Open up or defend? Vulnerability in relationships

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

If you are not ready for pain, you are not ready for an intimate relationship. Avoiding your own vulnerability and vulnerability leads to avoiding intimacy. A truly warm relationship is possible only between people whose souls are open towards each other.

Our society is taught to suppress our vulnerability, avoid it and “keep face”. Showing vulnerability is unsafe and publicly condemned. Of course, at work or in transport, you will not show others your real feelings, bare your soul in front of them, open your inner child. It's a completely different story when it comes to close relationships.

Have you noticed that when we love another person, we do not love his social, social and other masks, we love his inner child? We love him real, open and vulnerable. It is difficult to fall in love with a person who hides from us with all kinds of masks. You can respect him, you can admire him, but you can truly love only the true essence of a person, this is somewhere at the level of the soul. And the soul is free from all masks and roles that the Ego produces.

How you want to be loved for real. But for this you need to open up, and in order to open up, you need to be ready to go through pain again. One must see and acknowledge one's masks and discard them. And this is incredibly scary!

You once felt pain, and in order not to feel it anymore, you close yourself up, put on armor. This is a self-defense mechanism. In childhood, we are all born sincere and open to the world. But then, perhaps, we were betrayed, rejected, spat in our souls. Even the closest people - mom and dad, could do this, and then - first love, disappointments, tears … And we begin to close, strengthening our protection. But by closing ourselves off from the bad, we also close ourselves off from the good. We close ourselves off from love, and love is a prerequisite for the development of the soul. Relationships are the purpose and meaning of our life. This is what we're here for.

Continuing to defend himself, a person at one point finds himself lonely and unhappy. Perhaps he does not experience acute pain, having clothed his soul in armor. But he is experiencing a aching, dull pain from the fact that he himself deprived himself of life, life in its entirety.

“If I am vulnerable, I will again become a small child, on whom nothing depends. I want to control everything myself. After all, if I do not control the situation, then something bad will happen,”we say to ourselves.

Control and self-control takes a lot of energy and mental strength. Just imagine: all 24 hours you diligently play your chosen role, choose the right words, think over gestures so that, God forbid, your mask does not fall off at the most unexpected moment, and everyone suddenly does not see that you are not really what you wanted would seem. And then … it's scary to think - they will stop loving you!

While we are trying to influence our partner, we are on the defensive. Defense includes expectations, the desire to offend another, attempts to control, manipulate, accuse, make sarcastic remarks, cut off contact or condemn.

Total control is one of the types of psychological defense that prevents a person from establishing a truly close relationship. He simply cannot afford to "dissolve the nuns", because then he will lose power and control. This leads to the suppression of their natural manifestations, both emotional and behavioral. This is the so-called man in a case.

Total control can be disguised as “caring” about others. This is unsolicited advice, instructions, excessive guardianship, a great tendency to condemn the wrong behavior from his point of view, addiction to gossip, rumors and distortion of facts.

Such a person has the main criterion for choosing friends or partners: "Can I trust you?" To do this, he collects maximum information about a person. A person who wants to control everything will always wait for the first step from the other, until then keeping his feelings under vigilant control. But the other person, feeling that he is not trusted, begins to close. The result is a conflict. Both seem to want intimacy, they are drawn to each other, but they themselves continue to push each other away for fear of being rejected.

It is impossible to achieve closeness and complete understanding while remaining in psychological armor. What prevents us from taking off this armor? Fear. Fear of loss of relationship, loss of control, fear of repeated pain and dependence on another. But we do not understand that in this way, indeed, we become dependent on other people, because we are trying to control their reactions to us.

After all, if they recognize the real me, then they will understand that I am not worthy of love. One way or another, this fear is common to all people. Do not think that this is unique to you. But few people want to talk about it. Almost every person from childhood has a conviction: I am not good enough, all life is a struggle. If people learned to raise their children without trying to make them ideal, then there would be fewer such psychological problems. But, unfortunately, we were all brought up not in an ideal world and not by ideal parents, on the path of life we met not ideal lovers, etc.

So what do you do? It is necessary to understand that in a close relationship, vulnerability is not weakness, it is our strength! You don't have to fight for love. There is no need to defend against loved ones. And first you need to believe that you are worthy of their love.

One must find the courage to be weak and vulnerable in love. Courage to allow yourself to be less than perfect. Be yourself at all costs. Not to be afraid to be the first to say “I love you”, to love from the bottom of my heart, without expecting any guarantees in return. Do not be afraid to invest in a relationship with a person, without expecting anything in return.

Allowing to be seen for who you are. “Love for one's neighbor is limited by how much each person loves himself,” said Blessed Augustine. If you consider yourself a full-fledged person, worthy of love, then you will stop defending yourself, and will begin to hear another, you will begin to treat other people kinder and more tenderly.

But in order to be kinder to others, you need to become kinder to yourself. Because it is impossible to feel compassion for other people without forgiving for the imperfection of oneself.

What makes you vulnerable makes you sincere and open to love. At the same time, your openness sweeps away all the defenses of your partner, and he is no longer so afraid to take off his armor in front of you.