Why Guarding Your Heart Won’t Keep It From Breaking

“Pistanthrophobia” is the fear of trusting people due to negative past experiences.

This is the story of my life, but our generation is to blame for making me this way.

It’s no secret that Gen-Y’s version of a “relationship” is messed up. People care more about partying and “getting it in” than they do about getting to know someone and build with them. For a girl who already has trust issues resulting from being cheated on and having my first boyfriend date my best friend, this adds a whole new set of worries to deal with when it comes to any potential relationship.

Everyone who knows me can agree that I have always looked for something meaningful in my friendships/relationships. If I let you in, you will see every inch of love, sadness, hate, and happiness I have in me. I use to easily let everyone in, thinking they would always have my best interest in mind but after being burned too many times in the past, I thought my heart would be safer if it was only kept to myself. Don’t get me wrong, I won’t pretend like I’m perfect girlfriend material with zero flaws…I’ve also had my fair share of screw-ups.

I am not going to sit here and rant about everyone and everything that made me this way because the past is the past and living in it doesn’t do you or me any good, but I will tell you that I refuse to put myself in a position where that past has a chance of repeating itself. Have I dealt with it in the best of ways? Probably not. It’s caused me to start “talking” to the wrong types of guys. It’s caused me to start pinpointing flaws on the good guys and instantly pushing them away because of it. It’s caused me to distance myself the second I felt like I was getting close to someone I could actually trust. Not exactly the most healthy way to live, but at least it’s protecting my heart, right?

Wrong.

Blocking out any and all emotions leaves me feeling extremely lonely. Have I always been this way? Absolutely not. Has this coping method always worked? Not even a little. I’ve had someone look past all my bullsh*t before and help me trust and love again. Once that relationship ended, my guard was built even higher and stronger than before. Not so much because our love failed but more because dating in our generation just seems even more impossible now.

Trust on its own is already hard enough but when you add non-exclusive dating, mixed messages, “friends with benefits”; it becomes a never-ending guessing game of half-hearted feelings. How can anyone want to open their heart when the odds of getting it broken are so incredibly high?

When I see couples in love, part of me is ecstatic for them and another part of me just questions “WTF are they thinking?” Are they truly happy and in love? Is one of them secretly talking to five other people on Tinder? – It’s pathetic that I can’t even trust true love anymore but it’s because I have seen ‘love’ fall apart too many times before.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sitting here waiting for Prince Charming to knock on my door and return my glass slipper. I’m very content finding happiness in myself and focusing on my future. But I would be lying if I said that I didn’t wish that I could open up to someone completely and have him be my other half, but it’s hard to get that when running away always seems like the best option, and the easiest.

“It is both a blessing and a curse to feel everything so very deeply.” – David Jones

These issues are still a work in progress for me. But the one thing I can share is that the past is just one big lesson, but don’t let your present be filled with another set of regrets because you didn’t let that cute boy in because of what one jerk (or a series of them) did to you.

Featured image via Peng Louis on Pexels