scared of commitment, but make it hot girl coded

why we’ve mistaken detachment for power, and fear for freedom.

THE RISE OF THE COMMITMENT-PHOBE COOL GIRL

Once upon a time, being scared of commitment was a thing people unpacked in therapy. Now, it’s a meme. A vibe. A trait you write in your Hinge bio right after “low-maintenance but will cry if you don’t text back.”

Suddenly, we’ve romanticized running away before things get too real. We’ve made ghosting poetic, indecision aesthetic, and avoidant attachment sexy. “I'm emotionally unavailable but I look good in the sunlight”—as if that’s a flex and not a cry for help.

What used to be a defense mechanism is now a brand.

She’s scared to love you, but she can make an oat milk latte while looking like she’s just stepped out of a Pinterest board. She doesn’t reply to your texts, but she journals about you. She won’t commit, but she’ll post an insta story of your hands.

We call her “cool.”
We call her “hot.”
But beneath that eyeliner and edge, maybe she’s just scared.

DETACHMENT IS THE NEW DESIRE

There’s something seductive about being wanted but never pinned down.
We grew up watching women chase love. Now we’re flipping the narrative. Now we’re the ones ghosting.

And on paper? That feels like progress. (dare I say, Equality?)

But the truth is murkier. Detachment feels powerful… until it starts to ache.
Until you’re sitting in bed at 2 a.m. wondering why no one ever really stays, forgetting you never let them.
Until you're rereading old conversations like they’re relics, not relationships.
Until you realize you've made being emotionally unavailable your whole personality, because that felt safer than being seen.

WHEN DID COMMITMENT BECOME A LIABILITY?

Somewhere between hookup culture (the newest trend being “situationship”, social media, and therapy-speak entering everyday language, commitment started sounding like a trap. Like something only desperate people want.

Now we say “I’m not ready for anything serious” like it’s a green flag.
We pathologize love, diagnose it, dissect it.
We say “anxious attachment” the way we used to say “clingy.”
We say “boundaries” when we mean “walls.”
And we say “I'm just not a relationship person” because it sounds better than “I’ve been hurt before and I don’t know how to stop flinching.”

This one time a guy said “you know you’ve build these massive walls around you” and in my head I was like, “I don’t see the problem?” Just to realise that it’s the same as giving fake commitments. Like offering someone a taste of love but never the whole thing. Like leaving the porch light on but keeping the door locked.

And the worst part? Sometimes, we believe it too. We convince ourselves that as long as we act like we’re open, it counts. As long as we send the good morning texts and laugh at the right jokes and kiss them in the right places—it must mean something. Right?

You can’t hide behind “I’m just figuring things out” forever.
At some point, the people around you will stop knocking.
And you’ll realise the walls weren’t protecting you—they were isolating you. That you don’t just miss them, you miss who you got to be around them. Soft. Silly. Seen.

THE COOL GIRL TROPE GOT A MAKEOVER

You remember the Cool Girl from Gone Girl, right?
She drank beer, watched sports, and didn’t ask for anything.

But the 2020s Cool Girl? She’s still detached, but now she’s also hyper-self-aware.
She’s in therapy. She microdoses. She knows all the red flags—and sometimes is all of them.

She listens to sad girl indie and posts reels about “romanticizing solitude” while rewatching Normal People on loop.

She doesn’t fall in love. She observes it. An archivist of almosts.

She doesn’t text first.

She doesn’t stay the night.

She never asks what this is.

Not because she doesn’t care—

but because she cares so much, she’d rather lose you than admit it.

COMMITMENT ISN’T THE ENEMY.

FEAR IS.

Let’s be real: commitment isn’t scary because it’s boring.
It’s scary because it asks for vulnerability.
It demands showing up when you’d rather hide.
It means letting someone see you not just when you're glowing and witty and curated, but when you’re exhausted and jealous and not entirely okay.

That’s what we’re dodging. Not the commitment.
The exposure.
The intimacy.
The terrifying possibility that someone might see the parts of us we haven’t even made peace with.

Because what if they see the mess and walk away?
What if they stay and you still feel alone?
What if all the stories you’ve told yourself about being unlovable turn out to be true?

So you keep it light. You keep it safe. You perfect the art of being almost-close. You offer jokes instead of needs. Silence instead of honesty. You master detachment and call it boundaries, when really it’s just fear dressed up in self-respect.

And the worst part? You start to forget what real connection even feels like. You start to believe that maybe this—this half-love, this nearly-love, this temporary touch—is all you're built for.

But you're not.

You're built for more.

You’ve just been hiding under armor that used to be necessary.

And maybe now—
it’s just in the way.

“I’M NOT LOOKING FOR ANYTHING SERIOUS”

– AND OTHER HALF-TRUTHS

We say we’re not looking for anything serious, but we make playlists with their names in the titles.
We say we’re chill, but we overthink the double text.
We call it “casual” but analyze their Instagram likes like we’re writing a thesis.

This is the era of performative detachment.
We want closeness, but without the risk.
We want to feel loved, but never too much.
We want the comfort of someone’s shoulder without offering our own.

So we laugh it off. We say things like “I’m just better alone” or “love isn’t for me” with a shrug, like we haven’t stayed up scrolling through old texts or replaying half-finished moments in our heads. Like we don’t ache when we see someone choose softness out loud.

Because vulnerability doesn’t just scare us—it embarrasses us. And admitting we want to be seen, fully and without pretense, feels like confessing to a weakness we promised ourselves we’d never have again.

HOT GIRL ERA OR EMOTIONAL AVOIDANCE?

It’s tricky. Because empowerment and fear can look similar on the outside.

Skipping the label? Empowering.
Avoiding it because you’re scared to be hurt again? That’s fear.
Sleeping around because you want to explore? Valid.
Doing it because you think it’ll make you feel less lonely? That’s a different conversation.

Sometimes we don’t even know which it is.
Sometimes it’s both.

And sometimes we hide behind aesthetics—behind routines and rituals and books and skincare and iced coffee with cinnamon—to avoid the fact that we crave something lasting and don’t know how to ask for it.

We perform independence like it’s theatre. Curated loneliness. Pretty solitude. We light a candle, put on a face mask, post a story captioned “date night with me”—and hope no one notices how badly we want someone to text, “I wish I was there.”

We say we’re healing, and maybe we are. But healing doesn’t always look like stillness. Sometimes it’s messy and loud and requires admitting that the things we’ve called self-love were sometimes just ways to make the silence bearable.

VULNERABILITY IS HOT TOO, YOU KNOW

There’s nothing wrong with being scared.
The problem is pretending that fear is freedom.
The problem is mistaking numbness for coolness.

Let’s romanticize showing up.
Let’s romanticize staying.
Let’s romanticize the bravery it takes to say:
“I want this. I’m scared, but I want this.”

Because that, honestly? Is hotter than anything else.

There’s a quiet kind of confidence in choosing to care. In not playing it cool. In texting first, loving out loud, not needing detachment to prove your worth. Because while mystery might attract attention, it’s honesty that holds it.

And maybe the real flex isn’t how quickly you can leave—but how deeply you’re willing to stay.

WHEN DID WE BECOME SO AFRAID OF BEING SEEN?

We talk so much about being authentic, being raw, being “unapologetically ourselves"—
but commitment?
That’s where our curated selves start to crumble.

Because love demands you put the phone down.
It asks for the version of you that doesn’t always know what to say.
It sees the mess. The melt. The moods.
And stays.

But if you’ve never let someone see all that, how would you know?

We’ve mastered the art of being known without being felt. Of saying just enough to seem vulnerable, but never so much that it risks being real. We give glimpses, filters, captions with depth—but not depth itself.

Because being truly seen means giving someone the power to misunderstand you.

To disappoint you. To matter.

And that’s terrifying when you’ve built your whole identity around never needing anyone to begin with.

COMMITMENT ISN’T A CAGE. IT’S A CHOICE.

The problem isn’t commitment.
It’s how we’ve framed it—as the death of individuality. The end of fun. The villain in the Hot Girl story.

But real commitment?
It’s choosing someone, over and over, even when it’s inconvenient.
It’s being chosen in return, not for your highs but your humanness.
It’s trusting that you’re not too much.
It’s not having to be cool all the time.

It’s the kind of safety that doesn’t dull you—it softens you. Commitment doesn’t ask you to shrink; it asks you to show up. Fully. Flawed. Unfiltered.

It says: you don’t have to perform here. You don’t have to be a trend. You can just be.

And maybe that’s not the death of freedom at all—maybe that’s the first time you’ve ever really had it.

OKAY, BUT HOW DO WE UNLEARN THIS?

Here’s the thing: we’ve been told for years that “attachment is weakness.”
That crying is clingy. That wanting more is needy.
We’ve built identities around being the one who cares less.

But maybe we start small.

By texting back.
By saying what we mean.
By not laughing off the things we actually feel deeply.
By letting someone stay, even after we’ve shown them the unedited parts.

We unlearn it by giving softness a chance to stay.

Healing doesn’t always look like detachment—it often looks like trying again.

Awkwardly.

Imperfectly.

With trembling hands and a heart that still flinches.

But shows up anyway.

THE GIRLS WHO STAY

Let’s stop glamorizing the exit.
Let’s start celebrating the girls who stay.
The girls who lean in when it gets hard.
Who aren’t afraid to say, “Yes, I want love. Not as a punchline. Not as a plot twist. But as a possibility.”

Because the bravest thing you can do?
Is love without flinching.

Even when it’s terrifying.
Even when you’ve been hurt before.
Even when everything in you wants to self-sabotage and run.

The girls who stay?

They’ve known the ache of almosts. They’ve memorized the exits. But they choose presence anyway.

Not because it’s easy—but because softness deserves a chance to root. And in a world that tells us love is cringe, needy, naive—staying is the most radical thing you can do.

POPULARITY ON THE INTERNET: WHERE AESTHETICS AND FEAR COLLIDE

Let’s talk about why this has blown up online.

Commitment-phobia has become a trend. The "emotionally unavailable hot girl" trope? It’s viral. It’s a genre. It gets likes. It gets shared. It’s content that feels like a mirror.

Scroll through TikTok and you’ll find a flood of confessional videos: “I want love but I ghost every guy I like.” “Why I get the ick when people are nice to me.” “How to look like you don’t care (even when you do).”

There’s comfort in this chorus of chaos. It tells us we’re not alone in our fear. It lets us dress it up as funny, aesthetic, even aspirational. There’s always a perfect filter for avoidance.

But virality doesn’t equal healing. And when our deepest fears become punchlines, they’re harder to name. Harder to outgrow. Because suddenly, we’re not just scared—we’re trending.

The more we see detachment celebrated, the more we internalize it. It shapes our scripts. It sets our expectations. And before we know it, we’re performing disinterest for the algorithm, not asking ourselves what we really want.

The result? A generation of girls fluent in irony but starving for sincerity. Who can quote a thousand memes about “not catching feelings,” but have forgotten what it feels like to hold someone’s gaze and mean it.

YOU CAN BE HOT AND HEALING

You can wear lip gloss and still crave intimacy.
You can have a roster and still want one person to call yours.
You can say “I’m scared of commitment” and still work toward unlearning that fear.

There’s nothing hotter than a girl who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to say,
“Actually, I’m ready to stay. For real this time.”

And maybe you won’t get it right the first time.
Maybe you’ll mess up.
Maybe you’ll still flinch, still freeze, still overthink that double text.

But you’ll try.

And that?
That’s the coolest thing you’ll ever do.