Solid signs they aren’t attracted to you
Chasing someone who can’t seem to love you back? They’re not attracted to you and these are the signs to look out for.
by: E.B. Johnson
Have you fallen for someone that you just can’t seem to nail down? Sometimes, there’s a bigger message in the chase. If you’re always pursuing someone who never slows down, you may be dealing with someone who isn’t really attracted to you. Take a step back and look at the signs all around you. Are you wasting your time on something that will never work? When they aren’t attracted to you, give yourself a brutal dose of radical honesty.
Signs they aren’t attracted to you.
Is your new love interest really that into you? Or are you playing yourself again? When someone is really feeling us, it’s obvious. When they’re not on the same wavelength — the same is true. It’s up to us to be honest with ourselves. Are they really trying to get to know us? Do they want to spend time with us? Get closer to us? Being honest is the only way to avoid total heartbreak.
Zero physical touch
Does your love interest show a lot of physical interest in you? Do they go out of the way to be near you? Do they touch your hand, try to give you huge? Physical touch is a good early sign of attraction. We like to get close to the people we want to get close to. If they never go out of the way to touch you or get closer to you on a physical level — you may want to look more seriously at the attraction level.
A distant demeanor
When the other person is distant from us, it’s a pretty good sign that they’re not as interested as we are. It’s not really common to pull away from the people you’re intensely attracted to. Does your new loved one stay emotionally (or even physically) distant from you? What happens when you talk intimacy or put yourself out there with them? Do they go cold when you get flirtatious? If they initiate no flirtation or bonding on their own, look out.
Platonic conversation
Platonic conversation is always the starting point of a new relationship. At some point, though, it has to graduate. We can’t stay in that neutral place forever. When we’re really attracted to one another, we have to show it. For some, that’s with flirtation. With others, it’s simply opening up and getting to know more about one another. Does your love interest keep it neutral? Or do they flirt? Do you talk about serious things? Or is it totally casual?
No sexual chemistry
Like it or not, sexual chemistry is a big part of the equation (and one of the core fuels to physical attraction). If you’ve fallen for someone who can’t even talk to you openly about sex, then you may want to look at things a second time. As humans, sexual chemistry is very important to most of us. When our relationships progress, this becomes a part of it. Do they fail to ever make a move? Do they refuse to talk about sex or their sexual needs? Keep moving.
Limiting time together
There’s this almost irresistible draw that is created when two people are attracted to one another. As that connection becomes stronger, they are drawn closer and closer together — like magnets. We have to be careful with this energy, as it can often force us to become toxically attached. What about you and your new lover? Do you feel this draw from them too? Do they ever try to get you on your own? If they aren’t interested in spending one-on-one time with you, it’s a red flag.
Total avoidance
Is your love interest avoiding you? Maybe you opened up to them and told them how you feel. Perhaps it’s just become obvious from the way you behave around them. What happened when all the cards were laid out on the table? Did they have an honest conversation with you? Or did they run the other way? If they’ve started avoiding you altogether, then this behavior is ghosting. People only ghost those they aren’t interested in pursuing things with.
They’ve told you so
Believe it or not, the most common sign that they aren’t interest in you is when they tell you they aren’t into. This isn’t a challenge. It’s not a race flag that signals that start of some great chase. When someone says they’re not interested in you — you respect that and move on. Leave them alone. If they have told you that they aren’t attracted to you, then they aren’t attracted to you. That’s not a choice for you to change or make for them.
What you need to do next.
If you’ve just realized that it will never happen with that special someone, then take heart. There are steps you can take to repair your heart and move on. You’ve got to face what happened, though, and admit the hard truth that no one wants to hear: They aren’t attracted to you, so you have to pick up the pieces and move on.
1. Accept reality for what it is
There’s no moving forward until you accept the reality of your situation. You’re attracted to someone who isn’t attracted to you. They don’t want to be with you, and that won’t change. For you to keep pursuing them is disrespectful, both to yourself and to them. You deserve to be loved by someone who actually wants to get to know you. They deserve the same. When you accept that reality, you can stop selling yourself short in life and love.
Accept reality for what it is. Stop trying to force something that will never happen. They don’t have to love you back. They are not required to return your affection or any of your attentions. Accept that, and accept that a relationship with them will never fully be what you may what it to be.
We all need and want different things from our intimate relationships. While you may think they are everything you could ever want, the same may not be said of the other person. They may want and need entirely different things. They may not be interested in an intimate relationship at all. Even if you’re the best of friends, accept it when there’s no romantic interest. Some relationships never cross that line, and that’s okay. We need friends around us even more than we need lovers.
2. Let yourself grieve and detach
Sure, you might have been pining over this person for a long time, but that doesn’t really change anything. It means you have to allow yourself extra time to process, though, and within that process you have to consider your grief. We grieve a lot of different things. If you were crazy about this person for a while, then you may have built up a lot of big ideas and dreams in your head. For you to truly detach, let those things go.
Even if your romantic notions were only short-lived, it’s still important to let yourself grieve a little — alone. We don’t just grieve death. As humans, we can actually grieve through all kinds of disappointments. By losing hope of building something with this person, you’ve lost the idea of what you wanted, not being real and lost to you.
Let yourself feel that disappointment. Don’t brush it off and don’t pretend it doesn’t matter. It does. It’s okay to have your feelings hurt, and it’s likewise okay to take a step back and process those feelings. You don’t need to let anyone else in on this process. Grief what will never happen so that you can detach yourself and move on. If you hold on to that grief, you’ll be forever stuck in a loop of fruitless hope that will leave you shattered and unable to make sense of what’s real.
3. Create intentional space
Listen, the more you hang out around someone who isn’t attracted to you, the worse you’re going to make things for yourself. You need time to process your emotions, but you also need the freedom to do that. You’re not free to move on if that other person is always in your space, drawing you back in to a hopeless attraction that’s only making you feel worse. Once it’s clear where the line is, create intentional space and get away from them for a little while.
Create intentional space between you and the person who cannot love you back. Give them a wide berth until you’re totally detached from the idea of being with them. Once your end of the attraction has calmed, you can welcome yourself back into the circle (or not). Take it one day at a time.
If your friends invite you out and you know that person is going to be there — take a rain check. It’s not forever, it’s just for right now. Open up to a few of your close (and trustworthy) friends. Let them know what’s going on and enlist their help in making sure you keep your space until things have cooled down. By giving yourself a wide space, you’re allowing yourself to detach even further from someone you have no genuine right to attach you.
4. Distract yourself with passion
Passion can be one of the most powerful tools we have in letting go of a crush or loved one that doesn’t return our feelings. You see, passion doesn’t come only in the form of romantic love. We can also be passionate about our work, our interests, and even our friend and family connections. Instead of putting all the pressure on this one person to like you, turn to your other passions and allow them to fill you up instead.
Distract yourself from the pain and confusion by re-channeling all that passion into new experiences and new relationships. Get into new interest groups. Take a pottery class. Try out that hobby or collection that you’ve been dying to get into. These things help us channel our passion and connect with our joy — outside of a relationship.
The sooner you fill your life up with other things (and people) you love, the sooner you will move past this brief hangup in the love department. Distracting ourselves with our passions and interests can be one of the best ways to move on from disappointment, and rediscover additional aspects of self. There’s no end to the joys you could find around you, nor the potential partners that could present themselves once you allow yourself to move on.
5. Reconsider your standards
Is this a repeating pattern for you? Do you seem to gravitate always toward people who aren’t able to return your attraction or love? There’s a reason we reach for unavailable people, and it usually has a lot to do with our upbringing and our sense of self-esteem. If you keep running into these types of relationship walls again-and-again, now is a really excellent opportunity to discover why (and solve it).
Reconsider your standards and question them. What caused you to chase someone who didn’t want to be chased? Why were you attracted to someone who was mentally, physically, or emotionally unavailable? Falling for the wrong person isn’t always a mistake. Sometimes, it’s by design.
Make sure you get to the root of any issues that may lead to the problem repeating in the future. Was this a onetime mistake? Or is there a bigger pattern that you’re not quite seeing? Get a solid hold on your standards. What means the most to you? What caliber of partner are you really willing to settle with? When you reconsider the standards that you have, the entire world changes. You’ll see love in new ways that transform the quality of relationships you build.
Putting it all together…
Although we like to think that everyone we love will love us back, that isn’t the case. Some people simply don’t see us the way we see them, and that goes double for romantic attraction. Even if you’re the best of friends, it’s not always possible for two people to become attracted to one another at the same time. The sooner you accept they aren’t attracted to you, the sooner you can move on to find someone who is.
Accept your reality for what it is and accept the fact that they just aren’t attracted to you. Once you’ve accepted this, you can process your emotions and allow yourself to detach. Create intentional space you can heal in. You can’t move on if you’re constantly bombarded by the other person’s magnetic (to you) presence. As you create more space, fill that space up with passions. Romantic love is not the end-all and be-all. Divert your hurt into more productive pastimes and rediscover yourself. Keep falling into these one-sided relationships again-and-again? Question the patterns and where they come from so that you can build happier partnerships in the future.
- Luo, S., & Zhang, G. (2009). What Leads to Romantic Attraction: Similarity, Reciprocity, Security, or Beauty? Evidence From a Speed-Dating Study. Journal Of Personality, 77(4), 933–964. doi: 10.1111/j.1467–6494.2009.00570.x
