The Vulnerability Myth: Why Being Received Well Isn’t the Same as Being Intimate—and How Confusing the Two Costs Us Real Intimacy

Vulnerability is a big word in the healing world. And yet we—even the most emotionally intelligent of us, even the therapy community—often unintentionally champion a definition and experience of vulnerability that is…well, the opposite of vulnerable.

I saw it again the other day, in a comment that had nearly a thousand likes on a therapy page on social media. He said that the men he knew don’t struggle to open up, but rather they struggle to trust the share won’t be used against them. And that the fix for that must be built by making their honesty become better received. Many chimed in that it was true, that they choose not to share because of it being poorly received, or decided not to share again because it had been poorly received once.

While this example is about men and it’s online, I hear some version of this frequently from women I speak with and work with as well. But the main issue is, that isn’t vulnerability.

It opposes vulnerability. I’d even say it’s a sophisticated defense against vulnerability, promoted as vulnerability.

Relational vulnerability is sharing your interiority, your heart, your experiential reality all while knowing there is a risk that things might not go as we wish they will.

The risk of being open to the outcome IS what makes it vulnerable.

And by open I mean able to courageously face the outcome. (Which is not to be confused with becoming a doormat to it.)

Would it be amazing if people became more emotionally skillful, more compassionate, grow more integrity? Of course. But we cannot guarantee or control that. And paradoxically, one of the only ways to grow that maturity is to develop real vulnerability capacity. Because then you can offer it to others.

Expecting or requiring a particular response in order to share means we aren’t being vulnerable, but are instead in a quietly controlling or managing mode.

And it makes sense. We all, all us humans, are unconsciously trying to control things nearly all the time. It’s part of our adaptive evolution at play.

The Red Herring

But the idea that vulnerability should feel good or turn out well, or is only successful when it does, gives us a harmful, but seductive, red herring. One that ultimately inhibits the building of a secure centered self, and therefore inhibits our ability to make intimate contact with ourselves, reality and another person. The very things we need in order to actually be vulnerable–to actually then feel belonging and experience intimacy.

We often believe:

I felt understood → therefore, we were intimate.

I felt misunderstood → therefore, intimacy failed.

When the actual question is, were two people’s actual realities laid out on the table? Did I encounter you, and did I give you something real from inside me to encounter?

A relationship where someone can say, “I didn't like your response but I'm genuinely glad you were real,” is more intimate than one where the communication scripts of validate, reflect, empathize are done perfectly.

When Relief Feels Like Intimacy

I hear over and over again, couples fighting because one or both did not receive the other correctly, mirror correctly, and therefore were not being intimate correctly.

But we have confused intimacy/vulnerability with being received well. Vulnerability means risking an encounter with another person's separateness without controlling the outcome. And intimacy is what becomes possible when this happens, and two separate realities are encountered.

When our partner says the right thing, we often feel a "PHEW"—the biological relief of a regulated nervous system. We think that soothed feeling means we’ve achieved intimacy. We think feeling in sync, mirrored, validated and empathized with is intimacy.

And sometimes that can be the outcome of intimacy.

But that’s not intimacy in and of itself.

It might also just be the removal of separateness. Merging, enmeshing, losing yourself in the other. Or even a slight performance in order to “do it right.”

Intimacy is experiencing the other and yourself, as you are and as they are—including limits, differences, disappointments and uncomfortable subjective experiences.

Vulnerability and intimacy by nature involve a little risk, uncertainty, separateness. 

Similarly, if sharing your feelings is easy and something you do all the time—perhaps that’s not even vulnerable for you. Perhaps sharing less, or explaining less would be the truly vulnerable act. Sometimes we use sharing to cover ourselves, instead of expose ourselves.

The More Sophisticated Version of Control

Of course, we long to know we won't be rejected. Or judged or misunderstood. Or lose something we deeply want.

But when we go in with an expectation of outcome, we go in with the unconscious agenda of trying to get our partner’s validation, understanding, or empathy to feel okay. And even if unstated, the other person often can feel that and often pushes against that impossible responsibility. It’s why this is an area where people get in so many fights. People pick these things up energetically.

Even the most emotionally skillful, therapized of us do this a lot. In fact, it’s possible we do it this version of control more (trying to fix things is another variation of the same), because we’re often hyper-attuned to others at the cost of ourselves, and because we pride ourselves on receiving others in these “right” and safe ways.

Open to the Outcome Doesn’t Mean at Its Mercy

None of this means attunement, empathy, validation, or being received with care aren't deeply important to a mature relationship. They are.

The problem begins when their presence becomes the requirement for our willingness to encounter another person—or when their absence automatically means the encounter was not intimate or done incorrectly. It actually did exactly what intimacy was meant to do: Showed you reality in that moment.

And even the most attuned of us, can’t be that way all the time. In my experience, the most empathetic, keyed in of us are often the most self-abandoning. So even if someone appears attuned all the time, that alone too, is not evidence of actual intimacy. 

What Vulnerability Isn’t

Being open to the outcome does not mean submitting to the outcome.

It is not becoming a doormat or sticking around in cruelty. Or tolerating something we simply do not wish to tolerate. On the contrary, real vulnerability allows us to see more clearly, and then respond with even more agency and integrity in the face of all variety of responses.

And in no longer being hooked into trying to get what they may or may not give you, you regain a multitude of choices in how to deal with the reality in front of you.

It is also not a mandate to put yourself in harm's way. If you are physically or emotionally in danger, you wisely opt out of vulnerability.

Choosing to withhold vulnerability, and still stay in contact with yourself and what choices you do have, even if limited, is staying vulnerable with your own self. And that’s where all real vulnerability must first begin.

The Risk Is Reality

Contact with reality always brings us to uncertainty, which inevitably threatens the possibility of loss. But you cannot have intimacy or vulnerability without the possibility of loss…of the relationship, our ideas about someone or ourselves, our future dreams, a long-held protective response, an old belief we depend on…

Ultimately, real intimacy forces us face to face with our illusions of control. And does require an increasing tolerance of more anxiety and uncertainty. 

We are straddled with a most important question: do we want what’s real even if it includes some loss? Or are our fantasies most important?

Ironically, living from fantasy is more likely to lead to loss.

When you can tolerate reality—including the uncomfortable, unwanted, not-what-you-hoped-for kind—you don't need to prevent reality from arriving in order to remain in relationship with yourself. You can stay present and yourself, even when what you encounter is hard.

It is exactly where our personal freedom lies, and real intimacy begins.