Vulnerability in Marriage: How's It Working For You?
You may have heard marriage experts talk about the importance of vulnerability in relationships. It’s the idea that you willingly expose your true emotions, thoughts, and insecurities to others, allowing yourself to be seen and known as you really are, weaknesses and all. The goal is that, in being vulnerable, you would foster a deeper connection to others.
To some people, this is an appealing idea, especially to those who are always looking for ways to improve their relationship. For others, the idea of vulnerability feels risky - like something that exposes them and makes them prone to break. And to some extent, that’s true. A vulnerability in a bridge or a dam or a building puts it at risk of falling apart. But it also provides an opportunity for it to be worked on and reinforced so that it can become stronger than it was before that vulnerability was known.
Many marriage experts would say that being vulnerable in marriage is vital to the health of the relationship. As in construction, it provides an opportunity for that area of vulnerability to be worked on and built up or, at the very least, accepted and handled with care.
And that’s healthy…. if you have two people who know how to handle vulnerabilities and work to repair them, build them up, or work around them. But imagine if (back to the construction analogy) someone with a hunger for power found the vulnerability in a dam and, knowing that just a slight push, chip, or bit of pressure in the right spot could bring down the whole dam, in a moment of desperation for power, breached the vulnerability and sent the dam tumbling into the valley below. Vulnerability is good in a healthy marriage, but in a marriage where someone is hungry for power or control (or respect, leadership, or honor), vulnerability can bring destruction. So vulnerability in marriage is not always safe. The question is: how can you know whether it’s good to be vulnerable in your marriage?
How to know whether vulnerability is good for your marriage
The way we’re taught about vulnerability makes it sounds as though you should always be vulnerable because it’s a key to making things better. But when it’s talked about that positively, it can be a shock when you realize that your vulnerability has had the opposite effect. Rather than making things better and making the marriage stronger, it has made things more volatile and shaky. The vulnerabilities that are supposed to be used for good are being used against you instead.
And you’ll hear people talk about the differences between men and women when it comes to vulnerability, as though knowing that men have a harder time opening up (which isn’t true, by the way) makes it OK for them to have a hard time opening up but also makes it acceptable (and encouraged) for women to “help” them open up. Yet this creates such an unhealthy dynamic. It’s along the same lines as learning the 5 love languages or learning about love and respect or discovering his needs/her needs and believing that gaining that understanding makes it acceptable for one person to be unhealthy while the healthy person strives to help their spouse get healthy.
But what you really need to learn when you gain knowledge and understanding through those books or marriage retreats or other resources is that “reasons aren’t excuses.” Just because you can understand the reason why someone is the way he/she is, that doesn’t mean that it’s an excuse for continued unhealthy behavior. A person who has reasons for their behavior should, ideally, then use those reasons to heal rather than using them to continue to hurt.
And what happens when people are being hurt and then being told to be vulnerable is that, rather than creating closeness and connection, they are being hurt more. People-helpers want to encourage you to be open and honest about your thoughts and feelings, even if it’s uncomfortable, believing that, if you are both open and honest, then you give your spouse perspective on where you’re coming from, and that perspective will foster intimacy and unity. But does it?
Does vulnerability produce intimacy?
Let’s explore the accuracy of the proposition that being vulnerable (even if it’s uncomfortable) will help you understand each other better by first considering why sharing your thoughts and feelings might make you uncomfortable. Sometimes it might be uncomfortable simply because you don’t know how someone is going to respond. In that case, it may be healthy to push past the discomfort in order to test your discomfort and learn how they will respond.
But sometimes discomfort is based on something you already know. For example, you may already know, based on past experience, how the person is likely to respond. You don’t want to keep putting your hand on the red burner over and over again just because one day it might not actually be hot. Past experience has shown that a red burner is hot. You don’t need to keep testing it. [I’ve written an article on how past experiences of talking with your spouse can cause communication to be affected, and it’s very relevant to this point.]
Knowing that vulnerability isn’t always the right thing in relationships, let’s consider some reasons for choosing not to be vulnerable.
Does vulnerability make you uncomfortable?
Being uncomfortable can be an indication that it won’t be helpful to be vulnerable - that if you share your thoughts and feelings, they aren’t going to be heard or understood or treated with care. Feeling uncomfortable can be one reason not to be vulnerable. If you aren’t emotionally safe when you share, then don’t share. Don’t keep touching the hot stove. Or, as Scripture puts it “don’t cast your pearls before pigs for them to be trampled.”
Is the vulnerability mutual?
Another way to discover whether it might not be helpful to be vulnerable is to pay attention to whether the sharing of thoughts and feelings is equal. Do you share but your spouse doesn’t? If that’s the situation, being vulnerable is only creating an opportunity for an imbalance of power in the relationship, and an imbalance of power leads to one leaning toward dictatorship and the other leaning toward subservience. It’s like if you were to agree to work together with someone on a project but they just sat there and watched you do all the work. As long as you’re willing to do the work and they’re willing to sit there and watch, the watcher has the power to tell you what to do and you will just willingly do it. You both have the same goal, but only one of you is doing the work.
So if the vulnerability and sharing of thoughts and feelings isn’t mutual (or isn’t mutually respected) then you have a few options… which I explain in this article on how to get through to your spouse.
Does your spouse have a clue?
Another clue as to the whether vulnerability will help or harm your marriage is to ask: Does your spouse even seem to know what they’re thinking or feeling? Someone who isn’t in touch with what they experience internally (their thoughts and feelings) can’t handle their own thoughts and feelings and won’t be able to handle yours, either. If your spouse gets angry, self-deprecating (they turn on themselves with blame or self-victimization), or shuts down when you share your difficult thoughts and feelings, that might be why.
What’s the solution? Only share at the level your spouse is able and willing to share. It’s at this level that they are able to understand and handle what you have to share. Anything more than that and they will become dysregulated. [Read my article on what to do if your spouse is more like a child]
Is there only one way of thinking or one feeling?
Another clue that being vulnerable will not help your marriage or allow perspectives to be understood is that your spouse has only one way of thinking or one feeling regardless of the topic. One way of thinking means that your spouse seems unable to see things from your perspective. This may be the case if they tend to be able to come up with a thousand reasons as to why something should be done their way. No matter how compelling your evidence or how strong your feelings are in offering a different way, it’s not enough to convince them that it should be done your way (or even compromised on). They have only one way of thinking about it: their way.
And to have only one feeling means is that, while you can acknowledge a whole range of emotions (e.g. disappointment, concern, frustration, resentment, desperation, anger, sadness, etc.), your spouse seems to have only one emotional response. Often, it’s anger. No matter what topic you are trying to be vulnerable about in order to share your perspective, if it doesn’t align with what they want, they get angry. For some people, that emotion is self-pity. They start saying that they can’t do anything right, start feeling sorry for themselves, or make pitiful statements about how they know they have to try harder, etc. They might even reference thoughts of suicide or self-harm or engage in self-destructive activities (addictions, isolation, etc.)
When someone has a limited ability to think in ways outside of their own perspective or feel other people’s feelings, your ability to work through struggles with them will be limited, and the belief that being vulnerable will help will prove to be absolutely false. If you find this to be the case, you might want to read my article on narcissism for three tips from the Bible on how to handle it.
The heart of the matter
Vulnerability is not good for every relationship, because vulnerability is designed to teach and provide understanding, but not everyone is teachable. God says that “fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Proverbs 1:7) and “find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions” (Proverbs 18:2). In fact, “the complacency of fools will destroy them” (Proverbs 1:32), so don’t go down with the ship, because “a companion of fools suffers harm” ( Proverbs 13:20). When it comes to vulnerability, “do not speak to fools, for they will scorn your prudent words” (Proverbs 23:9).
If, when you are vulnerable and share your thoughts and feelings, it is well-received and you feel heard and understood, then vulnerability has been good. But if you feel emotionally beat up or rejected after sharing your thoughts and feelings, then being vulnerable was not good for you or the relationship. The results speak for themselves.
Sometimes being vulnerable isn’t just about always being open and sharing. Sometimes it’s simply about the willingness to try, even when there are no guarantees. It’s the willingness to love, the willingness to struggle if it means that at least you can say that you tried, and the willingness to try even if you fail.
But it also means that, once you’ve tried, you are realistic about the results, and then the vulnerability shifts to a willingness to watch and observe in the midst uncertainty (especially when your inclination is to act and do and change things), and possibly, a willingness to let go even if you’re afraid of what that might look like.
And when you understand the reality that being vulnerable isn’t a guarantee that your marriage will get better, then you will be open to the healthy approaches that really will help. And you will find that….. Hope isn’t found in our situation changing; it’s found in our situation….
Need help sorting out whether to be vulnerable? Schedule a Breakthrough Session.
Share this article