Why she can't allow herself to believe that you love her

Dear Men,

I know you’re confused. Maybe a little frustrated, even. You see her, all parts of her: the good and the bad. And you can’t help but fall in love with each and every one of them. You can’t help but feel like all those flaws and all those imperfections that she tries so hard to hide are exactly what make her truly beautiful. And you can’t help but feel like devoting your entire life towards making her feel as beautiful and perfect as she actually is.

But she just won’t believe you. She just won’t let herself go. And she just won’t understand how it is even possible for you to feel that way for her. This drives you crazy. It makes you feel helpless. You feel like you would do absolutely anything to make her see herself through your eyes for just a minute. You feel like taking away all of her pain and insecurities once and for all and filling her life with the kind of happiness she truly deserves. You feel like you just want to break through that wall she has built around her. And you just can’t seem to understand why it was ever built in the first place.

I know you want to break through, I know you want to understand, I know you want to give her true happiness and I know you want her to really believe you when you tell her you love her. But it’s just not that simple for her. It’s not simple because people made her promises that they could never even keep. Because she’s lost so much of her self-esteem that she doesn’t even feel like she deserves the love you’re giving her. Because too many people have entered her life and then just left, without any reason, without any guilt and without a warning. She doesn’t want you to be one of those people. She doesn’t want more broken promises. She doesn’t want to lose the little bit of self-esteem that’s still left. But she does want to believe you. She does want to give you a chance. She does want to trust you enough to give her the love she deserves. She really does, but life has given her too many reasons to not trust the people who say they “love” her. She has seen and felt so much in this short life of hers.

Just the thought that you might actually love her makes her scared beyond words. It makes her want to run away and hide from what will follow. It makes her recall all the times when she saw all her hopes and dreams come crashing down right in front of her eyes. She’s no stranger to what this love will entail. She knows how it works all too well; it actually feels like a pattern now. A guy comes along, he makes her smile, he makes her feel special, he makes her fall in love, he gives her some amazing moments, he slowly becomes the center of her entire life, and then? He just leaves. Where does the ‘love’ suddenly go away?

And this loss of faith isn’t because of just one single experience. Maybe it happened because of that time when the most important person in her life left her all alone, hurt and broken or maybe it happened when her friend’s guy cheated on her even though they seemed like the most perfect couple or maybe it was because of how she never saw any real love and affection between her parents or maybe it was the effect of all these things combined. Everything she saw and everything she felt just seemed to point at one simple truth: Love is temporary! And no matter how hard she tries to look at the bright side, no matter how much she tries to convince herself otherwise, and no matter how badly she wants to believe in some never-ending love, all the sad stories around her just seem to overpower all the happy ones.

She is perfectly aware of how beautiful love can be. She knows how it can make you feel like the happiest person in the entire universe, she knows how all the love songs and all those lame romantic comedies suddenly start to make sense when you have that special someone by your side, she knows about all the butterflies you constantly tend to feel, and she knows how love can make you smile at the smallest of things.

And she believes that maybe this time, it will be different...