The Shadow Side of Vulnerability
How a good thing can have bad outcomes
The ability to be open and vulnerable is often held up as a gold standard for authentic awareness and relational communication. People who refuse to be vulnerable often cover their soft spots with deflection, gaslighting, or other strategies that keep people from seeing who they really are. They don’t communicate very well and relationships often suffer when one of both people are caught in an avoidance of vulnerability. It is understandable why this “V-word,” as a friend described it, has become so central to discussions about relationships.
Men, it seems, are particularly recalcitrant when it comes to being emotionally vulnerable—at least, that is our reputation. So much so, I was once at a discussion group that focused on this question: Why aren’t men more vulnerable? When questions are posed this way, it signals an underlying assumption. I usually turn it over and ask: Where’s the shadow? Where is the dark side? Here is my exploration.
First, the night of the discussion group, I was acutely aware of the freeze up shadow. My spouse suffered from severe anxiety at the time, along with depression. The pain of suicide attempts and the decisions I had made to help relieve them left me feeling deeply hollow and empty inside. In an effort to understand, I sometimes waded into that vulnerable place in my journal and on retreats. Every time, however, I came out unable to function. I was disturbed at such a deep emotional level because I had opened up and become very vulnerable. I needed days off of work just to right myself. I could not function. If I tried to work, I would just stare at the screen all day, a zombie internally processing what was going on. This incapacitation is what I call the “vulnerability freeze up.” Being open and vulnerable can lead to the inability to function when what you are facing is overwhelming, and for most men, the stored up feelings are always overwhelming. So, you face a choice: do I get vulnerable? Or do I continue to function? From the outside, it’s easy to say, “Let it go and try vulnerability.” But it’s a lot harder when your wife and children are utterly dependent on you for sustenance, and you see the fear on their faces when they see your level of incapacitation. They need you to function. The wise man turns vulnerability away at the door because he sees this shadow.
While discussing vulnerability recently with a friend who is very open with his torments, he observed: “Sometimes I wonder if I am vulnerable in order to attract pity.” That’s also a shadow of vulnerability. We all want our stories to be heard—that’s human. But when we are emotionally vulnerable in order to attract a certain kind of response, that is becoming manipulative. Men who are pleasers or Mr. Nice Guys tend to be master manipulators. They can use open vulnerability to attract the energy they seek in their lives, often without even knowing it. Pity can be evoked, and validation is the prize.
Third, vulnerability can tip over into dumping—violating someone else’s boundaries while protecting the dumper. “Honest openness” has been used more than once to expose others in a hurtful way—usually someone they have been in relationship with—while defending it as “just being honest.” The masquerade in this is that the dumper tends to be praised for being vulnerable because they are exposing truths about themselves which it would appear does not put them in a good light. But the truth underneath the matter is that someone else in the story is looking even worse, and that is often on purpose. Vulnerability can be used as a weapon in this way; it becomes a way to hide the vicious attack that is actually being made, often by violating someone else’s boundaries.
Fourth, vulnerability can be a projection—that is, a wish that someone else would be vulnerable when we ourselves can’t or won’t. To take an example from the world of dating, women often say they want a man who can communicate his feelings—someone with emotional intelligence and self awareness. I tend to be attracted to this desire. Yet in many cases, I have found that the women who claim they want this cannot do it themselves. Instead of emotional awareness, they come with blame, passive aggression, and gas lighting. Such a woman is profoundly defended and emotionally unavailable. She can’t be vulnerable and if the man speaks from a place of vulnerability he is more likely to hear, “Be a man” than he is to receive empathy. This is experienced as a double-bind. There’s no way to succeed. Of course, men can draw women into emotional vulnerability and turn on them, too. This is a two way street.
Finally, vulnerability plays a big part in my writing and my work. Vulnerability is essential to poetry. Without it I cannot take the emotional risks to write or to speak it in public. If I am going to write directly of my experience, as in a memoir or even this essay, vulnerability is the necessary ingredient to allow it to happen. But here again there is a shadow to it. How far and how deep do I go in the published writing that involves other people—say family members, or dates, or prospective dates, or intimate partners? What if my comfort with vulnerability may not match theirs? What impact does public vulnerability and openness have on intimate life? What is the level to which you can be present to the experience of your life and share it without untowardly exposing the life of your friends and community who choose a different level of openness? Friends, community, lovers, family. Is permission enough? These questions live with me now. And because I am writing and a writer, I have no choice but to consciously consider this shadow of vulnerability. There is a need to speak the clear and vulnerable truth, but there is also a need to mind boundaries and the privacy of other people.
In summary, vulnerability is often presented as an elixir of emotional intimacy. Without vulnerability, it is difficult to communicate and trust. Honesty is a casualty of a lack of vulnerability. We know how crucial a willingness to take emotional risks and be emotionally vulnerable is to improving relationships. But like everything, vulnerability has a shadow. It is no panacea for what ails our relational lives. We need to consider it carefully. We need to look at what it really going on. What are we really up to? And how might vulnerability be operating in a way that we do not intend?
Anthony Signorelli
Author News
My second book on postcapitalism should be available in a about a week!
Also, I am finishing a two book set on grief and processing it through writing. More to come on that!