I’m Attracted to Emotionally Vulnerable People

“It’s not sexy to talk about your feelings. It makes you look needy and pathetic.”

Have you heard of that belief?

I felt bad at first, because I absolutely do talk about my feelings, in great detail, too.

Maybe I am needy and pathetic.

But at the end of the day, I don’t want to be with someone if I have to pretend to be calm and cool, because I’m not.

I’d even say that I’m “emotionally fragile.” Easily hurt, quick to be sad, anxious, fearful, and sometimes angry.

But I realized something.

When someone reveals their vulnerability, I find them more attractive, not less.

In fact, I feel turned off if someone seems to be totally fine. Because they don’t need my help.

I like to care for others, to comfort them and make them feel good. So emotional vulnerability from someone, draws me like a bee to honey.

Enter my fascinating high school classmate

In grade 11, I had a classmate, let’s call him Ronet. He was deeply depressed with a very low self-esteem.

Back then, I was ignorant about mental health and didn’t know how serious it was. I just thought that the dark and depressing things he said, were riveting.

Moreover, I was like his opposite. The sun to his moon, the light to his shadow, if we want to be cliche about it.

He would be so pessimistic and down on himself. So I would blast my positivity at him, since I was a fiercely optimistic person back then.

Yes, I was the epitome of toxic positivity.

Regardless, I felt drawn to him because I thought I could cheer him up and make him feel better.

A heartbreaking school field trip

My biology teacher pulled me aside one day.

Our biology field trip was coming up.

She said that since I was “mature and sensible,” she wanted me to watch over Ronet, as he had depression.

So she assigned him to my group. My teacher would check with me during the field trip to make sure he was okay.

I was thrilled to be entrusted with this mission. Though I was astonished that she assigned me, out of all people, to look after him.

Not sure I was the best guardian, either.

I wasn’t mean to Ronet, but I was a bit distant. During the field trip, I was grumpy because I couldn’t have my best friend in my group, and I missed her.

Ronet tried to get my attention a few times, but I was rather lukewarm towards him.

I regret how I acted now, but it’s too late for regrets.

Slamming the Nobel Prize together

Our high school had a Theory of Knowledge course.

The course taught us where knowledge comes from. So it’s about critical thinking.

Ronet was my partner for the final class presentation. We chose to present on the subjectivity of Nobel Prize judgments.

It was a captivating topic.

I poked fun at William Faulkner, who won the Nobel Prize for literature.

On a PowerPoint slide, I showed my classmates a sentence from his novel, The Sound and the Fury.

The sentence was so long, that it filled the whole slide. And it had no punctuation.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Faulkner.

But not everyone has the patience to read a sentence that lasts several pages with no punctuation in it.

While we were working together, Ronet remarked that I was hogging all the work.

That was probably true. I had trouble trusting other people to do the work properly.

But speaking of trust, the day before our presentation, my computer crashed and refused to turn on.

So I called Ronet and asked him to use his computer for us.

I also felt thrilled to call a boy for the first time, even if it was for innocent reasons.

And I probably sounded like a boss, telling him what to do, so it wasn’t romantic at all. Though I was friendly and polite about it.

Anyway, Ronet and I got 19 out of 20 for the presentation, which was an amazing mark!

The tragic dropout

Sadly, sometime in our final year of high school, Ronet dropped out and cut off contact from everyone.

Our teachers explained that he was severely depressed.

Oh man…

He and I were never close, and we weren’t quite friends. But it still struck me.

A part of me was disappointed too, because I believed we had a good rapport going. I learned his favorite Pokemon, Bulbasaur, and discovered his favorite fandom was the Transformers. (I still associate him with the Transformers to this day.)

So I was dumbfounded that he just left. Deleted all social accounts, no MSN or Facebook.

All that said, I was a high school kid, busy with a gazillion things. And I was too cheery and optimistic about life to dwell on this for long.

A boy of my dreams (literally)

When I went to university, however, I suddenly developed feelings for him.

I dreamed about him often, and he inspired many of my story characters.

He became a mythological figure in my life.

All the while, I wasn’t sure if my feelings towards him were romantic or just sympathy. I’m drawn to people I believe I can take care of, after all.

When I told my mom about this, she was displeased. “You like a boy who’s depressed? But I want a boy who can take care of you, not the other way around.”

My mom was harsh and judgy towards people with mental illness, as you can tell.

Plus, I said nothing about wanting to be in a relationship with him. My feelings were more likely to be platonic sympathy anyway, even if the sympathy was exceptional.

Perhaps the mysterious way that he vanished in the last year of high school, gave him an air of mystique.

About ten years later, I took a couple’s therapy course. For our research paper, we had to use a fictional couple to demonstrate what we learned.

I made up a cute story about my alter ego and Ronet as a couple, coming to see me (Sieran) as a therapist.

Oh I was quite proud of that paper. I made it sound like a romance novel, and my professor gave me an A+ for it.

This isn’t the first time I cast Ronet as a romance hero in fiction, however.

What does he mean to me, on a deeper level?

These past few weeks, I thought more about what Ronet meant to me.

I’m still extremely unlikely to meet him again. He might have changed a lot. Goodness knows I’m not the same person as I was in high school.

I don’t even know if he’s alive.

But he’s still a big part of my mind and life story.

It dawned on me too that he was the first guy I had sexual feelings for. Sort of.

I was lying in my parents’ bed. And I had a funny fantasy about what would happen, if I was having sex with him, and my parents caught us in the act.

Aside from that time, I didn’t think much about us sexually, though. That fantasy was more like a lighthearted joke to myself than anything. In fact, I almost forgot about this memory.

But he’s still important to me. His emotional vulnerability, where he showed his flaws without any pretense of strength, stirred me. Both in sympathy and in…something else.

Remember my cheesy analogy that I was the sun to his moon?

In a way, Ronet was like my shadow self. He represented the parts of myself I didn’t want others to see: the gloom, the despair, the self-hatred.

The strange thing was that when I saw these “flaws” in Ronet, I didn’t find them repulsive at all. In fact, I was attracted to him because he had these dark things.

Maybe this is twisted and unfair to him. But while it was hard to like those parts of myself, it was easy for me to love these traits in my classmate.

It’s interesting that in my regular crushes, I tend to focus on their strengths and I idealize them. But for Ronet, who I’m not sure is a crush, I reveled in his “flaws” and “darkness.”

Of course, you would probably argue that I’m reducing his humanity to something so simple and black and white. Perhaps I am. If I were to meet him for real, I’d probably view him differently.

But since he only lives in my imagination for now, this is how I feel about him, whether my feelings are right or wrong.

What’s even more twisted, however, is that thinking of Ronet makes me feel good about myself.

This is an unexpected feeling, since I have so much self-doubt and often put myself down.

But when I think of Ronet, I imagine myself as strong and optimistic, taking care of him, making him feel good, and generally being a hero.

Yes, it’s a savior complex. I am guilty of that. But indulge me. Now I picture myself in a black cloak, like some lord or prince, looking cool and free but also affectionate.

Then as I go on some trip, Ronet watches my silhouette fade away with longing in his eyes.

In reality, I’m the one with longing. I wish I had been friendlier and more responsive to him back when he was still in school.

Perhaps he wouldn’t have had to drop out, then. Or he could at least stay in touch with me, as friends.

Nevertheless, if I do meet him again one day, and he does have feelings for me, would I say yes to him?

I might be tempted!

How about you? Do you have a person in your past you feel regret and longing towards?

If you want to deepen your relationships with people you care about too, join me on my journey!