does knowing me more lead to loving me less?

when vulnerability feels like a gamble I always lose

They say the more you know someone, the more you grow to love them. That love deepens with understanding—the quirks, the vulnerabilities, the sacred pieces they don’t show the rest of the world.

But I’ve always felt like the opposite happens with me. That the more someone sees of me, the more they start to pull away. Like the deeper someone gets, the more cracks they find. And eventually, the closeness starts to cost them something.

There's this moment that happens—when you finally let someone past the first layer, past the carefully curated version of yourself you present to the world. You share something real. That one irrational fear that keeps you up at night, a wound that still pains you to think about, the way you need reassurance even when you hate needing it. And you brace for impact, watching their face for that flicker, that almost imperceptible shift that tells you they’re seeing something they didn’t expect. Something they're not sure they signed up for.

I've become an expert at reading that shift. The way conversations get a little shorter. The way “I love you” starts to feel like a line they’re rehearsing instead of meaning—like something they have to say, not something they get to say. The way they overload with physical affection to compensate for their lack of real connection. Like love with an asterisk. Love with terms and conditions they're still deciding on.

I learned to portion myself out in digestible pieces. I learned to be the version of me that's easiest to love: the funny one, the supportive one, the one who has her shit together. I became a master of misdirection, deflecting deeper questions with humor, changing the subject when things got too real. Because if they don't really know me, they can't really reject me, right?

But living like this is fucking exhausting. It’s so lonely being adored for a version of you that isn’t real, knowing the love you receive is just applause for the performance, not for the person behind it. Deep down you know that the real you—the one who cries at cancer commercials, carries trust issues, and sometimes needs to be alone for days just to feel human again—has been deemed too much. Too complicated. Too risky to love fully.

I watch other people grow closer through vulnerability—like sharing their messiest parts brings them together instead of pushing them apart. And I can’t help but wonder what’s so different about me? What is it about my particular brand of human that turns intimacy into a reason to pull away?

Maybe it’s the way I need constant reassurance but hate myself for needing it. Maybe it’s how I love so fiercely it borders on desperation, or how I can be completely present one day and need to disappear the next. Maybe it’s just that I’m still figuring out how to be a person in this world—and that process isn’t always pretty.

There’s something so demeaning about realizing you might be the problem. That after all your talk of compatibility and timing and emotional availability, the reason for every unraveling relationship is you—your specific combination of needs, wounds, and ways of being that seem to wear people down over time.

Each new person I let in is a test case—another chance to prove myself wrong. But the pattern always returns: the early spark, the phase where my quirks feel endearing, the slow reveal of who I really am—then the retreat. That quiet recalibration of their affection.

And with each cycle, my hope shrinks. My belief in “finding my person” becomes less romantic and more theoretical. Because if this has happened over and over, what are the odds the next time will be different? What are the odds the problem isn’t me?

I find myself cataloging my flaws with increasing precision. The way I overthink until I've spiraled into anxiety. How I can be clingy when I'm insecure but distant when I'm overwhelmed. The way I need more emotional maintenance than seems reasonable. How my past traumas leak into present moments, coloring perfectly innocent interactions with suspicion or fear. The way I love with an intensity that probably feels suffocating to people who just want something easy and light.

Maybe I’m just someone best appreciated from afar. The friend people adore but never deem their favorite. The writer people read but don’t really know. Maybe my kind of love—messy, consuming, real—isn’t what people actually want when they say they want love.

And the worst part? I can’t even blame them. If I met me, would I stick around? If I had to deal with my emotional complexity, my fear of abandonment disguised as hyper-independence, my way of making everything more intense than it needs to be—would I choose that? Or would I, too, start to love less the more I learned?

The math is brutal: if everyone pulls away once they really know me, the common denominator is me. But how do you change the core of who you are without erasing yourself entirely?

Every new connection feels like a slow countdown to the same ending. No matter how much I’ve grown, no matter how carefully I try to rewrite the pattern—I’m still me. And me, apparently, is someone who becomes harder to love the closer you get.

It’s a unsparing thought—to believe that being known means being left. And I won’t pretend it hasn’t shaped the way I approach love, or how tightly I hold my own truth.

But lately, I’ve started to wonder if the story I’ve been telling myself is just that—a story. One born more from hurt than fact.

Maybe I’m not too much. Maybe I’ve just been too much for the wrong people.

Maybe the problem isn’t that I’m unlovable, but that I’ve mistaken conditional affection for love enough times that I started to believe it was my fault when it disappeared.

Maybe knowing me more hasn’t made people love me less—it’s just made them realize they weren't ready to love someone fully. Maybe they weren’t ready to hold space for complexity, contradiction, softness that sometimes gets sharp around the edges.

And maybe that still hurts. A lot.

But I think I’m finally starting to understand that being fully seen and being fully loved aren't opposites—they’re twins. One just takes more courage. Not just from others, but from me, too.

Because if I want someone to stay after they’ve seen it all, I have to let them see it in the first place. I have to believe that love isn’t something I have to earn by being easy or agreeable or "low-maintenance." I have to believe that the kind of love I want—the deep, durable, staying kind—is possible.

Even if I haven’t found it yet.

I don’t have a bow to tie this up with. I still flinch when someone gets too close. I still wonder, sometimes, if I’m built wrong. But I’m trying. I’m learning to hold my own hand when I want to self-destruct. I’m learning that hiding doesn’t keep me safe—it just keeps me lonely.

Maybe knowing me should lead to loving me more.

And maybe, one day, someone will prove that to me.
But even if they don’t, maybe I can.