You complete me, you repel me, yet I can't let go

Content warning: This story touches on topics that might trigger you. It’s a story of extremes, loosely inspired by some of my own experiences. Please take it with however many grains of salt you like.

Once upon a time, I met a hunter and not just any hunter. This wasn’t a lion-like, obvious predator who dominates with charm and extravagance. It was a rabbit hunter who’s sensitive to people’s feelings and has learned to wear their insecurity and vulnerability as camouflage. They use empathy to lure their subjects in. They’re masters at this because this hunter was once a prey, and they were hurt badly in their life as prey. So they’ve learned to protect themselves, picked up the art of deception, and in their hurt, devoted themselves to a life of twisted nurturing. They may not even be aware of it.

The rabbit hunter doesn’t go for any prey, they’re out looking for the golden one. Their senses have been fine-tuned to sniff out low self-esteem, the need to please, and no boundaries. As well as traits like talent, resilience, and strengths they admire. They notice and reach for the empath who compulsively gives and needs validation. The golden prey was once the golden child who’s been conditioned to seek praise in order to feel valued. The hunter sees the suffering the prey has had to endure and knows exactly what they need. “I will give them the nurture they never had.”

The hunter knows to play their cards right initially—giving comfort when needed, making their prey feel seen, and saying all the right things. They show up, act sweet, and shower them with love. They vow never to leave. They give their prey enough freedom to keep them satisfied, while quietly nurturing their talents, guiding them towards their golden prey fantasy. When people come near the prey, the hunter becomes protective. They appear by their side: this is my territory, my precious one. Not just territory—property which they might want to live in and renovate someday.

The prey eventually falls for the hunter’s loving comfort and becomes dependent on it. They feel truly seen and understood: “No one has understood me like this before.” The hunter opens up about their own experiences, lays all of their cards out; surely someone who knows hurt won’t inflict it. The hunter has succeeded at gaining their prey’s trust and loyalty.

Then, the real show begins.

The hunter reveals glimpses of a different face. Standards start shifting. They start saying things or behaving in ways that remind their prey of moments they were treated badly. Nothing they do is ever good enough anymore. They’re compared to other people but are intermittently left some crumbs. The hunter is in control of the amount of treats their prey needs to stay satisfied. When the prey behaves correctly, they get rewarded. When they fall short, the hunter withdraws approval just out of reach, like dangling candy higher each time the child reaches for it. They don’t always tell the prey exactly what’s wrong with what they did—it’s just not quite right. The prey apologizes again and again but what for exactly? It’s rarely clear to them. All they know is that they must keep doing this in order to keep the hunter satisfied. They’re driven by an irrational fear that something terrible might happen if they stop trying.

The prey finds themselves lying to protect the hunter’s sensitive ego—they’re easily hurt, you see, they’re delicate creatures. The prey watches them perform as their warm and gleeful self while thinking, “if only they knew how instantly that warm face hardens.” But their voice never reaches people. The words never leave their tongue. They’ve been conditioned to feel like saying anything would mean hurting their hunter’s feelings and betraying their love. So they stay quiet, keeping in their lane, walking on eggshells.

The hunter enjoys being a manager but complains about it. “I have to make all the decisions”, they tell people, portraying their prey as childlike and dependent. The hunter cares deeply about gaining the approval of others, so they make an effort to befriend their prey’s friends, insist on meeting their family. The public sees the hunter as charming, kind, and giving—everyone loves them. But some nights when they’re alone, the hunter turns cold, withdrawing warmth and love like a tentacle. It’s chilling but the prey brushes it off because, “they’re not always like this”. “Everyone thinks we’re perfect together, so we must be—right?”

The golden prey, of course, isn’t a fool. At some point, they catch on to something. Their prey instincts kick in or someone comes along and raises a question. The hunter isn’t the person they met at the beginning, not anymore. The admiration and praises have been gradually replaced by critiques, complaining, and an ever-increasing list of demands. Demands to care about them, to do this and that, to prioritize their feelings and what they want over everything else. The prey tries to convince themselves with “but’s” that this is still the person they fell for: “but they were there for me in my times of need”, “but I love them and they love me I think”. Until one day, the prey realizes that they’re stood face-to-face with someone who resembles the very people they thought they’d never become.

“If I’m never good enough, if I repel them so much, then why won’t they just let me go?” the prey thinks to themselves.

“They’re not who I thought they would be. They can’t do anything right, but I don’t want to let them go. I want to continue nurturing them. They’re mine. I’ve invested in them,” thinks the rabbit hunter in response.

They feel protective and get defensive when other people criticize their prey. In these moments, they see their prey as golden—perfect. They’re so talented, have so many good traits, and they love them so much. No one protected them when they were criticized, the rabbit hunter was once expected to be the golden child themselves. So they take their prey under their protection; caring for them feels like caring for their younger self. “If I continue helping them improve, one day they’ll become the perfect version. We’ll do it together.”

The golden prey represents the idealized version the hunter could never become. An unattainable trophy of their fantasies. They give their prey the kind of praise and nurture they always yearned for but also inflict the same torment they endured. “This must be love in its complete form,” the hunter’s subconscious whispers. In this repetitive cycle of praise and torment, the prey never gets to improve nor grow. They stay stuck because they’re confused about their progress. The hunter loves to nurture but their prey is only allowed to grow till a specific threshold, be golden in a specific way. If the prey dares to grow without them or beyond their image, watch how their colours change.

This is how the hunter feeds. They feed off other people’s struggles, emotional responses, their love, kindness, and servitude. They see people’s light and want to drink from it because they were severed from their own. They turn empathy into a weapon against their prey because their own empathy was once used against them. The prey gives and performs and gives, but it seems they can never satisfy the hunter—and they can’t. You can’t fill a bottomless void. You can’t satiate endless hunger.

And yet, the prey continues responding to the hunter’s demands. They stay and continue feeding them despite it all. They hold onto the hope that one day they will be good enough, and the hunter will be satisfied, and they will in turn feel loved and valued—satiated. They, too, are hungry. They, too, are a bottomless well.

But why can’t the prey leave if they continue being mistreated, you might ask?

They’ve definitely tried, but the hunter notices and soothes them with sweet words. They’ve weaved themselves into the prey’s life and have made themselves indispensable out of fear of losing them. The prey has invested like never before, and they’ve grown comfortable. The grass is always greener anyway, and they’d have to start again. Maybe they’re really not good enough like the hunter says. Escape turns into a burdensome task, then into an unachievable goal, then into a meaningless fantasy.

So, they continue. Each of them attached to this golden prey fantasy, until they both become enmeshed with it and each other. Is the golden prey still the expectation for the prey or the hunter or the relationship itself? It all becomes a blur. It doesn’t matter though because the dynamic is designed to keep both of them stuck. If only they could see, that in the long run, it’s a double loss. They both lose their identities, or maybe they never had their own identities to begin with.

And who am I in this story? I’m the observer, and I occasionally make the attempt to wake a prey up. I’ve had the chance to see this dynamic up close in action, sometimes as a participant. I’ve seen it unfold in various ways. Sometimes, the prey doesn’t want to wake up or be saved. Sometimes, the hunter gets bored or decides they’ve exhausted their prey and leaves them for another.

There’s a sort of happy ending where they both grow comfortable in the dynamic and reach a point where the critiques lessen to make space for something that resembles genuine love. The ultimate happy ending is where the prey starts to see their own worth and stops accepting crumbs. So maybe, I’ll finish this story with that…

A day comes around when the prey finally decides they’ve starved enough and they want to leave. This is when the hunter’s instincts really kick in. They can sense that this time, it’s different. And so, they cling. They bring out all their tools and tricks and masks—the loving, warm, nurturing version of them who showers their prey with admiration suddenly returns out of nowhere. They do everything the prey had asked for but never received, remind them of their beautiful times together.

If the love-bombing doesn’t work, they reach for the tools with spikes. They remind them how much they poured into them and nurtured them to grow, how they were there for them in their lowest moments. “I’ve done so much, and this is how you repay me? You’re just like everyone else—a liar. You said you’d never leave me, why are you doing this?”

The prey could fall for this. They might feel that familiar suffocation in their chest and can’t resist it. It’s like they have a suction cup planted in their body. “This is the person who showed me love like no one else. No one has ever understood me like them. Maybe, now that they’ve been threatened by me leaving, they’ll return to the version I fell in love with.” The hunter might become a rabbit again—for a while. But then they’ll revert, they always do¹.

Dearest golden prey, this is how they learned love—how you learned love. It’s not their fault, so don’t hate them and try not to blame them. It’s not your fault, so don’t blame yourself either. But don’t expect them to change. No one changes unless they want to—the same goes for you. That rabbit version of them was once a mask and now a fantasy.

Let it go and save yourself. If you can’t do it for you, then do it for both of you. Don’t stay to try and heal what doesn’t want to be healed.

Leave before you’re left with no self. You can do it. I know you can.

And when you’ve left and gained some perspective—which you will—standing more fully in your authentic self, please remember to never become like them.

Don’t continue the pattern. Don’t convert more prey into hunters.