Raise the Bar, Not the Wall

Protecting your heart and closing it are not the same thing.

Someone told me recently that she was done dating.

Not taking a break. Not enjoying being single for a while. Done.

Her reasoning was understandable.

She'd been lied to. Cheated on. Breadcrumbed by someone who apparently thought sending “thinking about you” every three weeks constituted emotional availability.

Honestly, I understood the resignation.

There is something exhausting about giving someone access to you and discovering they didn't know how to handle what you gave them. Eventually, protecting yourself starts to feel easier than hoping the next person will be different.

So you build a wall.

At first, it feels like strength.

No one can disappoint you if you don't expect anything. No one can leave if you never let them close enough to matter. No one can break your heart if you've already decided nobody gets to touch it.

It's effective.

That's the problem.

Walls are very good at keeping people out.

They just aren't particularly good at determining who actually deserves to be there.

I've been thinking about this because I can feel myself doing it sometimes.

Someone gets too close and I find a reason to create distance. Someone shows interest and I immediately start looking for whatever they're eventually going to do wrong. Someone is kind to me and some suspicious little voice in my head asks what they want.

I call it being careful.

Sometimes it probably is.

Other times, I think I'm just scared.

And fear can disguise itself as standards remarkably well.

There is nothing wrong with having higher standards after you've been hurt. In fact, I think heartbreak should teach us something about what we will and won't accept the next time.

But standards say, “This is how I expect to be treated.”

Walls say, “I'm going to assume you'll hurt me before you get the chance to prove otherwise.”

Those aren't the same.

Raising the bar means noticing consistency.

It means watching whether someone's words match their behavior. It means expecting communication, respect, honesty, effort, and accountability without apologizing for wanting any of them.

It means leaving when those things repeatedly aren't there.

That's different from looking for an exit before anything has even gone wrong.

I don't want what happened to me to become the price someone else has to pay for knowing me.

That's difficult to admit.

Because there is a version of healing that feels safer when everyone else is guilty until proven innocent.

But I don't think I want to live like that.

I want to be wiser.

Not colder.

I want to recognize red flags without inventing them. I want to trust slowly without refusing to trust at all. I want to ask better questions instead of assuming I already know the answers.

And if someone good eventually walks into my life, I don't want them standing outside a fortress built by someone who isn't even there anymore.

Maybe that's another way the wrong person can keep taking from you.

They hurt you once, and then you spend years making sure nobody gets close enough to do it again.

Including people who might have loved you well.

I'm not suggesting we throw open every door.

Access should be earned.

Trust should grow through consistency.

Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting what experience taught you.

But there has to be something between giving everyone unlimited access and giving nobody a chance.

That's where I want to live.

Not without boundaries.

With better ones.

Not believing everyone.

Watching who gives me reasons to believe them.

Not lowering my standards because I'm afraid of being alone.

Raising them enough that being alone no longer scares me into accepting less.

And maybe, eventually, leaving a door somewhere in all of that.

Not wide open.

Just unlocked.

Words of Wisdom

Raise your standards without building a wall around your heart. Healing should teach you what you deserve, not convince you that everyone will eventually hurt you. Let people earn their way closer through consistency, honesty, and effort, and remember that protecting your peace doesn't require giving up the possibility of being loved well.

Until next Tuesday.

— S.