We're Protecting Ourselves: The Honest Reasons Why Girls Ice Guys Out

When a girl starts to really like a guy, there is so much that goes through her head.

She's finally letting those walls down she's worked so hard to build up.

It's really terrifying letting someone in when you're so used to looking after number one and feeding your cynicism.

We ladies are very skeptical, always waiting for something to go wrong. The second something doesn't go exactly the way we want it to, we shut down.

We don't want to get our hearts broken, so it's a lot easier to just pretend we don't have one.

We're all pretending to be heartless having a heart is equated with weakness. We don't want to be weak.

We have feelings, but we can't let you know that, OK?

When you aren't calling us enough, thinking about us enough or doing enough to make us feel completely comfortable, we bug out.

There's only so long we can put up the cool, calculated façade. We're scared if we stay with a guy for too long, he's going to see us for who we really are, and then he won't like us anymore.

So, once we feel like you're pulling away, even if you're not, we will ice you out.

Icing out is similar to ghosting in that we disappear. We fall off the face of the earth.

We care too much, so we pretend like we don't care at all.

Only, instead of completely shutting a guy out, we're actually just playing the cool girl to try to keep you engaged.

For example, when you don't contact us for four days and then reach out with a flaccid Facebook message, we'll click it so you can see we've “read” it, but we won't respond.

See? We don't care!

It's so passive aggressive.

In reality, we were sitting around, going over every single detail of our last encounter, wondering what we did to cause you not to call.

We've been sending screenshots to our girlfriends and wondering what the next move should be.

You clearly aren't into us, so now we can't be into you, either.

It's a bit of a power play, really. We don't want to lose control by investing too much and being too open with our feelings.

When we think you're losing interest, we'll take away all interest to pull you back in.

It's sick, and it's twisted, but it's true. You may not even be aware you're hurting us, but that won't resonate.

We'll just ice you out, internally sh*t a brick and casually open things up again when you come crawling back.

If we said we needed more attention, you would think we were crazy.

When we don't hear from you, we just assume you don't like us anymore.

The thing is, if we asked you to give us more attention, we would just be reaffirming the generalizations that society already has about women.

If we said what we wanted, you would call us a clinger.

We don't want to be labeled “crazy.” We want you to give us more face time, to call us more and assure us we're special.

All that sounds like it's asking a guy too much. So, we wallow in silence.

We're afraid to show our feelings, and we're afraid of showing ourselves our feelings.

When we start to feel things, it's really scary. We don't want to believe we actually are these emotional people who can get swept up by a cute boy.

We don't want to show you our true feelings because it feels like we're exposing ourselves. If we're exposed, we're open to getting hurt.

We're protecting ourselves.

We shut you out as a defense mechanism. If we don't care, we can't be susceptible to pain. We've spent our whole lives taking care of ourselves.

We don't want to let you in only to regret it. Icing you out is a weapon we utilize.

We're trying to gauge how much you care.

We don't want you to know we like you more than you like us. By icing you out, we can see how far you're willing to go for us.

If icing you out isn't enough for you to come through, then we get the answer we needed right away.

We expect you to let us down, so we'd rather know sooner than later.

If you come back and try to win us over, we'll give you a second chance because you've proved you care enough.

We need the affirmation, and this is the only way we know how to get it.

We don't know how to communicate.

We just don't have the right words to express how we feel. We ice you out because we can't even figure out what to say.

How do we tell you we really like you without scaring you? How do we say you're always on our minds without coming off as a psycho?

We push you away so we don't have to audibly deal with the complicated emotions that are devouring us from the inside out.

We want to be chased, but we don't want to be chased.

We all assert our independence until we hate our freedom. We don't want to be smothered, and yet we want to be pursued. There is a fine line when it comes to the chase.

We're still trying to figure out just what we want. We don't want you to be up our asses, but we don't want you to stop caring altogether.

Can't everything just be easily explained without fear?

We want you to miss us.

If we disappear for a little while, you're forced to miss us.

We want you to realize what you have and appreciate it. If everything were too easy for you, it wouldn't be exciting.

When we ice you out, it forces you to reassess our relationship.

Since absence makes the heart grow fonder, we're going to make sure you know what it's like when we're absent.

It's easier to be cold than to feel.

It's definitely a lot easier to be an “Ice Queen” than it is to be hot with feelings.

We'd rather push you away than admit our hearts are in it. Being cold provides us with a buffer. It gives us a wall to hide behind.

If we feel too much, we could end up burned. We don't want to give any guy that kind of power.

We expected this to fail from the beginning.

We went into this just waiting for it to end. Why prolong things? We self-sabotage just to get the ugly stuff over with.

We're cynical and jaded. This couldn't possibly work out, so why get emotionally invested in it?

Just smash it to pieces and walk away before anyone gets hurt.

We're insecure.

We ice you out because we don't know what else to do.

We aren't sure of this relationship, and we aren't sure about how you feel about us. You haven't given us anything solid to work with.

We're emotional, and when we start to feel crazy, we want to make it go away.

We can't think about anything else, and so we push it under the rug, hoping it will just resolve itself.

We're hoping you'll come after us and give us what we need but would never ask you for.