Throughout life, you can choose to be open or closed to friendships, relationships, and opportunities. 

If you choose to be open, you choose to trust the other person. What their motives and methods are determine if you have made yourself able to connect as you intended, or if you have made yourself vulnerable to being hurt. You may close off to heal after being hurt or betrayed, and that time may be very necessary. 

But if you choose to stay closed forever, that doesn’t mean you’ll never get hurt again. It means you’ll never connect, which means you’ll hurt in a different way all the time. 

Trust yourself and the wisdom you have gained from past experiences to know when to step in and when to step out of new potential connections. Your vulnerability decreases as your wisdom increases.

Vulnerability is just risk of being hurt.

When you use what you have learned, you know how to recognize red flags or what they even are. You know when your intuition tells you something is off and to pay attention to it. You have learned that giving the benefit of the doubt doesn't mean to try and ignore or forget behavior or treatment that is totally unacceptable.

You learned these things the hard way, but you didn't learn them just to never use them and close off entirely. 

You learned them so that you could more quickly filter out people and circumstances that are not going to end up rewarding for anyone's heart. You learned them so that you don't need a shield in order to protect yourself from getting hurt as deeply as in the past. You learned them to be able to live and love better than ever before. That is, if you choose to use them to be the wiser open person that you have learned how to be.