10 Things People Don’t Realize You’re Doing Because You’re Guarding Your Heart

1. Pushing people away. Every time you let someone into your life you start to push them away because you have convinced yourself they’ll leave. You tell yourself everyone else has up until this point so what’s to say this will be any different? People can make promises that they’ll stick around but it doesn’t mean they mean it.

2. Becoming reserved. You think you need to impress this person so you become guarded and reserved. You want to act like you don’t have feelings, like you’re just the “cool girl” and you’re not emotional or vulnerable. You try to impress them at a surface level and you don’t go any deeper because you’re scared that will be a turn off. You try to play mysterious, even though you’re anything but.

3. Saying no when you really want to say yes. If someone asks you out your brain goes into overload. You forget about the right now and fast forward to marriage and kids for some bizarre reason. You completely over think the situation unintentionally, which ultimately leads you to making some excuse like you’re already seeing someone. You know you’re completely overreacting, you know it was just an invite to dinner but even if you thought about it you still decided not to pursue it because your brain ruins everything.

4. Convincing yourself you’re unlovable. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re unlovable, maybe it’s because you don’t love yourself fully so you don’t think anyone else can or maybe it’s just been so long you’ve forgotten what being loved feels like. You just decided that you’re unworthy of love, that people aren’t capable of loving you because you’re damaged or not your best self. You convince yourself that if people do love you it’s only a matter of time before they discover your flaws and leave.

5. Canceling dates. If for some wild reason you said yes to going out with someone you pray that they will cancel because as much as you want to go, you don’t want to go even more. And if they don’t cancel, you do the honors of telling them that you don’t feel good or that something came up because you’re really not in the mood to go out with someone new and try to learn about them.

6. Questioning your self-worth. Instead of feeling sexy and happy when someone asks you on a date you instantly start to criticize yourself harder. What if he thinks my thighs are too fat? Omg, my stomach is gross. My acne is embarrassing. What if she thinks I’m awkward? All the self-doubts come into play and all the courage and strength you’ve built up over the years just vanishes and you become completely vulnerable. It’s an awful feeling.

7. Shutting your heart off. You pretend you don’t care, that you’re just nonchalant about all of this because why would you go on a date with someone and like them? That just doesn’t make sense. So you pretend not to have feelings, to not say things that will make them run the other direction. You just don’t play into it and try to play hard to get.

8. Convincing yourself there is something wrong with them. Or you convince yourself there’s a bunch wrong with you and that this will never work out. Even if the perfect person was standing in front of you, you’d convince yourself that they’re too perfect and they must only be going out with you for sympathy. Or something else stupid.

9. Making excuses. You make excuses for why you can’t do things or why you don’t want to do things because you’re afraid of the position it will put you in. You make completely ridiculous excuses for why things won’t work out or why you’re not attracted to them. You tell yourself anything to stop you from completely falling for them because you don’t want to let your heart get involved because then there is risk of it breaking.

10. Pretending to be someone you’re not. You do things you don’t normally do and say things you don’t understand. You get all confused and jumbled because you want to make a good impression. You try to impress them and you think the only way to do that is by pretending to be someone you’re not because you’re convinced there is no way they could fall for the real you. So you attempt to cover up that side because you’re out of your comfort zone and ultimately hope to push them away so you could keep convincing yourself there’s something wrong with you.