Why Successful Love Requires Vulnerability

We can state the matter starkly: we cannot be good lovers if we don’t know how to be vulnerable.

We make ourselves psychologically vulnerable whenever we let a partner know some of the ways in which we are weak, needy, scared, immature, incompetent or just plain odd - that is, some of the ways in which we are human. To be vulnerable is to dare to take off the usual cloak of normality and sensibleness with which we navigate the world and for once, to show someone who we really are, with all the fragility and unusualness implied. We might, as vulnerable people, admit to a desire to be mummied or daddied, to curl into a ball, to cry over a so-called small thing, to be reassured about an apparently minor flaw, to call up our lover every ten minutes, to suffer from anxiety or paranoia, to speak in a regressive voice or to hug a favourite stuffed animal…”