Some learn to put them up and down at will. Some walls never come down for any reason. You can put your walls down at any time in your life as you learn the tools to deal with emotions. The walls keep out hurt, keep in anger, but they also keep out love and caring. Love comes in many forms.
Love is as vital to our well-being as air and water.
Love heals wounds, keeps us well, and teaches us new skills. As adults we can learn that the job of life is not to avoid pain with thick walls, but to learn to cope with it and learn from it. We miss too much that is important in life when our walls are too high or too thick. When we fall in love, we start to put those walls down. Since all relationships have joy and pain, when we feel hurt, we put our walls back up.