Letting someone in means they can see you. And seeing means vulnerability.
In this reflection we admit what intimacy costs.
You say you want closeness. And you do. Part of you aches for it. For someone who knows you. For the relief of being understood without performing. For the weight of loneliness to finally lift.
But another part pulls back the moment closeness arrives. You find reasons to create distance. You pick fights. You go quiet. You retreat into yourself just when someone is finally making their way toward you.
Closeness scares you. That is not a character flaw. It is a reasonable response to having been hurt by closeness before.
Intimacy requires exposure. You cannot be close to someone while staying hidden. You have to let them see things you usually keep covered. The mess, the doubt, the need, the tender places you learned to protect.
If those tender places were hurt before—by a parent, a partner, a friend who took your vulnerability and used it against you—the body remembers. It learned that closeness comes with cost. That the people who get in are the ones who can do the most damage.
So when someone reaches for you now, the old alarm goes off. Not because they are dangerous. Because closeness is. Or used to be. The nervous system does not know the difference.
The pull toward intimacy and the push away from it can happen at the same time. You want what you fear. You crave what you avoid. The conflict lives inside you, and no one sees it except you.
Healing this is slow. It is not about forcing yourself to let people in before you are ready. It is about noticing the fear when it arises. About staying curious instead of acting on automatic pilot. About finding people who are patient enough to let you open at your own pace.
You are not too broken for closeness. You are too hurt to rush it.
Go slow. Notice what happens in your body when someone gets close. Let the fear be there without it making all the decisions.
Closeness is scary. It can also be the thing that heals what made it scary in the first place.
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