This Is For The Girl Who Pushes People Away

Almost everyone I know has hit a point in their singleness where they’ve been overwhelmed with dating exhaustion, but for the girls who push people away, that exhaustion hits a little harder.  

It’s a time where you realize everything you once thought you’d have by now, you don’t yet. You start to analyze all the things you’ve done wrong and all the reasons all your relationships haven’t worked out. You blame the other people, their lack of effort, their inability to meet your expectations; sometimes you just chalk it up as two people who just didn’t get along.

You start to believe that maybe you have a different path than most. Maybe you don’t fit into the cookie-cutter image that society paints for you. Maybe you’re just not the relationship type and maybe you’re just supposed to be single. 

You convince yourself of anything you can think of that skates around the real issues because it’s easier to do that than admit your faults. It’s easier to pass the blame and sugarcoat the situation than it is to acknowledge that you are stuck in patterns and to admit to your own faults. You’re failing to acknowledge that you’re choosing the people you do and pushing away others for reasons you haven’t turned inward to understand.

The truth is, you’re choosing people who will fit your idea that relationships won’t work out and pushing away the ones who show you reasons they do. You’re chasing the belief that if you stay with what you know, you’ll prevent yourself from getting hurt. The reality is that we’re all afraid to get hurt. No one wants to feel that pain and most don’t want to inflict it, but if you keep believing that relationships correlate with pain, then yours always will.

So, a piece of advice from someone who has endured more self-inflicted relationship anxiety than imaginable: Stop trying to avoid pain, because by trying to avoid and protect yourself, you’re causing it. You’re building walls where there shouldn’t be walls; creating conflicts to justify the relationship ending; pushing people away for reassurance that you can have control over who you let in, so you won’t lose control and fall for someone who isn’t worth it.

You feel this creates a sense of safety, but please remember how fast that security diminishes. How fast you’ll fall backward and regret every defense mechanism you used; how self-destructive this behavior is.

Please understand, these actions aren’t serving you and aren’t fair or healthy to put on yourself or anyone else, especially someone you claim to care about.

If you’re able to convince yourself that all relationships end in heartache, then you can convince yourself that some don’t. 

You need to convince yourself that not all relationships end.