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There seems to be a frequent misconception that vulnerability is a form of weakness. It is not, it is actually a sign of great strength. One definition of vulnerable is, “capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt.”
One must consent to being vulnerable, one must submit, yield, surrender, and actually risk being wounded or hurt. Capable of…
When one is unwilling to be vulnerable, I call it being walled off. That’s not intended as an insult, it’s simply a state of being that makes me think of castle walls and moats with alligators in them. When one is walled off they are behind a protected fortress, like a castle.
Most people wall themselves off from something, wear masks or hide some part of themselves from the world. It’s a defensive and protected mode, often rooted in fear, rational, reasonable, fear. Being vulnerable is usually painful and therefore rather illogical. You have to be slightly insane to think, “awesome, this is going to be extremely painful”…..and run towards it with enthusiasm. Especially crazy if you’ve done it several times before and the results were always painful.
Another misconception about vulnerability is that it is neediness, dependance, powerlessness, a somewhat child like state. We tend to think of emotional basket cases, people you have to walk on eggshells around, fearing triggering a breakdown. Venetian glass. That’s not vulnerability, it’s fragility. It’s simply another way of walling yourself off. People tend to give you a wide birth if they think you’re about to come apart at the seams.
I’m thinking of first loves and teen-age angst. Kids discover their first crush and think, What an awful feeling. This is a Divine joke! The world simply cannot be this unfair. This is unpleasant and cruel! Most of us recover somewhat, adapt and adjust, but that awareness that we are vulnerable to experiencing great pain generally stays with us. If there’s been too much wounding and we aren’t able to process it all, we tend to wall ourselves off, do what we can to protect ourselves from a repeat performance.
So why would anybody in their right mind practice the fine art of being vulnerable? Of voluntarily embracing the idea of being, “capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt?” Because that is how you build a closer relationship with other people, with God, and with yourself. That is how you create intimacy and feel connected to others and your Creator. There are no shortcuts, no way around it, you simply have to go through the pain to get to the other side of it. You have to be prepared, to have enough resources, to have the strength to draw upon to know you’re going to survive, even if you’re crushed. Most likely you will be crushed at some point. Even in the most loving relationships, people will often stomp on each others vulnerability, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.
There’s a paradox woven in there, in the process of surrendering to the reality of our own vulnerability, we discover our genuine power. There is something nearly akin to invincibility in knowing you can be wounded, crushed, flattened…and still survive. That’s a place of fearlessness and great strength.
Perusing the love and angst blogs the other day, really drove home the idea that men and women are very different, but we share the same issues, just manifested in different ways. The men I was reading were all convinced they needed to be rocks, impervious, not vulnerable, or women wouldn’t be attracted to them. I don’t know any women that like impervious rocks, indifferent, emotionally detached. What women really like to see is evidence of strength, and being capable of being wounded, vulnerable, crushed, but still standing tall and intact. That’s a powerful state of being. That’s an attractive state of being.
Women seem to have their own issues with vulnerability. I was a bit amused reading women yesterday because I recognize the same deceptions in myself. Often we think we are being vulnerable, when we are not. We are really being so tough, impervious, unwilling to risk being wounded, walled off. You see evidence of this in our back up plans. I’m willing to be vulnerable…I’m just going to make sure I have a good education, a separate bank account, lots of emotional support from my girlfriends, a distrustful attitude, and a color coded list of domestic chores so I can keep score….just in case anything goes wrong. We’re often in total defense mode, men are the enemy, man the battle stations and protect yourself.
Kind of interesting, both men and women really seem to crave intimacy, closeness, communion with another person, interconnectedness with our co-workers, our jobs, our communities, but so many of us fear the vulnerability and the risk that goes along with that. Love is simply one of those things that requires you to relinquish control. You can’t have it and be walled off from it at the same time. This applies to all forms of love, romantic love, Godly love, maternal love, brotherly love. It hurts, there’s going to be suffering involved, but walling yourself off from love is the most tragic kind of suffering of all.
One last thing, these observations didn’t come to me from being wise and having good insights, I was blindsided by them and caught completely unaware. Seriously, dumber than a box of rocks. What never ceases to amaze me is how I accidentally stumbled down the right path. I don’t really believe in accidents or coincidences, but I certainly do believe in blind and befuddled sheep, stumbling along bemused, having no idea where the path is leading…….
It appears that my understanding of this concept was wrong, as I, too, associate vulnerability with a sort of weakness. I like your interpretation better!
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Excellent article, Gabrielle! ⭐
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“The men I was reading were all convinced that they needed to be rocks, impervious, not vulnerable, or women wouldn’t be attracted to them. I don’t know any women who like impervious rocks, indifferent, unemotionally attached. What women like to see is evidence of strength; and be capable of being wounded, vulnerable, crushed, but still standing tall and intact.”
I like watching action films (of the old school) and the heroes portrayed certainly met considerable adversity before standing tall and intact in the end. The old film producers knew that was the heroic archetype (which goes back even to Greek and Roman authors).
Needless to say, the men immersed in Game philosophy get it all wrong. They teach men always to be indifferent, impervious, and emotionally aloof. Which is, conversely, why they have to have relationships built on fear instead of love since they aren’t heroic or strong men and normal women aren’t attracted to that type.
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IB2:
Related link:
http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2014/12/girls-dig-dark-triad-sluts-are-crazy.html
Vox has really outdone himself this time: “When I was forced to take a personality profile test for work, I tested high in narcissism and Machiavellianism, but very low in psychopathy. Which as it turns out is the psychological profile to which women are most strongly drawn.”
Enough said. LOL
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Not only is he a narcissist and extremely arrogant, he misses the subtleties of psychopaths. Women are often attracted to psychos, not because they act like psychos, but because they are very skilled at deception. It is the false charm of psychopaths that lures women in, not their lack of empathy.
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IB2;
Here’s an interesting question. A lot of women do follow Game blogs and believe in Game; some Gamers like Dalrock and Tomassi are married. I wondered what type of woman would find their message appealing? Because they’re fairly open about their contempt for women.
Dalrock, for example, mentions his wife occasionally, but she’s so nondescript that you can’t form an idea of what she’s like other than she’s his wife. Tomassi mentions his wife occasionally only in connection with some fairly graphic details of their intimate sexual encounters (fine subjects for Churchian men to discuss on public internet forums! LOL) I wonder why women find any thing about Game that would appeal to them?
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Those are good questions, Eric, the women who follow game blogs. Hey, what’s not to like about all that rabid contempt and wounding? 😉
I read them once in a while for a peek into the male subconscious, to get a feel for what men are thinking and feeling. In person, men are usually very kind to me and will not reveal their darker sides or how they really feel about things.
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Excellent post IB – very true and very hard to do – I agree.
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Love this post. It takes great strength to be truly vulnerable. You might enjoy Brené Brown’s research on this topic, if you haven’t seen it already. I saw this TED talk at a church retreat a couple years ago, and thought it was really good: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en
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Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out 😉
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