Why You Pull Away As Soon As a Relationship Starts to Feel Real

Things are good. Genuinely good. And that's exactly when you start finding reasons it might not work.

That's not cold feet about this particular person. It's a much older reflex, one that treats closeness itself as the risk, not whoever you happen to be close to.

Usually it traces back to a time depending on someone cost you, being let down, smothered, or having to manage someone else's needs before your own were ever allowed.

Distance feels like protection in the moment. What it actually costs is every relationship that might have been the exception, ended before it got the chance to prove it.