Without exception, my friends and family consider my partner to be a great person. And albeit biased, I’d wholeheartedly agree. I’m frequently told what a marvellous person she is and given constant compliments on her excellent character. All of the above is irrefutable. However, what about the side of her that others rarely, if ever, see as it’s contained within our relationship? The increasingly loud and relentless person in an argument who fails to see logic when it doesn’t support her perspective? Or her infuriatingly stubborn streak (even to her own detriment)? Not to mention the unrelenting ‘reminders’ to do something I’ve already been asked, even while I’m in the middle of doing something else? I can imagine many men and women are nodding their heads while reading this as they recognise the aforementioned in their own relationships.
I still maintain my partner’s an amazing person but it’s fair to say that her ‘less desirable’ traits are less likely to rear their head outside of our relationship. And the same is undoubtedly applicable to me. This doesn’t make either of us duplicitous or disingenuous and this experience is almost certainly reflected in every relationship and close friendship. Not to mention, just as the more frustrating aspects of one’s personality are reserved for their relationship, the same could be said for the best qualities of one’s character such as the uncompromising altruism that is kept for those closest to us.
Relationships are where polarised behaviours can not only be expected but also accepted; arguably due to the inherent vulnerability of relationships. They represent a safe place for our emotions and character, good, bad and indifferent, to be free; a place where any judgement we're subject to should be neutered by underlying affection and respect.
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To be vulnerable is a feature of the human condition. Hence it being present in any relationship. Without vulnerability, we lack the capacity for fear and apprehension. We lack the capacity to motivate ourselves toward a greater good for ourselves and those around us through connection and compassion. While vulnerability has become synonymous with exposure or weakness, on reflection, it is at the very core of human existence and by no means an attribute that we should seek to erode or ignore.
Brené Brown’s brilliant TED Talk articulated the struggle of vulnerability. Yet within a relationship, that struggle is countered by the security that is provided via our connections with each other. Anxieties are alleviated with reassurances, loneliness with companionship and judgement and criticism with acceptance. Within the sphere of relationships, opposing emotions are juxtaposed and balanced, thus diminishing our vulnerability. The intrinsic nature of vulnerability within relationships means it isn’t going anywhere and on the whole, this is a good thing. Indeed, for a partner or friend to facilitate the emotional refuge of a relationship that doesn’t allow vulnerability to be a crushing albatross but rather a feature that can be accepted and managed, is testament to a great partner or friend.
As spheres of intimacy, relationships will always have the scope for one’s fragility that vulnerability threatens to expose. Although a good relationship will ensure that doesn’t become the case in providing the requisite sanctuary. But what happens when that fragility is abused and taken advantage of with vulnerability becoming a means to facilitate that very abuse?
Vulnerability presents the landscape for relationships to encompass companionship and empathy. Though the vulnerability of others can be exploited by those who feel unable to embrace their own vulnerability and rather use it as a tool to protect their own insecurities and selfishly advance only their own desires. Mental, emotional and sometimes physical abuse, bullying, control and diminishing of individuality and any modicum of independence outside of a relationship, can just as easily be facilitated via vulnerability. Just as the safety and support afforded by a healthy relationship can be too.
For some, their own weakness compels them to pounce upon the vulnerability of a partner for their own gains. Just as they wouldn’t take such an approach with others (in the knowledge that their efforts would be feeble and consequently crushed), they reserve their form of abuse for the only sphere that they feel confident in experiencing success as they prey on the vulnerability of others.
He or she who is subject to such treatment is sadly pinned down by their own vulnerability and numbed, leaving them emotionally paralysed as their own fragility is taken advantage of. With the presence of vulnerability, it’s therefore little wonder that relationships are forums for the best and worst of the human condition with either being heightened through closeness and connection.
Our struggle with vulnerability is part of our emotional experience. And within relationships, that struggle is intensified. It’s a place for the best and the worst that we have to offer in the knowledge that we escape judgement and reproach to an extent that we could not hope for outside of its parameters. At face value, this presents anxieties that rationally, we might not want to encounter. But the possibility of that vulnerability being the basis of something greater continues to lead us to relationships in the hope that just that will be achieved.
