Dear Chasee,
As someone who more often gets run away from, maybe I'd be better at giving you sympathy than advice. Then again, I've most definitely gone through the scenario you've described and learned a few things from the countless false starts, dead ends and cold shoulders I've endured in my love-struck days. But before I get going, I hate to harp on something that's probably pretty obvious, but don't forget it's not just men who are running away. We all have our ways of protecting ourselves from being hurt, and I speak from experience when I say that women and men alike will often burn a bridge to save themselves a little romantic trouble.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's any one singular reason why you and your friends consistently play the coyote to your crushes' road runner. When I think about the times I've done the avoiding, it always depended on the situation. Sometimes I ran because my feelings weren't as strong as theirs, and sometimes I ran because my feelings were so much stronger it hurt to not have them reciprocated. Sometimes the person was crazy, and sometimes I was even crazier! It depended on the individual connection between us and the angle we were both coming from - if one of us was off just the slightest bit, we'd deflect when we got too close. Those times we hit straight on were like walking into a lamppost: It hurt like hell, but made you laugh at the same time. Still, those moments are rare it seems.

In that movie Closer, what's Jude Law's reason for choosing Julia Roberts over Natalie Portman? He chooses her because, in his words, "She doesn't need me." If the men y'all are after keep bailing when it's time to turn the chase into a capture, I bet it's because you're not both choosing to be together; it's because one or both of you feel forced into it. Our magnetic pull toward someone often has a lot of scary and unhealthy roots - weird compulsions that we won't even admit to our therapists. And sometimes these inner workings force us to make decisions we don't want to make, like pursuing those romantic interests we know are just gonna run away anyway. (Come on, like we can't tell from the moment we meet them! And isn't that why we want them in the first place?)