Love is a complex emotion. It has the ability to encompass your whole being and take over not only your heart, but also your mind. Loving someone is not meant to be easy. It is hard work, but it is hard work you enjoy doing. Love leads to passion, sacrifice, happiness and sometimes heartbreak. It can lead to intense highs and intense lows. It is an emotion that truly encompasses all other feelings we can experience. Love, while so incredibly beautiful, can be so incredibly disastrous. Loving someone, the wrong someone, can be incredible catastrophic, yet loving the wrong people, the broken people who can do no good for us, is so incredibly attractive. But, why?

We like the challenge

Everyone is a fan of the chase. The success of getting the guy or the girl is so much sweeter when you had to fight to get it. Broken people are a particularly attractive challenge because you know that not many people have been successful. There are times when you may get discouraged, but then you get a glimpse at the soft inside of a guy with a tough exterior and continue to chase after him. You want to be the one he or she finally says yes to, so you chase and endure the challenge. 

We want to be their savior

There is a sense of pride that comes along with breaking down the walls of a closed off and broken person. We feel honored that after chasing for so long, we have finally broken through the wall and get to see a person that no one else gets to see. We strive to pull out every hint of goodness in them and fix, or lighten, the load of the baggage they have been dragging with them. We feel proud knowing that we bring out their best side and feel accomplished when we start to notice they are working to become a better and more whole person. Unfortunately, in most cases, these changes will only last as long as the relationship. Once you leave, the goodness you worked so hard to constantly bring out, will be kept to themselves as if nothing you did ever mattered. 

They make us feel special

We work hard to try to fix them, and the hard work does not go unnoticed. Often times, we are placed on a pedestal and looked up to as someone they strive to become. We are encouraged by family members and friends as they shower us with words of affirmation and tells us they have never seen him or her so happy and so full a life. We are constantly told that we bring out a side of him or her that no one has ever seen before. And that feels good. It is encouraging to know that all of the time we have invested chasing after them and trying to fix them is paying off, and it's noticeable by the outside world. 

We crave the passion

Being in a relationship with someone you are trying to fix, someone who is broken or carrying a lot of baggage, is a roller coaster. There are periods of immense high and heart shattering lows. It is unlike anything you have ever experienced, so it is exciting and different. It is unpredictable, and makes the whole relationship full of passion and emotion that you never want to let go of. You wonder how you could ever love anyone else because this love is all consuming and encompassing. It is the love you see in the movies, but it is also the love that hurts. And even though it's a love that can be painful, it's a love that you don't want to let slip because losing a love like that seems unbearable. 

We see a glimpse of ourselves in them

Everyone in this world is a little broken and has their fair share of baggage and past heart ache. When we meet someone with baggage and a heart full of pain, we see a piece of ourselves in them. We spend endless amounts of time pouring into their lives and working to glue the pieces of their heart back together because we hope that someone would do the same for us. If we felt the way they did, or experienced the emotions they are consumed with, we hope that someone would work to fix us and to mend our heart back together. 

Loving a broken or damaged person is not a bad thing, and I believe that everyone in this world deserves to be loved and to experience love, but loving someone, damaged or not, who does not pour into you like you do to him or her, can be catastrophic. Yes, it is a love that is all consuming and encompassing. One that keeps you up late at night and makes you feel proud and empathetic, but it is also a love that hurts and requires you to hold onto the moments of high to get though the moments of heart shattering pain. 

It is easy to be blinded by love and to lose sight of who you are when you are loving someone you are trying to fix. Relationships should be centered around a love that sharpens both people, a love that holds onto the goodness of each individual and constantly works to bring that out of each of them.