When "Almost Unavailable" Becomes Something More

In part 1 of this series, we looked at why "almost unavailable" people are so captivating — how someone who stays just out of reach can come to carry our idealised projections, and how the Zeigarnik effect, uncertain reward prediction, and Lacan's idea of symbolic representation all help keep that possibility open rather than closed.

So is this kind of unresolved longing just an illusion destined to fade, or can it be something more—a psychologically meaningful space in its own right?

British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott offered a concept that helps make sense of this unresolved pull: potential space. He argued that people don't only live in fantasy or in reality; between the two lies a creative space. This is where children play, where art happens, and where we can lose ourselves completely while reading a novel or watching a film.

In this space, we know something hasn't happened yet, but we allow ourselves to imagine that it might; we know the story may never reach an ending, yet we're still willing to let it go on existing.

The "almost unavailable" figures may be the ones most able to keep a relationship suspended in this potential space. Because the relationship never truly enters reality, the fantasy doesn't need to face reality's test right away. We keep imagining, keep projecting, keep giving the relationship new meaning. What truly brings us joy, sometimes, isn't the everyday life that follows getting what we want, but a future that still holds infinite possibility.

This has made me rethink my own past writing on fantasy.

Over the years, I've mostly discussed how fantasy sustains psychological pathology. When someone keeps using fantasy to escape reality, letting reality give way to the imagined self that will never come true, fantasy can indeed become a defense — one that keeps a person trapped in pain, unable to keep growing.

But while writing this piece, I've felt that this is only one side of fantasy.

For a long time, we've tended to treat fantasy as the opposite of reality, as if a mature person should become steadily more "grounded," with less and less room for fantasy.

But perhaps a truly mature person isn't someone without fantasy, but someone who can let fantasy stay in its place as fantasy, while still allowing it to nourish reality.

A high-schooler preparing for medical school might fantasise about the day they'll wear a white coat. A young researcher might imagine standing on stage at an international conference one day. A student just starting university might, because they admire a teaching assistant, begin to think about who they want to become in the future.

These fantasies aren't a way of fleeing reality. On the contrary, they offer a temporary psychological space that lets us keep trying on different versions of ourselves, gradually growing toward the self we haven't yet become.

And so, fantasy is not the opposite of reality. When fantasy stays connected to reality, it can become a driving force for reality's own development. A student might stay more engaged in class because they admire a teaching assistant. A young researcher might push harder in a particular direction because they imagine themselves as a rising star in the field.

Fantasy hasn't taken them away from reality. On the contrary, it has given reality a direction.

So maturity isn't necessarily giving up fantasy but learning to live alongside it in peace.

Of course, real-world boundaries must be respected. A professional ethic exists between teaching assistants and students, and it should never develop into an actual intimate relationship. But fantasy itself doesn't necessarily need to be extinguished. A student can study harder because they admire a teaching assistant; can rethink their own future because they want to become someone like him; can, through a relationship that never truly began, experience for the first time what it feels like to genuinely admire someone, to idealise them, to feel that flutter of the heart.

Desire can exist. So can boundaries. Fantasy doesn't need to be eliminated, or realised, in order to help a person grow.

British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion was preoccupied with one question: Can a person bear "not knowing"?

When we like someone, we always want an answer as fast as possible: "Does he actually like me?" "Do we have a chance?" "Should I tell him now?" So we rush to define the relationship, rush to find an answer, rush to end this uncomfortable uncertainty.

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But Bion, borrowing the poet John Keats's idea of negative capability, points us toward another possibility: Maturity isn't about arriving at an answer right away. It's the capacity to let a question go unanswered for a while — to keep thinking, keep feeling, inside that uncertainty, instead of rushing to turn everything into something fixed and certain.

Looking back at those "almost unavailable" people, perhaps what truly draws us to them isn't only who they are, but the fact that they keep a question permanently open: "If we had met at a different stage of our lives, would the ending have been different?" "If I had said it out loud back then, what would have happened?" "If we hadn't been teacher and student, or colleagues, or two people who simply arrived in each other's lives a little too late — would the story have turned out completely differently?"

These questions may never have answers. But it's exactly because of that, that they keep pushing us to think about what we truly want, and who we hope to become.

Psychology theories explain why this kind of relationship so easily seizes our attention. Lacan explains why it can carry such rich desire. Winnicott reminds us that fantasy isn't only an escape from reality; it can also become a space for personal development. And Bion, in turn, tells us that what truly matters may not be knowing the answer as quickly as possible, but allowing a question to remain open for a while.

These aren't competing theories. They describe the same relationship structure.

Perhaps what truly draws us to "almost unavailable" people was never the promise that it would become love. It's that it keeps the future open.

And within that possibility that hasn't yet been closed off, we slowly discover who we truly want to become.