I’ll begin this with a short story.

The first time I fell in love, it was absolutely magical. Learning someone inside and out, spending every waking moment with them, and traveling from place to place with your significant other by your side. Yeah, it was all fun and games. That is, until we hit our rough patches. Not soon before long, we disagreed about everything.

The things I once absolutely loved about him seemed to irritate me more than anything else. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back, it was more sad than anything. Imagine hating everything that once made you fall in love with someone, imagine falling that hard out of love that the reason you even began to love them just seemed to be a nuisance. I used to love my ex’s stubbornness, but then it 180’d when we would argue and he wouldn’t back down and neither would I. I used to love my ex’s motivation and persistence, until he would play video games until he won rather than spending his time with me.

You see, love is scary.

People make it out to be something that it isn’t, because love isn’t just about sharing your life with someone, it’s about finding one person out of seven billion that will stay by your side through thick and thin. It’s about the fights, the hardships, enduring all of everything together. People won’t tell you that, because people don’t seem to understand it. I didn’t either for the longest time. Falling in love scares me, because I know what it was like to love someone, and I watched that love turned into spite.

If you follow my articles, you might have read one called “I Fell In Love In 24 Hours”. That, too, was a magical love story about a man who swept me off my feet-literally. That, too, was a story about a sad heartbreak. That time, it wasn’t necessarily my fault, nor my choice. But if you read it, maybe this will make more sense as to why I’m so terrified of loving someone again. I was built up to feel beautiful, unique, and cared about by someone to the point where I was a fish in a small stream, and he’d hooked me on a reel of emotions and words that turned out to be completely meaningless. Though I may be young, that doesn’t stop me from understanding what love is. I know what it is, and I have felt it. Sometimes I got it mixed up, and sometimes I would tell someone that I loved them when really, I wasn’t quite sure that I did. Maybe I wanted to love them, but maybe it just wasn’t there. In all my life, I have learned that you can love people in many ways. You can love someone as a friend, as a human, or as a life partner. I have many people I have loved as friends, and many people I have loved as people. Only a select few, though, have I loved as life partners. So why does it make me skeptical to love someone as a life partner again? Many reasons.

To begin with, you REALLY don’t know who they are. No matter how much you think you know someone, there will always be things you don’t know about them. I have felt before like I completely knew someone and even after two years of dating him, I found out many new things about him I never knew. They weren’t always good things, either. There were a few deal breakers, too. But we had been dating for so long there was no way I was about to throw two years away just because of something that bothered me, even if I would have left him had we only been dating for a shorter time. To me, not knowing someone isn’t really that big of a deal. It leaves a little excitement in my opinion, but to others it may be, which is why I bring it up first.

Being single, it’s really difficult to think about setting my mind and heart on someone again. Any time I talk to someone new, I can’t help but compare them to the relationship I had before whether it’s a good or a bad comparison. For example, if a guy opens the car door, it’s weird to me. My ex didn’t do that, so I wasn’t ever used to it for the longest time. It kind of sucks in a way, because I almost feel like there’s something wrong with me as a person.

I can’t seem to trust any guy that comes into my life simply because I recall being told, “You’re the only person I’m in love with,” and then that same guy was talking to several other girls. I recall being told, “I promise you, we are going to make long distance work,” and being forgotten about. Worst of all, I was cheated on. After being with someone for an extended amount of time, I found out on my own that he had been talking to someone else and dating someone else behind my back for over half of our relationship. This was a tough one to get over, and I’m not sure that I ever will because the very girl he cheated on me with he constantly was telling me not to worry about because they were “just friends”. As if I hadn’t heard that one before, right?

So of course now, whenever any guy I'm talking to tells me his female friend is “just a friend," there’s no way I genuinely believe it. As bad as that may make me seem, if you’ve ever been cheated on, maybe you’d understand that portion of my fear a little better than others.

I also get nervous about getting into relationships because I also have experienced the whole “taking separate paths” ordeal. I have my goals and aspirations, and he has his. Even if I’m willing to bend, though, he is set on his future. Which I have no problem with, except for the fact that even if we began to see each other before he knew what he wanted to do or where he wanted to be in life, he would make it very clear to me that I just wasn’t a part of his newfound future. So I learned there that even if you make a commitment, make promises, and plan things with someone, it takes one decision for someone to completely make you nonexistent in their life. They can change their minds just like that. I don’t know about you, but I can’t do that. Of course, this is all biased, so I can’t tell you what is right and what is wrong because maybe for some of you it’s easy to walk away. For a girl like me, it’s the complete opposite. I don’t date just to have fun and get spoiled, no. I date because I really want to find someone that I can share my life with. Someone whom I can travel with and be myself with. Some people want all sorts of fancy things. Fancy houses, fancy jewelry, flowers every week… But that isn’t me. And that’s why I fear falling in love. I fear it because there are so many women out there that love to get spoiled, and men are so used to spoiling them that when I don’t want anything, they think that I’m just being shy or delusional. Or I’m told that I’m “settling” for less. Which I’m not, because it’s okay to be happy with everything I have.

I’m afraid of falling in love again mainly because I fear that my past experiences with relationships have clouded my judgement towards future relationships. Which, I can’t allow that. Not every guy is going to hurt me, or cheat on me. Not every guy is going to promise me things and not follow through with them. I will one day find someone who loves me for me, good and bad. Someone that loves that I have goals for myself and is interested in accomplishing my goals with me as I am interested in accompanying him to accomplish his as well. Though, to an extent I can not help it. Hopefully I will find someone who can stick through my worries with me and assure me, even if it’s after time and time again. I know I’m gonna be a pain in the butt to deal with, and a pain in the butt to love. I’m going to question things, worry more than most women may, and I’m going to be skeptical about certain decisions. In a way, though, it isn’t all that bad. After all, if a guy has a problem with me taking precautions, he is more than welcome to go find someone that doesn’t care what he does. Someone that won’t text him to make sure he made it to the house okay, someone who isn’t a little curious about the people he surrounds himself with, or someone that doesn’t care about the choices he makes whether they’re good for him or not.

Even though I know I’m a pain, and I know for a fact I’m not the only one that feels this way, I do know one thing. My past may have scarred me, it may have changed the way I handle relationships, and it definitely changed the way I love. On the bright side, I know that it has only caused me to be more kind and caring towards my partner. Even though falling in love again is absolutely terrifying because of all the things that can go wrong, there is still a part of me that is for some odd reason willing to take that chance again someday. That is, with HOPEFULLY the right person this time. But for those of you who question why I’m skeptical, or why I don’t seem crazily interested in someone when they come my way, just understand that I once fell in love with a guy JUST like you (unless you’re a female, of course) and he broke my trust and my heart. A guy promised me the world, promised me a future with him, and left me to deal with life all by myself for the first time in years. Though it made me stronger, it really messed with my mind and it has caused a lot of difficulty in my dating life. It isn’t easy to want to fall in love again after knowing how dangerous love can be.

I never speak to any guys that I have gone out with since about the reasons why I become so skeptical. I don’t give a reason as to why I freak out before a date and cancel, or as to why I don’t care to reply to a text. Now I do. And I can only hope that you can all understand. It was never my choice, and I catch hell for it often. But truly, it is not you, it’s me. If you bear with me, though, we will get past it all over time. For those of you that are going through this as well, just know that it is a hard demon to battle, but don’t live your life fearing love. You may miss out on your opportunity to find it. As for the guys that have fallen for a girl like me or may fall for a girl like me in the future, please keep my words in mind, for I’m sure there are many females out there that are still afraid to love just like me. All I can say, is if you keep reassuring her and keep your promises, it can make all the difference to her in the world.