What Does it Mean to Be Vulnerable? A How to Guide to Vulnerability in Life & Love

When we ask the question, “what does it mean to be vulnerable,” we have, knowingly or unknowingly, opened a portal, if ever so slightly, into our deepest capacity to love and be loved. Those who share the longest and most deeply satisfying relationships know what vulnerability means. They have found the skills and courage to live a life rooted in true intimacy, and the vulnerability that accompanies it. 

Vulnerability, we will see, lies at the heart of all real connections. It’s one of the core factors that makes us human, an innate factor that every single person shares. Yet while we all share this common experience of vulnerability, many would do just about anything to avoid not just experiencing it, but even admitting that they could feel it. Most men, women, and people find themselves scared, if not terrified of this relational necessity.

In support of the need we all have for love and connection, here we’ll begin by exploring what it means to be vulnerable with someone. We’ll continue with a deeper look at what it means to be emotionally vulnerable, particularly in relationship. Finally we’ll conclude with an understanding of vulnerability’s essential role in the pathway to intimacy. 

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Vulnerable: what does it mean to be vulnerable with someone?

When we want to know what it means to be vulnerable with someone, we first have to understand a bit more about vulnerability itself. Let’s start by giving the word vulnerability both meaning and context. While vulnerability appears as a relational experience, engaging with another person isn’t required for us to feel vulnerable. Surprising to many, we experience the most vulnerability with the world around us. We experience it by simply living, as much as we experience it relationally. 

By definition being vulnerable means that even though we sense a level of risk, uncertainty, or lack of control in the moment or in a future outcome, that we move forward or take action anyway. Being vulnerable means we innately recognize that we cannot actually guarantee what will happen next. When we live vulnerably we admit, whether we feel comfortable in it or not, that we can’t ultimately control what awaits us around the next corner. 

Being vulnerable, we realize that we cannot predict what might fall from the sky – whether a blessing or a trauma. Nor can we control what happens in our body, what our boss likes or doesn’t like, how our children will grow up, or just about any other aspect of life. While we do absolutely have influence, we don’t have final say in how life unfolds. We can’t prearrange when our beloved will arrive – or leave. We cannot predetermine if someone will embrace our authenticity – or vehemently reject it. We have no guarantee that when we embark on the journey towards a long held dream or vision, that it will turn out as we imagined, yet we go ahead anyway. This is to live vulnerably. 

To live is to be vulnerable.

To drive, fly or even walk is to be vulnerable.

To raise children is to be vulnerable.

To be human is to be vulnerable.

To love is to be vulnerable.

To be authentic is to be vulnerable.

To dream is to be vulnerable.

To be is to be vulnerable.

To do is to be vulnerable. 

Recognizing that simply existing puts us face to face with vulnerability every day, to be vulnerable with someone means that we allow another to see, hear, witness, and share in our personal experience of vulnerability. That could look like sharing something with someone that we don’t think they want to hear. It might mean admitting we’re hurt, disappointed, or lonely. This could look like revealing and expressing a part of ourselves that we have barely acknowledged ourselves. One of the most basic forms of being vulnerable with someone is saying ‘I love you,’ especially for the first time. 

In a nutshell, being vulnerable with someone means taking a chance and embracing a risk by doing or expressing something meaningful to us even though we cannot control the result. 

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Vulnerable: what does it mean to be emotionally vulnerable?

Now let’s get more specific and look at what it means to be emotionally vulnerable. In a way, all vulnerability has an emotional component because taking a chance on anything means we risk feeling a whole host of potential emotions – from elation to grief. From that perspective, we see that being vulnerable, especially emotionally vulnerable requires us to allow a full range of feelings to flow within us and between us. That then reminds us of the fact that emotions are the language of intimacy in all relationships, especially romantic ones. And, we cannot be intimate in the absence of vulnerability.

Therefore to be emotionally vulnerable with someone means specifically that you reveal or allow another to see the full range of emotions that arise within and through you. Being emotionally vulnerable means that we allow another to witness the highs and lows, the beauty and the anguish of our emotional world. This means that we can be emotionally vulnerable with all kinds of people – from our beloved, to a parent, to a best friend, a therapist, a family member, or even a stranger. We can reveal ourselves emotionally to anyone, in any space, that feels as if it will hold us safely, securely.

In romantic relationships, many people, men and women alike, avoid being emotionally vulnerable because they believe or imagine they won’t be loved if they allow their partner to witness the full intensity of their human emotions. Yet, what most people actually find when they begin to practice how to be emotionally vulnerable is that they experience more love, much more love and acceptance, when they authentically share their emotional self. Many of us actually fall in love only in the presence of real emotional intimacy. Of course we must also say that being emotionally vulnerable with a partner does not mean making them our emotional dumping ground. To sustain romantic connection we must pair emotional vulnerability with emotional literacy and consciousness. 

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What does it mean to be vulnerable in relationship

When exploring the answer to the question, what does it mean to be vulnerable in relationship, some may find it humorous, if not a bit scary too, to realize that just being in a relationship is, in and of itself, a vulnerable experience. Building on our definitions of vulnerability from above and knowing that being vulnerable in a relationship means sharing our full range of vulnerabilities with each other – from living to loving to dying – let’s consider some of the most common vulnerable aspects of a relationship. 

1. Conflict: We’ll start with the one many want to avoid most in relationship. Conflict, whether we’ve learned to consciously navigate it or not, makes most of us uncomfortable. It feels vulnerable because something precious to us feels shaken and we know there is no one-stop formula for repair. We have to walk through the challenging moment as best we can. Those in our Loving Soul-to-Soul program have learned that the more we allow ourselves to bring vulnerability to our upsets the faster and more deeply they heal – turning conflict into communion. 

2. Emotions: As we explored in the last section, we all feel and our shared feelings unite us. That means that when it comes to how to be vulnerable in a relationship, we must develop a capacity to allow and embrace our own feelings, and then reveal them to our beloved. We allow ourselves to be witnessed, consciously, in the fullness of our emotional expression. 

3. Dreams and Desires: Every one of our souls is meant to experience something big and bold in our lives. Yet, many of us, because of our fear of vulnerability, our fear of the unknown never actually embark on those dreams. Sharing this vulnerability with a partner can offer a great boost of both confidence and security to go after your soul’s vision, your soul’s greatest ecstasy. 

4. Parenting. For those couples who become parents, they may not realize it until after they’ve conceived, but little in life can offer a deeper experience of vulnerability than caring for the life of a child. If we want them to thrive we cannot control their every move. Even if we could, we cannot ensure they have the ideal life we imagine for them. We have to surrender control and learn to trust life as they grow and evolve into the exquisite souls they are. There is simply no way around that vulnerability. 

5. Health and Death. While we have great influence over the wellbeing and longevity of our bodies through our lifestyle choices, we have no guarantees. We cannot completely control what happens within the cells of our own body nor the body of our beloved. In the same way, we will never know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when we wake up together in the morning, that we will have the privilege of falling asleep with our partner that night. Again, this illuminates the full meaning of vulnerability in relationship that we live everyday. 

6. Love. As we started our list with one of the vulnerabilities many want to avoid, we’ll end with the vulnerability in relationship that most crave. Love itself, loving someone and being loved by someone, means we open ourselves to the greatest depths of vulnerability. We offer love and we can’t guarantee its reciprocation. We also won’t always return another’s love. Over decades of a relationship, all couples move through waves of closeness and distance, hopefully always returning more deeply in love than before. Yet we never know for sure. 

Contemplating these truths of the meaning of vulnerability in relationship may feel overwhelming. In this contemplation, remember that any feelings that might arise are real, very real, and very valid. You may have an “oh wow” moment where you come face to face with a level of vulnerability you have never before considered. Yet, as you stop and feel, you might just discover that the opportunity, the true gift of vulnerability, is to be reminded of the preciousness of life and the people we share it with. 

When you learn to deeply accept and embrace vulnerability you will find your capacity for, and connection to, the most incredible love will have expanded in inordinate ways. 

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The pathway to intimacy

As we considered both the delicacy and the power of vulnerability here, we laid the groundwork, we paved the way for a relationship and partnership that takes your breath away over and over again. We’ve revealed the necessary approach to true love, if that is what we desire. We have invited a realness of being for ourselves, for our partners, for everyone. We have called forth real humanness, always infused with vulnerability, whether we admit it or not.  

As we said earlier, love thrives in the presence of vulnerability and this journey to mastering what it means to be vulnerable in life and love starts with you. To know the blessings of shared vulnerability you’ll need to begin by cultivating and deepening your relationship with yourself. You’ll want to make sure you have given yourself permission to feel a full range of emotions. You’ll need to develop a trust in life itself because, as we have said, living in and of itself brings us heart to heart with vulnerability. 

Once you trust your own relationship with vulnerability, you can now share it with another and allow another to share vulnerably with you. We call this second stage of the Path of Soul Love ‘Ecstatic Intimacy’ where hearts, souls, and bodies unite for the evolution and ecstasy of each other’s souls. The power of uniting in this way, defies words to describe it. 

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In closing, if we’re honest here, most people long for this depth of love, passion, and fulfillment in their life, love and lovemaking. At the same time, many rarely find the courage within to walk this path. It’s heartbreaking to know how many people, both single and partnered, fear the risk of vulnerability so much and hold so much fear of intimacy, that they will cut off the life force of a relationship before it ever fully breathes.

We hope you have come to realize that every single person, every single soul, was designed with the capacity to live a fully vulnerable life. No matter the body you were born into, you have been designed with the complete ability to fully embody vulnerability. 

So, will you, along with your partner – present or future – have the privilege of knowing the greatest of intimacies, pleasures, and joys available on this human journey? We hope so. 

Ecstasy starts with vulnerability… What will you do now?

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Since 2006, highly conscious men and women, with a commitment to extraordinary relationships, have chosen Ecstatic Intimacy to find and cultivate Soul Partnerships from their bedrooms to their boardrooms. Ecstatic Intimacy believes in coveted relationships, for all. 

You too, are invited…