Feel like giving up, any advice?

I recently went on a date that I thought went really well. We knew each other beforehand as she was a family friend, spoke literally non-stop for 8 hours and she made jokes about her “future mother in law” (again, family friends so she knows and has spoken to my mom multiple times) in general it was probably one of the best dates I’ve been on.

After the date, there was barely any communication. Her replies were never that great anyway; she has a kid and works almost every day so I’d gotten used to waiting a while for a message, but we went on a date Saturday night and I’d had 1 message since then. Tonight she finally put me out of my misery by sending a text saying she didn’t feel ready to be dating, got used to being single and felt like it wasn’t fair to have no time to talk to or see me.

Like I said I was kind of expecting this, but it sucks and idk what to do about it. I know we only went on one date but I‘ve always had a bit of a thing for her (like for over a decade) and after a lot of bad experiences with relationships I had really high hopes about this one. The conversation got fairly personal between us and there’s not a lot of people I felt comfortable opening up to on the same level as I did her.

Anyway, I’m at the point now where I have no energy to get to know someone new at all. Had high hopes for this girl, opened up and got shut down. My previous ex, I opened up about some deep personal stuff, got broken up with the *next* *day.* I feel like I’m just in a cycle where I can’t get close to anybody and it’s really made me put my guard up, because I’m genuinely scared of being let down again.

Does anyone have any advice on how to move on from this? I don’t want to be a guarded, defensive person that’s afraid to let people in, so how do I avoid that? This kinda felt like the final nail in the coffin for me and I don’t like it because honestly all I want is someone to be myself with. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!