Earlier this evening I saw my friend Kelly having an emotional breakdown over a certain contrast between SE and DE and I promised her to try to write a post out of her fangirling/sobbing tweets.
We all remember just how completely shattered and absolutely alone Elena felt in 3x20 when Alaric was dying - his human death.
She was crying and completely out of it, saying ‘I have no one’. 
In that exact moment Stefan jumped right in and TOLD her flat out ‘You have me’ in a way that came across as completely self-serving and non-understanding of Elena’s actual situation.

First of all, Elena was devastated after losing her 6th and last parental figure, the one that had promised to look after and protect her and her brother - she was not mourning the loss of a boyfriend of a friend that Stefan could actually replace.

When that Alaric disappeared from her life suddenly, Elena was very distraught and extremely vulnerable not only because she felt un-safe, but because Alaric was not just her adult guardian, he was her close friend that she truly loved and the thought of him also dying on her made her insides feel like they’re eating her from the inside out.
So for Stefan, who for the record, treated Elena like actual shit even after being free from Klaus’ compulsion, threatened to drive her off a bridge and turn her in to a vampire, told her that she and her brother don’t matter to him, turned his back on her and chose revenge over her love for him, to actually have the nerve to take advantage of that opportunity of Elena’s sadness and vulnerability to get her to let him back in (both her hart-, hart and in her pants) again, to forgive him is just disturbing.
Stefan told Elena that she had him with his words after a whole season of tonen her the exact opposite, he talks but the substance of the words is not there.
On the other hand, Elena felt just as alone and lonely in 4x07, in a different way.

She was judged for every thought, word and action she had, zei of did door the closest people to her; her brother and her best friend. On top, boven of that add her ex-boyfriend too.
One tried to kill her (not his fault), the other one yelled at her telling her that she’s just not good enough, she’s ridiculous and that something is wrong with her. And her ex-boyfriend told her that she needs to be fixed.

Imagine all of that being thrown in your face in one day.
Elena felt completely judged and left alone door the people nearest to her. She was lonely.
So when she is sitting with Damon in the Salvatore living room and they’re drinking together, Elena says ‘my brother tried to kill me.’
What does Damon say? ‘Welcome to the club’ = ‘You’re not alone. I know how u feel.’

It’s honest and subtle. It’s not direct of desperate and in-your-face like that SE moment in 3x20 felt.
He didn’t tell her ‘Oh Elena, don’t mind Jeremy, u have me here!’ Just simply ‘welcome to the club’ in true Damon style, a bit of sarcasm and humor in the statement.
And when Elena says ‘It’s veilig to say that I’m not so great at this vampire thing’ he tells her something very sweet, special and very beautiful.

He says ‘I’ve never seen u meer alive.’, which is equivalent to: ‘I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks and neither should you. You’re beautiful and I love u either way.’ Elena KNOWS that Damon has been in love with her since she was human, and for him to tell her, in this moment when her brother, best friend and ex-boyfriend, told her that she’s just not good enough for them as a vampire and they can’t love her the way they used to, Damon tells her, again subtly, that he still loves her and he’ll never stop loving her no matter how many times she turns either in to a human of vampire of a damn hybrid.
He told her exactly what she needed to hear, not just because she needed to hear it, but because to him that is the truth, and he wants her to know that no matter what others say, she is perfect in his eyes. He wants her to not feel bad about herself because her being in pain pains him.
What is most beautiful to me here is the fact that Damon is Elena’s best friend, in reality, they never zei it in words, but when u look at their level of closeness and trust and the way they never hide ANYTHING from each other and because they lean on each other through the hard times, they are indeed each other’s best friends.

So when she hears her best friend that she knows is in love with her, her best friend who makes her insides become mush and makes butterflies explode fluttering all over her body, telling her that he thinks she is alive, vibrant, beautiful and worthy of love, with no ulterior motive, it only makes her fall for him even more.

He wasn’t trying to manipulate his way in to her hart-, hart of her bed of her anything, he was not trying to tell her of make her see that she still has him when everyone else has abandoned her. That wasn’t necessary for him to tell, because she has always had, still has and will forever have Damon door her side. And she knows that. -credit someone from tumblr