Girls with soft hearts only flirt when it means something. If she has been bantering back and forth with someone, if she has been spending all of her spare time reaching out to someone, they have a special place in her heart.

She is the monogamous type. She is only looking for something serious. In her mind, flirting is supposed to lead to a relationship. It’s the logical next step.

If the other person has been flirting back with her, she is going to make assumptions. That they feel the same way. That they want a real relationship with her.

Some people call her gullible, because she expects the best instead of preparing for the worst, but she sees the good in people. Instead of picturing broken hearts, she imagines rose petals and midnight dates.

That’s why she never sees betrayal coming. When she is told that her person just got out of a bad relationship and isn’t looking to date right now, she is thrown off. Lost. Confused.

She doesn’t understand why they would treat her like they’re falling hard if they were only going to push her away in the end. It doesn’t make any sense to her.

But she is far from stupid. She knows the smart decision would be to walk away. To tell them that they are looking for different things and she cannot lower her standards to appease them.

But since she has already grown attached to them, she finds it difficult to let go. She can’t shake the thoughts she had in her head about holding hands and exchanging kisses and staying up all night sharing secrets.

So she does the only thing she can stomach doing and she stays. She gives them exactly what they want without complaining. But instead of accepting that she will never be more than friends with them, she secretly holds onto the hope that they will change their mind.

Whenever they text her first or lean in close or admit they miss her, she gets her expectations up. She thinks that they are slowly realizing that they were wrong, that they really do want to be with her. The romantic inside her thinks that she will get what she wants after all.

Of course, her heart splits in two when she realizes that they meant what they said. They aren’t looking to date her. They aren’t going to turn into her boyfriend. They aren’t going to wake up one day and realize she is the love of their life.

Unfortunately, it’s not the first time this has happened to her and it probably won’t be the last. She keeps getting stuck in almost relationships because she never learns from her mistakes. She doesn’t want the last boy who hurt her to have an impact on the next boy. She doesn’t want her baggage to convince her to give up on love.

She doesn’t want to become a pessimist — because she believes that love is out there and isn’t going to stop until she finds it.