I have been trying to manage other people's feelings and reactions for as long as i can remember. That's a self-soothing fantasy of sorts. With this mindset, you are naturally drawn to people who need such emotional management - a realization that you can't actually manage other people's happiness was long and painful. These days I am not sure that getting people to open up by altering your presentation is a good idea. Maybe we should learn to accept that we have no insight into another and just observe them with patient curiousity? That we are fundamentally alone and isolated and the best you can hope for is a person who's values align with yours - and so you feel safe around them?