1. You can have crushes that last for months or years just because you are not willing to initiate contact or make the first move even though you keep thinking about them…a lot.

2. If the person you like approaches you, you will not show any kind of excitement which may come off as ‘not interested’ but the truth is you are actually quite interested, you just don’t know how to handle the first few encounters very well.

3. On dates, you usually do the listening because you want to divert the attention from talking about you as long as you possibly can, despite the fact that you want to open up to them and tell them a lot of things about yourself–including how romantic you really are.

4. You never believe the compliments you get. You always think they are delusive, not genuine or that there is another motive behind it, however, you keep the compliments you want to say to yourself or even say too little because you are not sure how the person will take it.

5. You have so many unsent texts and emails sitting in your inbox since you never had the audacity to send them because of how ‘sappy’ they were.

6. The moment someone shows interest in you, you will find a reason why it won’t work, on the other hand, you envision  how lovely it would be if you two were together walking in the park, talking about life.

7. You will keep a fair amount of physical distance at first but you will wonder how the touch of their hands feels like.

8. You will have vulnerable moments and you will think of calling the one you like, but you will end up talking to your best friend instead.

9. You don’t trust easily; but deep inside, you want to let the person know exactly why you don’t but you also don’t want to push them away.

10. You will struggle to make eye contact; you don’t want them to know how into them you really are. So you always try to look away.

11. You get cold feet whenever something sounds too good to be true; you think the mask will come off and the real heart breaker will come out, but you also wonder if maybe you are the exception to the rule.

12. You wish you could let anyone you’re into talk to your best friend so they can explain to them that there is a very lovable person underneath this mask of ice.

13. You will miss them in several occasions and you will wish they were there with you, but you will never let them know that.

14. When you decide to reach out, you will keep it as short and shallow as possible. “Hi. How are you? Hope all is well.” But what you really want to say “Hi. I miss you. I really want to see you.”

15. As much as you enjoy coffee dates, what you really want is a whole day full of activities ending with a heart to heart conversation really late at night.

16. You tend to buy things for the people you like but never give it to them because you don’t want them to think you are too attached too soon.

17. The truth is, the more romantic you are the more guarded you will be, because you know that if you decide to let someone in, you will go all out and the last time you gave your heart to someone–it got broken, so you keep guarding your heart until you find the person who truly wants to peel off all your layers.