In late 2019 I broke up with a very abusive ex of nearly four years, and it took me until late 2021 to stop hating men and everyone around me and peacefully let people in again.

Fast forward to now. I’ve been in three relationships since then and have talked to and tried to get close to many other people, almost all of them ending with some degree of defensive resentment from one or both parties and/or my being abandoned.

I think my “hate wall”, as I call it, has been firmly up since I was ghosted in February of last year, and I’m only just now admitting it to myself. I still hold the others responsible for their actions, but I don’t think this seething rage and sense of injustice that I carry around with me is helping at all. My therapist tells me that I don’t need to worry about approaching dating from the same “clean slate” that I had previously, that once I’ve healed from this last relationship there’s nothing stopping me and that I’ll know when I’m ready, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve been fucking up by not giving these romantic connections the best chance possible to start well, and I don’t want to continue doing that.

But how do I stop being so angry at how I was mistreated? How do I stop the subconscious assumptions that the next person is just going to fuck me over? How do I let myself just… emotionally give and be vulnerable, for as much as I have the spoons for? Deep down inside it feels like with every new person I meet, they have to “prove” to me that I won’t be taken advantage of by really going out of their way for me, more than I’m currently doing for them, and that just doesn’t feel fair. It feels like I’m already shooting it in the foot, in ways that can be very subtle and hard to spot.