Olalekan Adebumiti
It starts as a whisper in your chest. The moment someone tries to get close, you take a half-step back.
You don’t do it on purpose. You keep the conversation light. You make a joke when they ask how you are really feeling.
In your defence, you are protecting your peace. But you are actually starving the connection before it even has a chance to breathe.
You tell yourself you are just unlucky. You say the dating pool is full of people who don’t want to commit or are emotionally immature.
And sometimes, that is true. But there is a harder truth sitting underneath all of that.
But what if the wall isn’t out there but in you?
We often think of self-sabotage as big, dramatic moments. But the most dangerous kind of sabotage is quiet and subtle. It looks like “standards, independence or keeping it together.
When you are ready, here are the quiet habits that are keeping you safe, but keeping you lonely.
1. You Wear Your Apathy Like a Badge of Honour
You’ve learned that caring is dangerous. You agreed that the person who cares the least holds all the power. So, you became a master of detachment.
You wait three hours to reply to a text, even though you saw it immediately. You deliberately hold back enthusiasm when they suggest a date idea you actually love. You act like you could take it or leave it.
You tell yourself this is how you maintain your dignity. You think, if I don’t show them I like them, they can’t hurt me.
The problem with playing it cool is that you attract people who like the chase, and not those who want a connection. Warm, secure people, the kind you actually want to build a life with, are repelled by ice.
When you offer them apathy, they don’t try harder. They assume you aren’t interested, and they walk away to find someone who is.
You think you are protecting your heart, but you are actually just ensuring that no one ever gets close enough to see it.
2. You Mistake Anxiety for Chemistry
You meet someone kind. They are consistent. They call when they say they will. There are no guessing games. And you feel… nothing.
Something tells you, “there’s just no spark.”
Then you meet someone hot and cold. They leave you on ‘read’ for a day, then bombard you with attention. You feel a rush of adrenaline. You check your phone a hundred times an hour. You feel sick to your stomach, but you call it butterflies and passion.
This is one of the most common ways we sabotage healthy love. We have normalised the idea that love should feel like a panic attack.
If you are used to chaos, peace feels like boredom.
When a secure person enters your life, your nervous system doesn’t know what to do.
It isn’t getting the dopamine hit that comes from the uncertainty. So, you reject the stable person.
You convince yourself they are boring. You go back to the rollercoaster because the lows make the highs feel earned.
You are chasing a feeling that isn’t love. It is just anxiety with a better PR team.
3. It Feels Safer to Predict the End Than to Enjoy the Beginning
You go on a first date. It goes well. You laugh. You share a dessert. They walk you to the station.
On the train home, your brain starts working overtime. You start looking for the catch. They probably have commitment issues, you think. They are too focused on their career. They live too far away. This is going to end badly.
You start mourning the relationship before it has even started.
This is a defence mechanism called “foreboding joy.” You are so terrified of being blindsided by pain that you try to beat the pain to the punch. You think that if you predict the heartbreak, it won’t hurt as much when it happens.
So, you start acting weird. You withdraw. You become prickly. You stop putting in effort because “what’s the point?”
And eventually, the person leaves. Not because of the reasons you invented in your head, but because you were never really there.
You were five steps ahead, attending the funeral of a relationship that was still trying to be born. You prove yourself right, but you lose the chance to be happy.
4. You Weaponise Your Independence
You have worked hard to build a life you love. You pay your own rent. You book your own holidays. You have a solid circle of friends. You have convinced yourself that you don’t need anyone.
“I want a partner, not a saviour,” you say. And that is a healthy mindset.
But there is a thin line between healthy independence and hyper-independence. Hyper-independence is a trauma response.
It is the belief that relying on anyone else is a weakness. It is the refusal to let anyone help you, support you, or witness your messy moments.
You sabotage love by making sure there is no space in your life for anyone else to fit.
You don’t let them carry your bag. You don’t let them comfort you when you’ve had a bad day at work. You don’t ask for small favours. You keep your schedule so packed that seeing you requires an appointment three weeks in advance.
You are signalling to the world that you are a fortress. And the thing about fortresses is that they are designed to keep people out.
Love requires interdependence. It requires admitting that while you can do it all alone, you might not want to. It requires dropping the “I’ve got this” act long enough to let someone else get you.
5. You Hold Onto a Checklist That No Human Can Pass
We all have preferences. Maybe you like someone who loves dogs, or someone who enjoys hiking. That is fine.
But be honest with yourself. Has your list of “non-negotiables” become a shield?
You reject someone because they wore the wrong shoes. You write someone off because they haven’t read your favourite book. You fixate on the way they chew, or a singular, awkward comment, and you blow it up until it is all you can see.
This isn’t about standards. This is about fear.
Perfection is the ultimate armour. If you demand perfection, you never have to risk intimacy. You can stay single and tell yourself it’s because you just haven’t met someone “on your level.” It allows you to feel superior instead of feeling vulnerable.
You are looking for a reason to say no, because saying yes is terrifying. Saying yes means opening yourself up to the possibility of being hurt.
So you hide behind the checklist, waiting for a fantasy person who doesn’t exist, while real, imperfect, wonderful people walk right past you.
It is heavy, isn’t it?
Carrying all that armour.
It is exhausting to constantly monitor your own behaviour, to calculate your text response times, to scan every interaction for red flags, to keep your walls so high that you can’t even see over them.
You have been protecting yourself for a long time. And that makes sense. Somewhere in your past, you learned that these habits kept you safe. They stopped you from feeling foolish. They stopped you from being caught off guard.
But look at where they have brought you. They haven’t brought you love. They have only brought you safety. And safety is a very lonely place to live.
You don’t need to break all your habits overnight. You don’t need to suddenly become a person who wears their heart on their sleeve and trusts everyone blindly.
You just need to try one small thing. The next time you feel the urge to pull back, stay.
The next time you want to play it cool, say, “I had a really great time with you.”
The next time you want to obsess over a flaw, ask yourself, “Does this actually matter?”
The next time you feel that flicker of panic because things are calm, take a deep breath and let yourself be bored.
Drop the shield. Just an inch. It is scary, I know. But the only things that can reach you behind that wall are the things you have already felt.
If you want something new and real, you have to come out into the open to find it.
And I suggest you do that now.
