Vulnerability in Relationships

Let me ask you two questions. Have you ever wondered why you are able to form great relationships with some people and never able to break the ice with others? And, why does your comfort level with the other person define your depth of your relationship? In my opinion it all boils down how vulnerable are you ready to be in the presence of the other person. (Yes, it is another post about vulnerability, but another aspect of it)

What do people mean when they say “We should be our true selves with the people we love”? It means to strip ourselves off our ego when with loved ones and be ready to expose our vulnerable sides. It is by sharing vulnerabilities that we come close, form a bond and become one. Why do you think your best-friend knows al your secrets? ‘Our Secrets’ generally make us feel vulnerable, often fabricated with our insecurities, embarrassing incidents, opinions, along with some masala from our minds. Which is why there are chosen people with whom we share our secrets.

These fear of exposing our vulnerability is also the reason for the epidemic of loneliness fast spreading. The walls of trust are getting harder to build and easier to break, our egos preferring to shove us into cold places to letting us face cold realities, and we choose blankets of ignorance to the springs of joy. It is getting harder to form deeper relationships because though we quick to show are strengths we back away when we need to show our vulnerable sides, on which genuine relationships are built. This is resulting in relationships formed with a superhero portraits of our loved ones painted in our minds and an incomplete of us in their minds, the moment the image is shattered we find it hard to continue.

The interesting part is we often try to find reasons like physical proximity and different life paths for degenerating relationships or not being able to form relationships, while these may play a part the main reason is the inability to open up. If the reasons mentioned above were really the biggest ones why the most toxic relationship in our life is often with ourselves? It is because we fail to open up even with ourselves. We shy away from showing our vulnerable sides even to ourselves out of fear of shattering the image we have formed of ourselves.

When we open up to ourselves two magical things happen: a) The darkness of loneliness is consumed by our light of fulfillment and b) We find out we are not as good or bad as we thought, we just are, there is no need for labels.

While not everyone needs to see our vulnerable side, to show it to a chosen few will drastically improve our relationships. The chosen few can consist only of you, but it cannot do without you because if one is not able to accept their vulnerable sides how can they expect to accept the vulnerable sides of others. Acceptance is the next pillar on which relationships are supported.

Go on have a chit-chat with yourself and other close ones.