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I’ve recently been thinking about my fears around vulnerability and intimacy. Sometimes it feels easier to be vulnerable with my journal and through my writing than it is to let anyone get close to me. Unfortunately, I’m plagued with an overly analytical mind, and I tend to dissect my every thought and feeling mostly because I want to make sure that everything I do comes from a place of true clarity. I’m really an over thinker who wishes someone would take me out of my own head at times.
I’m also a Cancer, which means I’m deeply melancholic and tend to romanticize my life, always searching for meaning in the stories woven through my experiences. So if I share stories from my past, it’s not because I’m stuck there or attached to them; it’s simply that I’m a creative soul who ties the threads of the past into the fabric of my storytelling.
I’m learning, though, that I can’t always live in my head, heal in my head, and read every book there is to find the peace I’m looking for. Healing sometimes comes from putting yourself in the experience and allowing yourself to move differently than you have in the past. Let the triggers come, and to move through them patiently and gently. Patience with myself is crucial, especially when everything in my body wants to run away as soon as discomfort washes over me.
I’ve been reflecting on my past experiences with the male species and what has shaped my understanding of them, and how they relate to me and my understanding of emotional intimacy. When I reflect, I remember my first experience of liking a boy. I was in the first grade, and he was in the second. We both had crushes on each other, and my friends would send little messages back and forth, even though now I realize how young we were. I remember the feeling of liking someone but being overcome by a deep sense of shyness. Still, that sweet boy would always come over to talk to me, or we’d send messages through friends — “He said this,” “Tell him I said that.” I vividly remember one time I got really sick at school and was sitting outside the nurse’s room, feeling so unwell. He took off his coat, placed it over me, and held me. We were so little, and yet he waited with me until my parents picked me up.
The following week — I kid you not — we moved into my parents’ first home, and I was transferred to the neighborhood school. I never saw him again. Oh, how I wish all of my interactions with boys and men had been as sweet as the memory of my first crush. Some things haven’t changed for me. I’m still a deeply shy person when it comes to getting to know men. I’ve always been very reserved, and growing up, I saw the pursuit of men as dangerous something tied to loss, hurt, or chaos.
While I love my dad, and I’m an only child on his side — definitely a papi’s girl — I’ve also carried deep memories of abandonment. My father was always deeply emotional, yet often in denial of his true nature.
I think a lot of men are like that. They carry this shell of emotional avoidance that they believe hides their pain well, but it always finds a way to leak through. You can sense that something deep inside them is struggling to be felt. My conclusion is that men often think they are strong when they deny their emotions, but holding all of that in eventually breaks them down. Maybe they don’t feel safe enough to share it or even to face it. I’m not sure what goes through their minds. I find that the most masculine men I know are the ones who aren’t ashamed of their darkness or their varying emotions.
At times, my dad would slip into a dark place that I couldn’t quite reach. I remember nurturing him at a very young age, wondering why is he so sad. He would retreat into himself, and I’d ask him, “Papi, what’s wrong?” He’d look at me with the saddest eyes — eyes that seemed to appear mostly when he drank and say, “Ay, mija, no entenderías.” (“You wouldn’t understand.”)
But I so deeply wanted to understand.
Now I know he’d had a very colorful life of ups and downs. Nonetheless, it was always hard on me because he seemed so distant. He would run away as soon as things felt heavy, sometimes physically, other times emotionally, or through addiction. He was never cruel to me, but it felt like he would leave me. As little girl I vividly remember how I deeply yearned for him to come back.
One time in first grade, my dad left for eight or nine months, I can’t remember exactly, but it felt like an eternity. He vanished after his father died. I remember it vividly; he looked broken. In his youthful immaturity, he was too selfish to see beyond his own pain to notice that his only girl needed him too. Isn’t it funny how we pass along our brokenness like a nice little inheritance?
I used to fall into deep emotional tantrums whenever my dad would disappear. He would call, and I’d fall into deep sadness, wondering, Why did my dad leave me? Why won’t he talk to me? My dad, I know now, is an avoidant.
I say this not to hate on my father, trust me, I’ve done deep spiritual work to forgive him, and I have so much compassion for him. He was a young, traumatized man. I mean, I was also a hot mess in my twenties, and thank God I didn’t have a child to go through that ride with me. I share this as a way to share my story not for you to feel bad for me.
I had my first kiss at fifteen, on the day of my quinceañera — my sweet fifteen — in my pretty pink dress. It was truly perfect, hehe. It was with my best friend. We were inseparable, and everyone knew I was in love with him, but it was all so innocent. Nothing ever came of it because I was a straight-edge girl in my younger years. I was determined to live a life different from what I’d seen, so falling truly in love at that age wasn’t going to happen for me.
When I went to college, I had no real dating experience. I was innocent and naïve and wanted to be like my friends, to be as open as they were with boys. But I quickly realized I wasn’t the type who could do that. By my second year of college, I realized I had some major emotional things I needed to handle. Towards the middle of my sophomore year, I met a young guy. I didn’t even want to go out that night, but my friends convinced me. It was the day before winter break.
My friend was out with some guys from the local medical school and introduced me to the boy who would become my first love and first real relationship. I remember we talked the entire night, and I thought, Wow, he’s so handsome. He asked for my number, and I left for D.C. the following day.
College winter breaks are a month long, and I didn’t think much of the experience. He was a white boy from Ohio, my age, somehow already in medical school, while I was a struggling sophomore Latina girl who could barely pass her math classes. I didn’t think he’d be interested in me. I let it go as a fun night, just a lovely memory to keep in my pocket. Then, ding ding, I get a text from the smart boy from the bar. What could he possibly be texting me for? I was doing laundry at the laundromat — I’m a city girl, so our home at the time didn’t have a laundry machine and I looked at my friend who had come along to keep me company and said, This guy from the bar is texting me. What do you think he wants?
She looked at me and said, I don’t know — text him back. So I did. And I felt the avoidant attachment in me begin to activate for the very first time, my fear of vulnerability.
Sometimes it’s easier to like people who don’t like you back, as if your soul recognizes that they’ll never put you in a real place of vulnerability, than to like someone who’s genuinely interested in you. I’ve realized I love a fantasy romance story played out in my head. All the if, shoulds, couldve, wouldave beens. A sweet little treat to ponder on, letting my imagination run rampant as I dive into the stories of fantasy.
I’ve always found great comfort in being alone. I love it. I can’t even explain to you, the joy I feel being in my own company. I’m never bored. Since I was little, I’ve always had this thing: if the house was full of people, I’d run to the quietest room and just be by myself. I deeply enjoy people who let me simply be, who can sit with me in silence. Even though I love a good yap, I also love being left alone, lol. Some people get offended by that; they need you to constantly feed them attention. But sometimes I just need to be left alone in peace, without having to explain that I’m not mad or upset. I just want to be alone. or. I feel like I might die inside.
I can be a great socializer, it comes naturally to me. You can put me in any room full of strangers, and I’ll probably leave having a meaningful conversation with at least one person there. I’m not shy — except when it comes to opening up romantically. If I really like someone, something zaps me out of my entire personality, and I retreat into a deep shell of shyness that others might interpret as aloofness. I now realize that’s my fear of vulnerability — my fear of getting hurt.
Anyway, I avoided texting the guy first for a month. I didn’t text him once, and yet there he was texting me every day, wanting to take me on a date when we got back to school that spring. I think I recognize now that when someone is genuinely interested in you, he will do everything in his power to spend time with you, to get to know you slowly and at your own pace. He won’t rush you into intimacy. His eyes won’t revert straight to sex and your body. He will seek to know your soul, to fall in love with the pieces of you that you’re afraid will get you rejected.
And even though we couldn’t have been a more bizarre pairing, who put these two people together? I remember we went to dinner and yapped for hours. He took me to a restaurant that was too fancy for the both of us, and the older couple next to us said, “Aww, are you both celebrating something?” We looked at each other and laughed and said, “No, it’s our first date,” and they laughed because it seemed like we’d known each other forever. That was the first time someone shook the shyness from me. He made me feel safe, like we were already friends and I had nothing to worry about.
I came from rags, with a family home I was a bit ashamed of showing him, while his family’s home was perfect — every color scheme coordinated, everything in its place. Where I had piles of storage, his family had space for decorations. But he never cared about what I came from or how I grew up. He would tell me he admired me for how far I’d come, and that made him love me even more. While I sometimes felt resentment, feeling he hadn’t suffered like I did, so he knew nothing about life. I built a wall between us. Still, my first love was beautiful, even though it wasn’t meant to be. It set a standard for how I wish to be treated.
One thing I remember about that relationship, is that I never fully let myself fall in love with him. I had deep love for him, but that mad, secure falling. I could never achieve it because of my own fear of love & intimacy. I’ve been terrified my whole life of loving anyone or being dependent on anyone. I feared losing myself in the process, of getting hurt and being abandoned like I felt my father once did. Yet I was also tangled in codependency, a fear of being alone.
In those six years, I often wanted to run for the hills. I felt chained to a prison of control, I was so toxic then, reacting and acting out the dynamics I had seen in my parents’ relationship. I wasn’t ready for something that serious. I needed to deal with my own understanding of men and the role they played in my life. So I left my first love with the desire to grow into my own person, to learn true intimacy with myself, and to see men not as foreign, dangerous, or on the other extreme as saviors of my broken life, but simply as human.
In my “single era,” I was eager to get out there, and have fun. And, wow, I was in over my head. The world slapped me with the reality of hookup culture. I realized my first relationship had protected me from a lot of the cruelty that men and women spew on each other as strangers.
I got rejected, used, and treated as less than human by a few and okay by others — all in the name of being “young and free.” But for me, when I get hurt, it scars me deeply. The pain feels like it lasts for years, even if the moment was brief. The rejection and discardedness from people I shared my body with left me hurt. I remember the last time it happened — I was 29 — and I remember thinking with deep conviction: I will never let anyone who does not respect me touch me again. I must have said it with such passion that the universe heard me, because it felt like men and there attention disappeared from my life after that.
For the last five years, I’ve been alone and without any male disruption — and honestly, it’s made my head spin. I don’t say that with bitterness. For a while, I thought I hated the people who hurt or ghosted me, because how could they do that, to me? They left me to my own conclusions. Just like I felt my dad had once left me when he would disappear into his world. When you’re insecure, that silence can take you to a dark place. I’m not good enough. I’m not pretty enough. Blah, blah, blah. I laugh now because I know it was probably the best thing that could’ve happened. It opened my eyes to the journey of self-respect and love that I needed to go on.
I’ve also realized that those things happen when you’re not in alignment with people and you rush into experiences you shouldn’t be having in the first place. And honestly, being ghosted is probably better than having a man who has no interest in you stick around and ping-pong you around like a dummy. See it as divine protection. Thank you, God, for keeping me safe, for not revealing my true value to those who can’t handle me with care and reverence. Thank you for removing them and keeping me safe. May they go in peace kind of thing.
I’ve never been “boy-crazy,” but I had a habit of being very emotionally detached, until intimacy. Then I’d find myself in deep, obsessive attachment. It’s strange — I couldn’t fully attach to my boyfriend, who so deeply wanted me to love him, but as soon as some guy rejected me, I’d feel like I needed his love immediately.
What was going on with me?
I realize now that I needed to heal my daddy issues, those feelings of abandonment that had been hiding inside me for years. I also needed to stop sharing my body with people who showed no regard for my soul. So when I declared, I will not let anyone touch me, I was sealing a vow of abstinence, a decision to hold off on intimacy until I could respect myself fully again. I signed up for a ten-month emotional intelligence course and was determined to build my self-esteem before even considering physical intimacy again. The truth is, I didn’t even know what true intimacy was. I just knew that what I once thought was fun wasn’t bringing me joy, and only feelings of deep self-loathing.
In this time of deep singleness, I’ve found that I genuinely enjoy my aloneness. I feel safe there — I still do. But a part of me also craves intimacy and partnership, but only if God wills it for me. And I truly mean that. I only want connection that feels in true alignment: safe, intentional, shared values and meant to be. If not, I’m perfectly okay in my aloneness.
In the past, I wanted people to choose me, I’d feel heartbroken when they didn’t. But I’ve healed that little girl who yearned for the sad, bad boy to love her. I believe sex is sacred and should be respected as such, something shared only with someone who has true reverence for you. How can someone have reverence for your being if you give it so freely? How can they know the jewel they’re holding if you don’t treat it as precious yourself?
In my emotional intelligence class, they taught us about courting, how crucial proper courting is for spiritually led relationships. I remember thinking at first, Who even does that anymore? Men run away as soon as you ask them to respect you. Proper courting — especially in a spiritually grounded or faith-based sense — isn’t about rules or rigidity, but about building love with intention, patience, and reverence. It’s the process of discerning with God whether two people are truly aligned in heart, values, and purpose.
Courting involves getting to know someone with the potential for a serious relationship through a structured process of building communication, respect, and mutual understanding. Key steps include starting as friends, getting to know each other authentically through meaningful conversations, being clear about your intentions, showing respect, and developing a connection through shared activities. The process emphasizes intentional, gradual progression and requires patience, honesty, and a focus on emotional and spiritual compatibility before physical intimacy develops.
It also requires being honest about your values and not pretending to be what the other person likes. One of my values, for example, is growth. I value personal growth and a deep spiritual life. If someone shows me signs that those aren’t important to them, even if I find them attractive, I have to walk away. Those are not qualities you can force someone to one day have or respect.
It’s like thinking, “Once he falls in love with me, he’ll start valuing introspection or respecting my desire to put God at the center of the relationship.” But that’s not how it works. Sometimes when a guy thinks you’re pretty, he’ll say, “Well, I don’t really believe in God,” but when he realizes it’s important to you, he’ll respond with, “Well, I mean, I could think about it…” Im also an observant person and I can tell when someone is just mirroring me because they think its what I want to hear.
No — I don’t want you to go to God for me. or mirror me, i want authenticity. I’d like for you to already see the value of God in your own life, for you. because if you respect God in your own life, you’ll respect how much it means to me without having to worry you think my beliefs are stupid, or a fantasy that you need to be convinced of. I don’t want to be in a position where I’m constantly justifying my faith or feeling like I have to be the teacher. That’s another thing: yes, I’m deep and introspective, but being put in the position to constantly elevate others spiritually, while they teach me nothing, drains me.
Too many people lie about who they are just to keep someone in their lives, and then act surprised when that person isn’t who they thought they were. People are constantly revealing themselves to you, and yet we pretend not to see it. I’ve realized I must live out my standards. I have to ask for friendship first, the moment I feel even a spark of attraction. Because if someone is meant for you, you have forever to be with them. So why are we rushing into things with no wisdom? Cálmate.
If someone is truly interested in you, friendship and safety will be their highest priorities. Because one day, if you get to a place in life with a partner and you age, or one of you gets really sick, or life hits hard financially, or your parents pass away, they won’t stay because they remember you were once hot. They’ll stay because they love and respect your soul. People who are shallow are shallow forever. One day you’ll get pregnant, and you’ll want that man to fall even more in love with you, not because of your body, but because of his reverence for your soul. When you’re both aging and tired, you’ll want someone who still loves your soul, not someone thinking, “I need something new to make me feel alive because she’s boring and not hot anymore.” You’ll want someone who takes care of you with gentleness and still chooses you even when life isn’t easy or fun.
That’s why I believe God has to be at the center. God is the fuel for true goodness. If someone lacks respect for God, they will not respect you. If they believe there’s no one above their own humanity, they will always be selfish and shallow.
Seek your Joseph.
Something shifted a few months ago. Maybe I’ve learned what I needed to learn, because suddenly, people are showing interest in me again.
And I realize that healing doesn’t come only from reading books, it comes from living your new standards.
There’s a guy from another state who’s shown interest in me, persistent in wanting to get to know me. Anyway, he asked to come visit and an immediate panic ran through my body. Ugh, no, I can’t do this. This is too much.
But as everyone keeps reminding me, I can’t live my life hiding, waiting to be perfectly healed before I let anyone in. So, reluctantly, I said yes to the visit — with all my boundaries in place, and the clear rule that we’re only hanging out as friends only. Friendship first. It allows space to confirm — or deny — whether someone is meant to grow closer to you. Avoid unnecessary suffering.
I think many times we’re so desperate for a relationship that we let any spark take over like a tornado, sweeping us up in fantasy. I share this story not because I think I’ve found “the one” definitely not. I share it because of the panic I felt when the very thing I’ve wanted — connection — finally presented itself. When the real opportunity to be seen and known arrived, my fear rose too. As a woman, it’s important to learn to be alone and to enjoy your own company, but not to get stuck there. I panicked when I said yes to the visit because I was scared, scared of getting hurt, being used, judged, or rejected.
But I can meet connection differently now, because I am different.
I’ve changed. I know who I am now.
Most importantly, I have a deep relationship with God. He’s the compass of my life. I know true love now because I’ve found God’s love for me and my love for Him. I trust that I can walk away from anything that doesn’t serve my highest good anymore. I’ve told God I wish to experience true love, a genuine union with someone I can grow with, who inspires me as I hope to inspire them. I wish to have my own family one day, to raise children who know more love than trauma, so the healing I’ve done ripples into generations after me. I’ve always admired families who live with sacred loyalty, whose children want to be around their parents because of the joy and safety they feel. I hope to create that someday.
But I also feel peace if God’s plan is different — if I’m meant to walk this life solo. Because I’ve found something deep and sweet in His comfort.
So no, I can’t give dating advice — I’m not a great dater. But I can tell you this:
Trust the process of healing. When God places you in a season of isolation, be fully there. Because when He takes you out, you’ll realize how precious that solitude was it was where you learned to love every part of yourself. It’s where you stopped making idols out of men and romance. God must remain the highest priority. No one should ever take you away from that connection with Him. A man can’t be more important than God. But if you put God first, He will help you navigate life through the process of partnership and connection.
In any relationship, I’m looking for mutual respect, reciprocity, and tenderness — someone I can talk to about anything without fear of rejection, someone who receives me with patience and care. Integrity is the highest virtue of them all. And yes, I enjoy fun times, but understand that my life doesn’t revolve around drinking and partying anymore. We can have fun in clarity and soberness, feeling totally comfortable in each other’s essence instead of constantly searching for escapism. Don’t get me wrong — I like to have a good time. But the version of me who partied every Saturday and made no room for my intimate time with God is not someone I want to go back to. That was when I felt the most empty.
I’ve come to see that love isn’t about perfection. My mom is sick with cancer, but I see the best version of my father now. Once someone who ran from hard things, now fully present and there for us both.
He’s shown me that love, and people, are never perfect. We are all deeply flawed, but we can evolve. We grow. And through it all, love for family and those who care for you is God’s light shining through, reminding you that you matter — even in the imperfections of life.
As always, I hope you leave feeling a little more inspired.
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A Little More Inspired 
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