If you usually meet new partners who are rough around the edges, have a broken wing, or just need someone to help them organize their goals, stop it. Love is not a rescue mission.

Rescue missions are relationships in which a person either needs you or wants you to think they need you. The results are always the same.

Either the dysfunctional person you attach yourself to remains dysfunctional and sucks you completely dry of your empathy, patience, and energy for self-care, or they succeed, thanks to you, and leave you in the dust as they climb the social ladder.

You can avoid entering situations like these by avoiding attractive, charismatic people who lie, lack competence, engage in substance abuse of any kind, are a passive parent to their child, a victim of circumstance, or who enact no means to stabilize or better themselves.

Founding a relationship with pity ultimately puts you above the person you are with, since you see yourself as the missing ingredient to their success. The fact is if they need you, then the relationship will be all about them. You may have all the power, but they have all the control.

There is no rational justification for why you should be designated the stabilizing force in their emotionally uncertain lives. If they need to be rescued before you met, then it by default has nothing to do with you. Leave it that way.