“I Want Connection, but I Don’t Trust Anyone”
“I crave closeness. I want people I can lean on, laugh with, really open up to. But whenever someone gets too close, something in me pulls away. I scan for red flags. I question their motives. I assume they’ll leave or turn on me eventually. It’s like I want connection—but I can’t let anyone all the way in.”
Dear Mark,
What you’ve written is something so many people carry silently. A longing for intimacy paired with an instinctive mistrust of it. A craving for closeness that lives side by side with fear. Not fear of people in general, but fear of what happens when you start to need them. When you start to hope.
And that inner tug-of-war—wanting love but anticipating betrayal—isn’t confusion. It’s a nervous system pattern. It’s what happens when your early relational experiences taught you to equate closeness with danger. When people who were supposed to care for you, hold you, or protect you became the very source of your fear.
It’s easy to internalize that mistrust as personal failure. To think, I’m just too guarded. Too cynical. Too broken. But what you’re describing isn’t a personality flaw. It’s a trust injury—a wound that lives in the emotional and relational body. And like any injury, it changes how you move through the world. Not because you want it to—but because you had to.
Maybe you grew up in a home where love came with strings. Where affection was conditional. Where truth was punished. Where caretakers were inconsistent—present one moment, gone the next. Or maybe you loved someone deeply once, only to be betrayed in a way that made your whole sense of emotional safety fracture.
Whatever the origin, your body learned this: it’s not safe to depend on anyone.
And now, even when you’re surrounded by good people, or start to feel something real forming, your mind flips into scan mode. You look for the trap. You brace for the fall. You question the sincerity. Not because you’re trying to sabotage the relationship—but because your system is trying to protect you from pain it still remembers.
That’s not emotional immaturity. That’s relational hypervigilance. A form of self-defense born out of experience.
And what makes it even more painful is this: the part of you that doesn’t trust is often the same part that wants connection the most. You don’t want to push people away. You don’t want to live on high alert. But the cost of letting someone in—only to be hurt again—feels too high.
So you stay in this middle place. Reaching, retreating. Craving, withdrawing. Smiling politely but not revealing much. Saying “I’m fine” when you’re anything but. You want to belong—but only if it feels completely safe. And deep down, you’re not sure it ever will.
This is the emotional paradox of those with trust injuries: you miss what you don’t believe exists.
And yet—you haven’t given up. That’s what I see in your fragment. That quiet ache that still wants to believe in the possibility of closeness. That part of you still searching for proof that intimacy doesn’t have to equal abandonment.
So how do you begin to trust again?
You don’t start by forcing it. You start by listening to the part of you that doesn’t trust—and letting it be seen without judgment. That part is doing its job. It’s been protecting you for a long time. It deserves respect, not silence.
You ask it questions like:
What am I afraid will happen if I let them in?
What signs am I looking for that it’s unsafe?
What has trusting cost me in the past?
And what part of me still wants to try anyway?
From there, you begin to experiment. Gently. Slowly. You test safety in small doses. You let someone see a little more of you—not everything, just a little—and watch what they do with it. You begin to notice who actually shows up, not who you assume will hurt you. And you let yourself be surprised when someone doesn’t disappear.
Building trust is not about blind faith. It’s about data. Real, lived, earned experiences that teach your body, over time, that some people are consistent. That some people listen. That some people don’t leave when you cry or set a boundary or show them a shadow.
And yes, there will still be fear. That doesn’t mean you’re not ready. It means you’re trying something new. And newness always comes with uncertainty.
You may never feel 100% safe letting someone in. But you don’t need complete safety. You only need a small willingness to stay with the discomfort long enough for something real to grow. Trust doesn’t require certainty—it requires participation.
And if the fear is too loud, too overwhelming to take that step, that’s okay too. That’s a sign to start with yourself. To build the kind of relationship internally that you long to have externally. One where you stop abandoning your own needs. Where you stop calling your caution “drama” and start calling it “wisdom.” Where you stop treating your longing like a problem and start seeing it as a signal that something in you is still alive.
Wanting connection doesn’t make you weak.
Not trusting people doesn’t make you damaged.
It makes you human. Shaped by experience. Still healing. Still hoping.
You don’t need to be ready. You just need to be real.
I’m walking this line too.
–RJ