If you’re going to compare Martin Blackwood and Barnabas Bennett, you have to contrast them. They’re opposites except for “trapped in the Lonely by a Lukas”… which was when Barnabas begged for rescue ineffectually while Martin said he was fine (because mind control).
Martin dropped out of school at 17 to support his mother, which he wouldn’t have had to do if he had any other financial resources or social support. Barnabas was so high status that he thought no judge would find in Mordecai Lukas’s favour if he simply refused to repay his loan.
Martin fell in love with a guy who spent a while insulting/stalking him, so I think we can say that he gets attached, like, relatively easily? Barnabas said that “I have no one in the world whose absence truly pains me.”