It was Fall 2014 when the guy who I thought was the love of my life, proved to me that he actually didn’t care about me at all. For the sake of the potentiality of a long, emotional story, I’ll spare the details. But basically, I ended up sobbing on the streets of Charleston, South Carolina at 3 a.m., calling my parents, telling them to come get me the next day and take me back home. I spent that night on my best friend’s couch, watching the sun come up from her living room window, because I couldn’t spend the whole night in my own bed of my own bedroom, and think about how he wasn’t there beside me.

I was a wreck. I left Charleston, transferred colleges – it’s an understatement to say that I was heartbroken. The guy who I had given my all to had lied to me and betrayed me. When you’re young, heartbreak feels like the world is ending.

When I moved back home, I warded off potential relationships for the safety of guarding myself, proving to myself and to everyone else that I didn’t need anyone in order to have a happy life. I had seen from a first-hand experience what happens when you let your guard down, and I knew for a fact that I never wanted to make myself that vulnerable to feel that way ever again. Note to self: Do Not Let Down Guard. Problems always arise.

I developed what is, in a sense, "commitment phobia" in romantic relationships.

When we think of commitment phobia in romantic relationships, we most likely think of the heartless guy who left us so he could hookup with other girls. He didn’t want to settle down and only have one girl because he was “too ballin’ to be tied down” or something of the sort. But I’m a girl – a good girl at that – and I have commitment phobia. It’s not the type of commitment phobia where I’m scared of having only one guy – I’ve always been the one-guy kind of girl. And no, I don’t fear love; I don’t fear having a connection. These are both great things, they make a lot of us happy. What I’m scared of is giving all of my flawed self to another person who is equally as flawed. So, up goes the wall that keeps back any kind of defenseless emotion. And those of us who feel this way think that this is a good thing. Until we meet the good guy, the right guy. We’re scared to settle down with any great guy who comes into our life because we’re afraid that we’re “settling.” We know that the guy is great, but what if it doesn’t work out? We’re willing to do anything to not let ourselves slip back into depression, trying our hardest to keep up our shield.

When we finally do meet a great guy and feel the potential of a serious relationship beginning to build up, what do we do? We leave. We run to our single girlfriends, we run to the bar and order as many drinks as our livers can take, and we drink to have a stress-free time. We drink to forget, we drink to find answers.

We let the awful ex-boyfriend reign over our current relationship even though he’s not even the guy who is currently in our life. WHY do we do this to ourselves? Why do we keep up this wall and keep out the good guy, maybe even the best guy we’ll meet in our life? We want the journey that a fun relationship entails, but we’re scared of it once we get halfway through. We’re scared of the potential next failure to add to our already-long list of romantic failures. We can’t shake the memory of how miserable that last guy made us feel, and we think that it only happened because we let our guard down. Giving ourselves in a relationship is vulnerable, and it’s scary as hell. But we need to let that wall down.

We have got to stop punishing, blaming, disregarding the right guy, for all of the wrong guy’s mistakes.

We have to got to stop punishing ourselves for our previous heartbreaks.

We need to allow ourselves to love the person who is already sure that they love us.

If you’ve found that great guy and he makes you happy, why on earth would you want to leave him? Don’t let the asshole ex-boyfriend from your past keep you away from the potential greatest love of your life. That last guy was a jerk. But now he’s gone, and you’ve learned a lot since then. This new guy is here now, and he loves you for everything that you and everything that you’re not. If he’s not even taking a single glance backwards, why the hell are you running away?

This new guy wants to love you the right way.

I think it’s time you let yourself go. I think it’s time you let him in.