Boundaries of the heart

So balance is the key to life, but to achieve balance within your heart seems to be quite a challenge for most. What I have found is that people are often one of two ways when it comes to their heart, completely open and free flowing, or completely rigid and closed off. Now the difficulty with this, is that first leaves a person completely vulnerable to heartache, the other leaves the person completely alone, only letting those around them in so close before they run into a brick wall. Neither of these seem to be an ideal option to choose. So the question becomes, where is the middle ground, and how does one find it within themselves and around them? I wonder if having flexible boundaries might be the middle ground. If a person never allows themselves to be loved by another, they can never feel the moments of true happiness that come with true and unconditional love. However there is also pain and hurt that comes with this love. The thing is, with true love, the pain and hurt can be mended, and love will always rise up stronger than before. When a person locks the key to their heart, they eliminate the possibility of feeling pain within their heart, but also the feelings of passion and spiritual connectedness that only true and unconditional love can bring. That seems to me to be a lonely place to be, and people with a locked heart will do just about anything to keep it that way. They will find other ways to feel happiness, such as the use of substances, they will participate in one night affairs just to get a quick dose of only the desirable feelings of love, and they nearly always stay in control of relationships by giving bursts of love, but only enough to interest a person before they take it back. This protects them, and leaves them in charge of something that they are not meant to be in charge of, matters of the heart.
The alternative "bleeding heart", brings on a whole new concern. This is more like a slow death of self. When a person has no boundaries around their heart at all, what this means is that they do not pay attention to their sense of self. They give and give and give to take care of others, never asking for anything in return, but secretly hoping that some benefits will come and somebody will return the favors of a bleeding heart. It seems to make sense to a bleeding heart that others around them would reach out to take care of them and their needs, after all that is what they do for others. So they give and give, and wait and wait, until one day they get very angry and tired because nobody has responded to their unspoken needs. At this point, they make the switch to the locked heart. So in thinking about these two scenarios, what could change, what could be different to make a middle ground, a thriving heart? The troublee is, too often these two tpes are attracted to one anohter in relationsips, and they can never be oin the same place at the same time. The bleeding heart is attracted to the locked heart because they seem to have the most need to be taken care of, they could potentia;;y be the most rewarding person to be with because they need to learn to trust others due to being hurt before. What better person to teach them that people can give love than a bleeding heart? Do yousee where tis could become problematic? The locked heart loves the constant love reassurance that a bleeding heart will give, until one day the bleeding heart runs out of love because they are not being nurtured back, they are not having their spiritual needs met, they are not recieving refills of love that come in a balanced relationship. When the bleeding heart switches to a locked heart when they cannot give anymore, the original locked heart feels relived that they never opened their heart because they knew that this would happen, they knew that pain would come, and they are reasured that they have done the right thing by never opening their heart to this pain. Can you see the irony in this? Had both people found the middle ground, they could achieve the perfect balance together, and they could experience the joys and pains of a relationhsip together, not be lonely, share, smile, and cry together. Anger would be okay sometimes, and when things got messy, and either or both partners fell down, they could work together to pick things back up again and still manage to love. Easier said than done!