I’m single, but I hope that won’t be the case for the rest of my life. I do want to meet someone amazing, but I’m also scared of it. It’s not the process of falling in love that’s scary — what terrifies me is the thought of finding love and then losing it. Here’s why:
- It’s hard to trust. Trusting people has always been hard for me, especially since whenever I’ve done it in the past, I ended up getting screwed over. It almost doesn’t seem worth it anymore, but I know that a healthy, long-term relationship can’t survive without it. Love is really the ultimate form of trust, and I’m scared of it being broken.
- Nothing is guaranteed. That’s just the way life works. No one can promise to love you forever, and nothing is guaranteed to last. Accepting that is hard to do, but while I’m working on it, the idea of losing love is still terrifying. How do you really invest in someone if there’s no guarantee they won’t just let you go? Sure, I believe there’s a reason for everything, but I can’t cope with the idea of possibly investing years into a relationship, just for it to end.
- Love is the biggest risk you can take. It involves opening yourself up to someone and really letting them see all the skeletons in your closet and the stuff you’ve never wanted to share with anyone else. Love is inherently a risk because it can fade or break so easily. You have to be a little bit of a risk-taker to fall in love, and I’ve always preferred to play it safe.
- Once I’m in, I’m all in. It takes a while for me to really invest in someone, but once I do, my love is the deep kind. If I’ve decided a guy’s worth going for, it’s because I believe he’s truly a good fit for my life and I can see things developing into a real, committed relationship. I get deeply involved right off the bat, which means the prospect of it ending soon scares me even more.
- My love doesn’t come cheaply. I don’t trust easily and I don’t love easily either. I’m not the kind of girl who just throws her heart out on her sleeve. If I love someone, it’s because they’ve earned it. I don’t want to think that anyone worth loving could also hurt me by leaving, but that’s just how it is.
- I want to protect myself. But I don’t know where the exact line is between being smart and being closed off to it totally. I want love, but more than that, I want it to be the kind of love that lasts. Because of this, I get muddled in the pursuit of protecting myself, and because of how scared I am that it might end, I don’t start in the first place. Self-defeating much?
- I don’t want to be so guarded. Trust me, I wish I could be more open to the risks that come with love. I wish I was the kind of girl who could throw caution to the wind and invest in something with no promised outcome. That carefree kind of love is so appealing to me, but I just can’t seem to risk losing it after the thrill has worn off.
- I’d rather not lose it. The saying “I’d rather have loved and lost than never loved at all” is one I wish I could embrace. But even just the idea of it is so painful to me, I don’t know if I could really promise that. To give someone that much of my heart and soul, only to have it end? I’m scared of that.
- Love is a choice, and so is letting go. Ultimately, I know I’m not going to be promised forever, no matter how good the intentions are at the start. Just as someone chooses to love me, they have the right to choose to let me go, and I have the same rights. Love isn’t always logical, and people get to own their own feelings in whatever way they want. Maybe if love is about choosing, and not destiny or fate, it seems a little more human, and therefore, flawed. But I’d like to try to choose to love anyway. I’m going to try hard to be a little braver than I’ve been before, and hope that I can make it through whatever love throws my way.
