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Trying to build a relationship with an emotionally unavailable person can be an extremely draining and frustrating experience. Although there are many who attempt to tear down the walls in an effort to win the heart of their emotionally unavailable love interest, most fail and wind up with their hearts broken in the process. At times, the signs of a person struggling with these emotional issues can be pretty apparent. Other times, they can be masked and mistaken for something else. Are you unsure if the guy you’re seeing is emotionally unavailable? Check out these signs and hopefully you’ll be able to come to an accurate conclusion.

Women are emotional beings whereas men are logical and more objective.

This has always been the rationale behind the differences between men and women, particularly when it comes to maneuvering through this often convoluted terrain we call love and relationships.  I always thought that to be bulls**t. If anyone ever doubt the emotional proclivity of men, they must have never sat in the presence of men watching sports or read a story about a man brutally killing his ex in a fit of jealous rage.

However, this hasn’t stopped folks from believing that women are not able to sustain friends with benefits relationships the way that men do. The basis has always been that women focus on the friendship, men on the benefits. And while it may start out with a lustful tryst, it eventually turns into more because you, as a woman, are emotional and thus prone to falling in love.  That’s the general belief anyway.

Last night, I was watching Friends with Benefits, a film that came out last year starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis. In the movie, Kunis plays a young and outgoing woman, who was recently dumped and currently works as a corporate headhunter.  As part of her job, she secures a job for Timberlake’s character as a photo editor at GQ magazine, who too was recently dumped. Anyway, besides a working relationship, the two soon form a friendship where they party, play Wii and write ish all over each other’s faces when one passed out drunk.

One night they are sitting on the couch, watching some sappy Hollywood rom-com (so Meta) when Kunis’s character says: “God I miss sex. Sometimes you just need it; it’s like cracking your neck.” To which, Timberlake’s character agreed and offered this insight: “Two people should have sex like people play tennis. Two people play a game and shake hands and go with their s**t.”  Then Justin suggested that they should “play tennis” together. After swearing on a bible app on Kunis’ iPad, the two agreed to have unemotional, uncommitted sex while just being friends. Without spoiling the entire film, let’s just say that their arrangement doesn’t exactly end the same way it started.

But that’s Hollywood for you: they certainly know how to wrap things up in the most optimistic and simplistic packages. In real life though, no strings-attached sex is a little bit more complicated than it implies. I have heard plenty of horror stories from girlfriends and strangers alike about their own misgivings with no strings-attached sex. While sex does not always lead to intimacy, it can often form a feeling of it and can sometimes actually make it occur. And despite initially believing that they could handle the situation, eventually those emotions would kick in, which would cause their lover to either lose interest or distance themselves. Next comes months of frustration, disappointment and in some cases, personal blame for involving yourself in a sex with benefits arrangement.

I also know from my own personal experience in the past where I had fallen head over heels with a guy, whose relationship stopped at my respective bedroom. I remember it un-fondly: we met at a community festival where we both were volunteering for a local non-profit. After a day of flirting, by the end of the night, I was butt naked on my couch. We would see each other several times afterwards, both in purely platonic situations and in more intimate settings. However, after I had confessed to him that my feelings were stronger than what we did with the lights off, he began to alter his interactions with me.  Let’s just say that we didn’t end up like Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake.

This kind of confusion and drama is what normally happens when folks engage in relationships with people that they actually want to have something more real and sustainable with. They think that by making themselves available on their lover’s terms, their lover will one day see the light and realize that the person whom they were looking for was in their lives the whole time. But it rarely works out like that, now does it?

But on the other hand, while anyone can make themselves physically available, those who have had some past trauma from prior relationships and even from childhood or are simply are too busy for a relationship do not have the wherewithal to maintain or invest in a personal and more emotional relationship. And unfortunately, it is the person, who above all undeniable evidence holds out hopes that, their love – or in this case sex – will conquer all previous damage, who will ultimately bear the brunt of the damage.  I know this from once being the hoper and eventually becoming the emotionally unavailable party.

Yes, it is true that women too can be unemotionally unavailable, which means that they too are fully capable of entering into not only a no strings attached sexual relationship but purely platonic friendships with the opposite sex. While the desire to love and be loved by one person is a legitimate desire that many women have, for some women that ambition is not currently in the cards. As such, they are fully prepared to play the field or sex whoever they want to while they work on their internal issues – both free from guilt or commitment.

But generally speaking, those kind of arrangements rarely fair well for anyone.  For one, there are way too many risks including pregnancy and the threat of STDs. But even if you are the most protected person on the planet, there is no hiding from the fact that folks, regardless of gender, are naturally emotional beings. And eventually someone will end up investing feelings. And that’s when the real drama begins…

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Photograph: Melissa Mahoney

Staceyann Chin, spoken word artist and LGBT political activist, has penned a very provocative piece in the UK Guardian called, ‘Why Chasing Straight Women Still Thrills Me.” It lays out the many reasons why lesbian women, like Chin here, love the thrill of chasing and eventually bedding straight girls.

Chin writes: “Maybe it is the thrill of conversion – and that is only if any such crossover can be deemed a conversion. Who is to say such conquests were not sleeper-lesbians, just waiting for the right moment to awaken? I suppose, though, through the right lens, the process could be described as evangelical, this business of meeting, and courting and having a woman decide to jump the heterosexual ship to be with you (even if it is temporary). More often than not, the crossover is accompanied by confessions of, “I’ve never done this with anyone before.” Or, “I’m not into women, there’s just something about you that makes me want to try this.” Either way, you are the chosen one, the messiah, the mandate that pulls her, magnetic, toward her most hidden desires.”

After getting all Neo on us and declaring herself the “chosen one,” Chin then proceeds to run down the list of a sure fire way to have all the lesbian sex with straight woman as humanly possible. The trick, she writes, is to not take yourself, or the interaction, too seriously and to “be platonic first” like the caring buddy, who will listen and be the shoulder to cry on about all the messed up stuff  like how disrespectful or inconsiderate her boyfriend is being. And then when she is at her most vulnerable, swoop in for the kill.

Needless to say, this editorial has stoked all sorts of flames online. Some of the comments accuse Chin of being predatory, especially for viewing her potential straight love interest as conquest.  Some of the reaction questioned whether a narrative such as this would be acceptable if written by a man. And then there are others, who wonder if Chin’s candor is a bit irresponsible in that it perpetuates stereotypes about the aggressive lesbian preying on innocent women.

Personally, I don’t have anything against gay women sleeping with straight, or I like to think of them as bi-curious, women if both parties like the idea. That’s not to say that I necessarily like or agree with her methods, but I do believe that there is something here that we all could learn from – regardless of sexual orientation of the speaker.