VERY interesting discussion and some good questions/points here....
I'm going to call this "Musings from the Bear Cave" and warn you it is a bit long...
GMan asked about starting over and not trusting yourself not to make the same mistake(s) again..... As someone who has now been on the receiving end of 2 <x>LC's (xW1 was 30 so QLC maybe? xW2 was 46 so definitely MLC), I was left with a serious case of "WTF is wrong with me's?" and "What Lesson did I not get the first time around?" It took some introspection to see that the two cases, while having similar outcomes, are not the same. xW1 turned into a drug-abusing, raging, bed- and man-hopping lunatic whereas xW2 seems to be wallowing along in a pity-party of depression but it still led me to ask what did I not see up front that allowed me to make the choices I did... and how do I do it better the next time (assuming there is one)? For me, it has crystallized into the realization that, in both cases, I was trying to be a fixer and THAT realization put a HUGE spotlight on my own behaviours and my own "deficits."
People tend to search out partners to fulfill needs, some biological (the need to procreate) some emotional (the need to feel and give love, to protect, to support, etc.), some intellectual (being able to have meaningful conversations about deep subjects), some based on security and safety (primeval/primordial needs). What level of priority we put on each of these things will often determine the "type" of person we attract or that we find attractive (NOT the same thing). By examining our own "needs" and how they relate to the world around us, we may be able to ascertain where we are possibly engaging in patterns that are not healthy (i. e. finding people that need to be rescued or "fixed"). Once THAT is known, we can then identify the feelings and thoughts that fgo along with it and those become knowledge triggers, much like GMan expressed where he sees himself attracting a specific type of person. The thing there is that he RECOGNIZES THAT before getting too involved, allowing himself to become vulnerable... That is definitely progress and growth.
I tend to disagree SLIGHTLY with OR's concepts and her example of the junk removal guys between vulnerability and trust but only in minutia... Hiring someone to do a job, by definition, implies a level of trust/expectations that they can, in fact, do a job. If there was not an iota of trust to begin with, they would not have gotten the job. Trust, therefore, is initially based on (yes, I am going to say that word) expectations. By hiring someone to od a certain piece of work, she made herself vulnerable to disappointment if her expectations were not met (i. e. they did a crappy job or didn't do it at all). Of course, , in a business perspective, she also had the option of not paying them if the job was not done correctly so there is a set of mutual trust/expectations. This business view is, however, VERY different in my view to an interpersonal relationship.
On the personal side, trust and vulnerability go hand in hand. When we meet someone, we extend a little tiny tentacle of vulnerability, take a tiny risk by asking them out or making that initial contact. By the same token, we take that risk knowing that we may be rejected. In order to take that risk and to expose ourselves to the possible rejection, we have to trust ourselves that we can, in fact, cope with the result if it is negative. If we are not in a position to handle that rejection, to me, it is a sign that we are not ready to take that risk yet. How to go about getting ourselves in a position to open ourselves to that risk is a TOTALLY different story and it is as individual as a fingerprint. Some of us tend to be of the "Everybody gets 1 chance" and expect people to be decent humans on the whole mindset (I include myself in this category) while others are the opposite and view the world with skepticism and cynicism. Others have migrated form one end of the spectrum to the other and there are others that are somewhere between what OR called "Pollyanna" and that guy in the cartoon that ran around constantly proclaiming "We are all doomed, we're alllll gonna die."
How much of ourselves we expose then takes on a life of it's own. We expose ourselves, little by little (for the most part - I mean, we are all adults here now with various amounts of baggage/battle damage and not some love-sick bunch of twitterpated teenies), based on the trust we impart to the person we are dealing with. This happens in friendships as well as intimate relationships. With some, we find that thhe level of trust can only go to a certain point, after which the trust is abused or defiled and then we back off a couple of notches and assign them to, as MourningDove so aptly puts it, one of the "outer circles" of friends/acquaintances. Others earn more trust, thereby allowing us to become more vulnerable (which then increases the level of trust - it is a cyclical process). The more we trust and the more we open ourselves to the other, the more risk we assume.
This is all then related to what I wrote above with respect to the healing and identifying our own needs, our own healthy and unhealthy patters because this giving of trust and allowing ourselves to become vulnerable and open is filtered by our own observations. When we have bee nable to identify our own patterns that are possibly not so healthy, we are able then to recognize the emotions and behaviours that are leading us down the slippery slope in time to avoid a major disaster. Doesn't mean that we are not going to get burned a bit but it's comparing burning a fingertip as to putting your whole hand on the griddle palm down.
I personally feel that a true intimate and loving relationship is VERY much dependant on mutual trust and vulnerability. THAT, for example, is one of MY not-so-healthy behaviours that I needed to review and modify - I was always the one that opened myself more easily so that there was a disparity in the amount of trust and vulnerability shown. I have learned what that felt like when I was doing it and now am extremely cognizant of when I tend to be going down that road. When that "red flag" pops up, I either slow down until the other catches up or I will break it off all together because I am NOT interested in lop-sided relationships on ANY level. To me, I visualize it as having to chase someone... (Pursuit and distance). I'm very aware of that situation now and in the case I feel the other person beginning to distance, I stop where I am and let them be. They can then choose to quit running and bridge the distance, in which case, we can take each others hand and proceed forward, they can continue to run which then effectively ends the relationship, or they can choose to stop where they are which results in an assignment of closeness.
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Trust and vulnerability