That's not what it looks like. Chemistry is not the truth teller. Yes, it's intense, yes, it's magnetic, yes, it just feels really good. When those moments when, oh my gosh, I just can't stop thinking about him. This must mean he's the one. But what if he isn't? What if it feels like he is, but his behavior literally later shows you he isn't because no one's gonna complete you. The only person who can is you. You complete yourself, and when you present as a whole person on your own, you're gonna be less likely to want to buy into that lie that chemistry tells you. There isn't no when you know, you know. Love it first sight and all of that crap. Maybe you do feel very strong feelings for someone right away. Maybe you do feel a chemistry, but you still need to give it time to see if the patterns reveal something different. Because emotionally willing men, they don't create connection just when it's convenient for them. They stay engaged even when intimacy requires more of them. They repair the rupture and they come back to the conversation. They stay emotionally present, even when it's uncomfortable. Standards with a backbone means that you stop building relationships from chemistry alone and you start allowing behavior to determine who gets access to you. Because chemistry, oh, it's a strong pull and it could sure pull you in. But consistent behavior is going to tell you whether or not that connection is actually safe. And if this episode hits something deep within you, and you're realizing that for the longest time you've been holding on to potential instead of the reality, that you haven't been looking at the patterns and you've been depending on that chemistry, that feel, that spark, that dopamine hit to determine whether someone's right or wrong for you, but you're ready to do something different. You're ready to have standards with a backbone, and you're ready to look at the behavior patterns over time. If that's you, then I'm gonna invite you into a magnetic connections call. This is not a therapy session, it's simply a 30-minute free call where we're gonna talk about your patterns, where you have been buying into chemistry and what you need to do next to start buying into the reality and have standards with the backbone. It's just a call for someone who's done explaining away that inconsistency, who's ready to earn emotional safety, and who's ready to start choosing a connection. And she's gonna do it from clarity and not from chemistry. Because emotionally unavailable men, they are not your guy. And you don't have to keep repeating this same pattern. Next week, we're gonna go even deeper into this topic of standards with a backbone. Because once you stop confusing chemistry with commitments, and you start realizing how much access you've been giving, and it was before trust was even ever established. You need to know what changes do I need to make when I actually embody the standards with a backbone. This is the next step in the process. It's when the attention and the words are no longer earning access to you, when you're no longer using potential as your barometer, because you've learned that access is earned through behavior. I'll see you next week. Thank you so much for listening. You have the power. And now it's time to have some standards with a backbone and act like it. Thank you for listening to You Have the Power, the Road to Truth, Freedom, and Real Connection. If something landed while you were listening, pay attention to that. Emotionally unavailable men aren't a mystery to solve. They're information. They show you exactly where you've been waiting, minimizing, or tolerating what doesn't actually work for you. This podcast isn't here to teach you how to manage that dynamic better. It's here to help you stop participating in it. Clear standards and stay paper in yourself. Pattern paper.