be inscrutable

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My dad always goes nonstop when lecturing me to keep my mouth shut. He considers it to be the best quality someone could have. I have to agree: the people I look up to have always been those never babble about their personal life or inner thoughts. They are considered to be hard to read. Their gravity and silence sometimes unintentionally lend to them what some people might call an aloof air, and some consider this type of personality to be difficult to approach or hard to deal with. But trust me, this is a top-notch quality. It means that if people want to understand you, they are going to need to put in the time and effort to get your trust first. It also means that it is harder for people to take advantage of you in various situations. 

Such people will keep their true selves secret by presenting a different face to the world. This is called duplicity. This doesn’t mean that you have to be fake. You just conceal part of yourself from the public. The fear of the unknown you present to others keeps the mutual relationship thrilling. Your duplicitous nature and inscrutable mind will remain a mystery in others’ eyes. 

People rarely want to know you in the way you might think. They don’t care if you have been suffering from self-hate or if you have been staving off suicidal thoughts for more than a decade. No, they want to know if their ideas of who you are line up with the person you are on the inside. People have a tendency to say they want to read you, to understand you, to see a side of you no one else gets to see; but they have a greater tendency to not like it when you finally let them.

p.s. On the rare occasion that someone does genuinely want to know you, they will automatically make the effort to do so. They won’t need to ask you to open up, because it will be your natural response to be yourself with them.