16 Ways Women Who Have Difficulty Trusting Show They Care About You

1. She isn’t naturally shy, but she tends to be shy initially because being forthcoming hasn’t always worked in the past. When she starts to behave around you the way she acts around her closest friends, she’s letting you in emotionally.

2. She might not reach out to make plans, because she doesn’t want to be shut down or rejected, especially early on. Instead, she’ll respond by making sure you know how much she appreciates you taking initiative, and will be open to trying new things when you propose them.

3. She stopped herself from just blowing you off. She’s trying. Trying to believe that you aren’t just anyone. Trying to believe your first move won’t be to hurt her.

4. She wants to love blindly, but she can’t because before you met her, she learned exactly what can happen when you wholeheartedly put all your faith in one person: They can leave. But her belief in that big, unattainable love exists and if she’s giving you a chance it means you have qualities she thinks could fit with hers. She wouldn’t bother otherwise.

5. She’ll ask you too many questions. It’s partially because she wants to get to know you and partially a defense mechanism – if you’re talking about yourself it saves her talking about her own life, which she’s not sure she’s ready for yet.

6. She will be overly protective of her family life. When someone has difficulty trusting, remember that it might not be the result of an ex. It could be her family life that left her with fear of abandonment, which is often revealed if that’s a subject she strays from.

7. She’ll find excuses to touch you because she associates touch with comfort and wants you to feel at ease with her. Women with trust issues will go above and beyond to make you feel secure, because they don’t want to make anyone feel insecurities they’ve dealt with.

8. She’ll make sure you know her identifying qualities by showing you what she likes outside the realm of romance and dating. While she might not be ready to talk about old relationships, she’ll want to show your more of herself than just restaurant preferences and affinity for certain movies, or dessert.

9. She’ll consider making plans with you in the future – but not too far in advance. If she’s really interested, she’ll say yes to concert tickets, or an event a few weeks or a month down the road. But if it’s still new, making plans 6 months from now is too much. Don’t invite her to your brother’s wedding just yet.

10. She’ll talk about the future in generalizations – not so she doesn’t freak you out, so she doesn’t freak herself out.

11. If she calls you out on something that bothered her, she’s beginning to trust you. She’d typically brush it off, ignore it, or phase you out if you did something to upset her. But if she’s willing to explain how you made her feel in a specific instance, she thinks you’re worth keeping around.

12. If she doesn’t demand commitment from you right away, it doesn’t mean she’s not interested in that eventually. She takes commitment seriously and doesn’t want to rush. Fear of rejection means biding your time before putting yourself in a vulnerable position.

13. She’ll be over protective of you around her friends, even before you realize she cared about you. She knows how it feels to have someone else not stick up for her, and doesn’t ever want you to feel that way.

14. The more she likes you, the higher her expectations will be. (But if she sees how hard you try, she’s also more apt to be forgiving.)

15. She will appear to not need you and it’s through no fault of your own. She doesn’t want to appear to rely on anyone but herself because people who are hesitant to trust don’t want to openly admit that they need anyone else to be happy.

16. You’ll know she’s going for longevity if she opens up to you about why she has trouble trusting people in the first place. She won’t lay it out for you, but she’ll give you pieces from her past relationships, or share a small bit of the story about who hurt her. She’ll want you to understand where she’s coming from, and she’ll want to understand anything that hurt you too.