The Pattern: If a guy is dating someone, married, or otherwise engaged, you’re intrigued. Or maybe you don’t deliberately seek out unavailable men, but find that all the guys you’re inexplicably drawn to are already taken. You start out thinking it’s just a fling so it’s fine that he’s in a committed relationship. After all, you’re not that great with intimacy yourself, so dating an unavailable guy gives you the space you knowingly or unknowingly need. But then you get attached. You think he’ll leave her. So you wait. And wait. And wait. Or perhaps the guy’s not in a relationship at all, but he’s emotionally unavailable. Guess what? Emotionally, this is just as devastating and destructive to you.

How To Break It: GET OUT NOW! Or even better, don’t get in to begin with. It’s masochistic to be involved with a guy who’s not truly available for a relationship with you, whether it’s because he has a girlfriend, a wife, or just issues. It will turn you into this person you don’t want to be—someone who stands by on the sidelines of life waiting for a man to get his shit together and leave another woman. Here’s how this situation works out: it doesn’t. Maybe it worked out well for one person, and the guy left his wife/girlfriend/issues, and they lived happily ever after. But for mere mortals, even in those rare instances when the man does leave his wife, all that happens is he transitions into the "emotionally unavailable" category, and it still won’t work out. If a man is newly separated or going through a divorce, chances are he’s unavailable. Wait until his shit is like, really together. Dating any kind of unavailable man is not fun. It’s not romantic. It’s torture. And you deserve better.