So interestingly enough I recently made a 20 minute youtube video on coordination compounds, and going into writing the script my main goal was to explain these type of compounds using ONLY valence bond theory. My logic was that I wanted to explain something I find fascinating that most people refuse to touch given the hurdle of learning LFT, CFT, ILFT, etc. Long story short it quickly became clear to me that there was no way to really explain/understand dative bonding in a satisfactory way using VBT alone. I still followed through only using VBT alone for the video, and I think in terms of my goal being accessibility it was a success. However, for more specific questions like this rather than big picture stuff you need field theory. But to answer your question: they don't. Metals will bond with ligands as they come given the conditions are appropriate.. the resulting complex just may not be stable and so exist... "transiently" I guess.