9 Signs You're A Hard Woman To Get Close To (Even If You Don't Mean To Be)
You might be keeping people at arm's length without realizing it.
Lany-Jade Mondou | Pexels Women who were raised on fairy tales and Disney princesses have been thinking about their wedding for most of their lives. The idea of wearing a big white dress in front of friends and family, being told they will be loved forever, and dancing the night away in the arms of their soul mate is something many brides-to-be cherish and eagerly anticipate.
Unfortunately, for many women, a wedding day seems elusive, and it may be because you're a hard woman to get close to. “Why is that? When is it going to be my turn?” ask these women.
Sometimes, women build walls around themselves without even realizing it. Recognizing the signs and subconscious behaviors linked with these emotional walls can help break the pattern and make you more emotionally inviting.
Here are 9 signs you're a hard woman to get close to, even if you don't mean to be:
1. You self-sabotage
Some women are experts at self-sabotage. They can, without any awareness, drive a relationship off the rails, often for no reason whatsoever.
Why do women self-sabotage and kill a relationship before it starts? Because they are scared.
They are scared it won’t work out. They are scared they will get hurt. They are scared it might work out and wonder if they will be a good long-term partner. They are scared their life will have to change. They are scared of what people might think.
How do women self-sabotage? By being needy. By being demanding. By being nitpicky. By being overly critical. By flirting or even cheating. By not being interested in compromising. By taking everything personally. And so much more.
Again, most people who self-sabotage aren’t aware they are doing it. It is born from insecurity, usually from past relationships gone wrong.
Take a look at your behaviors in past relationships. Is there anything you might have done that led to its demise?
2. You're not fully yourself
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Imagine a woman who presents herself as a cool, mellow, undemanding person. Men fall in love with this kind of person pretty quickly. Unfortunately, this is not who she is.
She might be consumed with anxiety. She might need constant communication. She probably needs verbal affirmation, and she definitely needs to feel needed by others.
Her boyfriends know nothing about this, so what happens because she can’t be herself? Her relationship ultimately implodes.
Sometimes her partner might realize she is not who she presents herself as, and so they leave. Sometimes she gets so anxious about things that she blows it up at her partner. Oftentimes, because she knows she isn’t herself in the relationship, she doesn’t trust her lover could be either, and, without trust, the relationship dies a slow death.
I know we all want to present the best version of ourselves when we are in a new relationship, but it’s important we be ourselves, to present as ourselves, so a potential partner can truly know us, and fall in love with our real selves, not a stranger.
Some women may engage in self-silencing, suppressing their true feelings and needs to maintain harmony or avoid conflict in relationships. A 2023 study explained that this can create a barrier to true intimacy and connection, as partners may struggle to understand her or feel truly connected to her when she's not being genuine.
3. You choose the wrong people
Many people, through no fault of their own, choose the same type of person over and over. For some people, they are attracted to people who will treat them well, but for many, they are attracted to people who will only cause them heartbreak.
Many people tell me they have a ‘type’, a kind of person they are always attracted to. I always ask them how chasing the ‘type’ has worked out for them. Could it be why they are sitting here with me in counseling while lamenting they haven’t been able to find their ‘person.’ Usually, the answer is "It has not worked out so well."
The first step in starting to choose a different sort of person is to recognize that you always choose the wrong ones. Once you see this, you can start changing your approach.
The first step is to take stock of the traits of the wrong people you have chosen. We tend to get attracted to someone for their overall vibe, but if you are aware of the traits of the people who have hurt you, the minute you see evidence of those traits, you can run.
The second step, in many ways more important, is for you to do some work on yourself and help you attract the kind of person you want. It’s a general rule that we attract someone who reflects us. If we aren’t in a good place, we attract someone else who isn’t in a good place. And vice versa.
Accepting how you tend to choose the wrong person and taking steps to change this tendency will help you get to the altar as the bride you long to be.
4. You stay in toxic relationships for much longer than you should
For many people, they know they are in a bad relationship, but they stay anyway. The reasons they do so are important to note.
They do so because they believe they can fix their person. They do so because they aren’t quitters and have already devoted so much time that they don’t want to walk away.
They do so because they don’t believe they deserve any better. They do so because they hope things can go back to the way they were in the beginning, when they were happy. Unfortunately, staying in a toxic relationship will get you nowhere.
No one will change unless they want to. Things will never go back to the way they were in the beginning. Being the only one fighting for a relationship is a waste of time, and no one deserves to be in a relationship that makes them unhappy! So, if you are in a toxic relationship, get out now! It’s the only way you will find the happiness that you seek.
5. You don't take care of yourself
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If someone feels terrible about themselves, they will only attract people who feel terrible as well. For many people who feel terrible about themselves, they hope they will find someone who will make them feel whole, who will pull them out of the bad mental state in which they dwell.
But it just doesn’t work this way.
If you want to find the happily-ever-after you desire, you must take care of yourself. You need to stay physically and mentally happy and create a life that satisfies you. You need to have healthy relationships with friends and family.
If you can take care of yourself and make yourself a healthy, happy person, not someone who needs to find themselves through someone else, you will be way more likely to find the person you seek.
A 2012 study concluded that while neglecting self-care might be a sign of underlying issues that can make forming close relationships more challenging for some women, it's not always a definitive predictor. Understanding the complexities of these connections and addressing the root causes through support and professional help is key to fostering healthier self-care practices and building stronger relationships.
6. You hold on to past pain
For so many women who are looking for a healthy relationship, they continue living in the past.
They are holding on to past hurts and projecting them onto potential partners. They have put up tall walls that are almost insurmountable. They sabotage what might be a healthy relationship to prevent themselves from getting hurt.
We must work through past hurts before we seek a new relationship. We must take the time to figure out what went wrong and recognize our role in it. If you can work through what happened, learn your lessons, and let the relationship go, you will be way more likely to find, and keep a healthy relationship.
7. You prioritize your phone over people
I am sure you are intimately acquainted with your phone. I am guessing you are holding it right now to read this article. Perhaps you are even addicted to it and keep it next to you at all times.. Perhaps the idea of losing your phone fills you with an incredible amount of anxiety.
This is a fact for many, many women in the world, women who are addicted to their phones and women who are unwittingly sabotaging their relationships because of it.
Women who are addicted to their phones are women who might not be able to give men the attention they desire. Who wants a partner who is always on their phone instead of talking to you? Those relationships end quickly.
Who wants a partner in bed at night, prioritizing their phone over cuddling and falling asleep together?
So, pay attention to your phone use and see if it interferes in your relationships. Relationships are about connection, and if your connection is weak because of your phone, some changes are going to have to be made!
Research suggests that excessive or inappropriate smartphone use can create barriers to intimacy and closeness in relationships. These barriers can stem from the negative relational consequences of phubbing, the role of attachment styles, the impact of social comparison, and gender differences in communication preferences.
8. You use social media as a relationship tool
Oh, how we relationship coaches wish social media had never been invented. Why? Social media is one of the biggest impediments to a happy relationship.
How many times have you connected with someone online or in person, and then immediately checked out their social media profiles before you take one more step in getting to know them?
If you don’t like what you see, the quality of the content they generate, you might write them off. Even worse, if you see that he has too many women friends, he can get written off immediately.
Also, women use social media to spy on their partners. Constantly monitoring social media to see if your partner is online, then getting irritated if they are online and they don't reach out to you, is not a good way to build a trusting relationship. Neither is seeing that they aren’t online and wondering if they are doing something nefarious.
Social media does not reflect a full person. No one in a healthy relationship monitors the whereabouts of their partner all the time. Stalking someone online never does anyone any good.
So, if you use social media as a means to evaluate a relationship, know it will most likely only harm the connection in the end and leave you alone. Again.
9. You don't put yourself out there
How can you find someone if you aren’t out there looking for them? If you are sitting at home while waiting for your mister right to appear out of nowhere, you are not making an effort to do what you need to do to meet people. You'll will never find your groom to stand beside this way.
Much like anything you want in the world — a job, a car, a trip to Paris — you need to take the steps necessary to get it. Sitting around, waiting for someone to hand you what you want is a waste of time.
I would encourage you to put yourself out there. Make an online dating profile. Do the things you enjoy doing to meet people. Try tantric speed dating.
Whatever it is you need to do to start meeting people. I always say we need to kiss a few frogs before we find our prince. You can’t find frogs to kiss on your couch. At least, I hope not!
A fear of intimacy can lead to avoiding close relationships or sabotaging them when they begin to deepen. According to a 2024 study, this fear can be rooted in past experiences of betrayal, trauma, or neglect, leading to a tendency to push others away or resist emotional openness.
I am guessing that if you are reading this article and still single, many of these habits will ring true for you. If you want to find your person, take the steps you need to take to change things up.
If you do, if you make some change and positively open your energy, you are way more likely to be the person wearing the white dress sometime shortly.
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be. Mitzi's bylines have appeared in The Good Men Project, MSN, PopSugar, Prevention, Huffington Post, Psych Central, among many others.
