Protect your peace, but don’t build a fortress so tall that the good people can’t get in.

Guarding yourself works until the guarding becomes the whole arrangement. After enough disappointment, the sensible caution that protected you starts running automatically, and it filters out people who would have been good for you along with the ones who would not. The system cannot tell the difference, because it was built when everyone looked like a risk.

Check whether a rule you made once is still earning its place. Let one person slightly closer than your current setting allows, in a small way, and see. Safety and company are both real needs, and you are allowed to want the second one.