Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier and more self expressed. I'm your host, Erin Keating.
Today I want to talk about vulnerability. I've been thinking a lot about vulnerability and emotional safety. And I've been working on this every day since my divorce and since I blew up my life a couple of years ago. I've been working on my vulnerability with you and sharing myself on an emotional level, being less compartmentalized, protecting myself less, being more honest and open and in touch with my intuition. My friendships have deepened as a result, my professional relationships have deepened as a result. We all saw that TED Talk that Brené Brown did and our minds and eyes were open to the power of vulnerability. And if you haven't seen it, you should definitely go look at it right now.
But in love and relationships, vulnerability does not come naturally to me. I was talking to a guy online, we were chatting, texting back and forth, and I think he was catfishing me because all he wanted to talk about was bitcoin. And I eventually had to end the conversation, conversation. But he said to me, I said something about getting divorced. And he said to me, it sounds like you've been hurt in the past. And I thought to myself, who hasn't been hurt in the past? Like that's some revelation that a 52 year old woman who's recently divorced has been hurt in the past. But what it got me thinking was, yeah, I have been hurt in the past. And the lesson that I took away from my earliest intimate relationships, familial and romantic, was don't be vulnerable, protect yourself.
Like a lot of Gen X kids, I was raised to be very independent, which is a superpower for me in my adult life. But when you are independent and wholly responsible for yourself and have a lot of shit on your shoulders, there isn't a ton of room to be vulnerable. And when I was a kid, my mom would comfort me when I was sad, but the message that I got about men is that they're not going to take care of your emotions and they're not going to prioritize your safety and your emotional well being really isn't that important. And you have to figure out how to keep yourself safe because no one is coming to save you. And by the way, you should carry your own suitcase.
It was pretty clear to me that if I didn't become independent and I didn't learn how to care for myself, on a fundamental level, there wasn't really anyone there who would do that for me. I'm not throwing my mom under the bus. She did everything she could possibly do and she was amazing and remains amazing. But there are circumstances in my childhood that taught me this lesson over and over and over again. And so vulnerability was not a game that I felt comfortable or safe playing. And when I fell in love as a teenager, I loved so hard, oh my God. I mean, it was so epic for me to, to be in love and to have my first romantic and sexual relationships.
And then in that teenage way when things fell apart with betrayals and drama and all of it, I think I took it a lot harder than most girls would have because I had opened my heart and gotten. It really hurt really bad. And so in my late teens and in my 20s, I really stayed away from relationships. There were so many nice guys who liked me and I just couldn't see them, I just couldn't imagine that what I had for them was what they would really want. I was too sassy, I was too tough, I was too guarded. And I saw my friends in relationships and I just thought, yeah, I don't know how to do that.
I'm vulnerable in my female friendships, I always have been. I'm vulnerable with my therapists, that's what I'm paying them for, is to learn that. Right? I certainly have had people in my life who were there to hold me and to love me. And I have had good men in my life for short periods of time. But my instinct is always to handle it myself, more often than not. In my love relationships and in my 17 year marriage, 20 year relationship with my ex, vulnerability was largely not a safe place. I would open myself up and then there would always be a cost for being too revealed. It would somehow always come back around to hurt me.
I know not every man is like this. I know that there are so many good men out there who are caring and will take care of me and will want to be in an emotionally vulnerable relationship where we take care of each other, but I don't have a template for that. And I think that's what makes me so comfortable with having casual intimacy. I know not everyone can do that and not everyone wants to do that or is comfortable doing that because the paradigm that we are raised to think is virtuous and that may be more emotionally integrated is to look for a deeply emotionally connected and potentially vulnerable dynamic with a man.
And I don't really need that. In fact, it's so much harder for me. It's so easy for me to do friends with benefits because I'm not opening my heart, we're just friends and we have sex and it's hot and it's nice and I can be direct and communicate my needs. But I'm not laying it all on the line. And why all of this has come up for me is because I literally had one date with someone who seems like an emotionally mature, real nice, smart, genuine human being who might actually be a worthy partner for me. Now in my head, I'm already like so far down the line in this relationship, I'm a fucking lunatic.
I'm already so far down the line in this relationship where we're married and I'm being oppressed. We have not had a second date, but this is how deep seated my fear of vulnerability is. My fear of being seen, my fear of wanting too much, of wanting something I might not get, of being betrayed. This is literally after a great conversation and some kissing with somebody nice. It's just interesting to me that this is the most confronting thing that could possibly happen scares the out of me.
And I did open my heart to the Marine, I definitely did. It was a beautiful first relationship out of the marriage. But there was so much distance and difference between us that I was in a foreign territory. And he wasn't asking anything emotional of me because he didn't have those skills. And so we just had a lot of fun and felt very connected and had amazing sex and had good times together, until we didn't have good times together because things started to get real in a way. So, gosh, I'm working so hard to overcome all of the experiences in my life that had me feeling like I needed to be an island.
Like I needed to handle everything by myself, it's a practice in vulnerability. I am working on that muscle. I share my feelings with you, I share my deepest thoughts, because I don't want to be a person who can't choose vulnerability in love. I really want to be someone who can do that. I want to show up with my whole self and my whole heart.
I can do that with women. Women are safe, women are amazing. Men, real tricky. And while I love being a wild child, I really do and having sexy adventures, my heart sometimes wants more than that. Then my heart freaks out and says, but you'll lose your freedom, you'll lose your agency, you'll get trapped, you'll sell yourself out, you'll fawn, you'll do all the things you've done in past relationships don't do that to yourself. So I'm feeling my tender, vulnerable, 8 year old heart. I'm feeling my tender teenage and 20 something longing heart beating inside of me. And it scares the out of me because somehow in my mind, being fierce and clear and determined and directed and passionate and outspoken and all those things that I love about myself feels contradictory or incompatible with being in a loving relationship.
I know how to compartmentalize, I don't know how to integrate. And if I'm going to be with someone, this guy or someone else, that person's gonna have to be able to handle that. I'm on this journey and it's hard to believe that someone's gonna want to do that when you know, my story about myself in love is that like I'm a little bit up and that I don't know how to do it. And that got really validated by my ex husband who made it very clear to me that I wasn't doing love right, but I was, I was doing it right. I was showing up and I was doing it in the best way I knew how while still needing to protect myself. And I think the next relationship that's like a real fully integrated, emotional, connected, mature thing that I find will be a revelation in my life. But it feels so raw to go there, right? It feels so raw to go there. Otherwise, why, why am I crying? Do you feel safe being vulnerable? Were you taught some lesson about the cost of vulnerability? Did you have great early experiences and great models in your life for being vulnerable and open and being cared for in that state? We are all scared of getting hurt.
But I am no longer willing to allow that fear of getting hurt to limit what is possible for me in life. I am not the woman I was in my 20s where I was scared to take risks with my heart because I just couldn't stand the notion of getting hurt. I'm okay with getting hurt. I'm okay with it. I want to grow, I want to stretch, I want to change, I still want to a lot of guys that's going to be really incompatible. But you never know. Stranger things have happened. I still want to have sexual adventures, let's just put it that way.
But maybe I could do that inside of a relationship, who knows? I'm not willing to limit what is possible for me based on what I have been able to do in the past. If this divorce didn't kill me, nothing will. If the stresses and strains of my career didn't kill me, nothing will. If being a single mom of twin teenagers didn't kill me, nothing will. And I am willing to take on the uncomfortable feelings that it takes to be vulnerable. Are you? I hear from a lot of women that it's just not worth it to try. I think it might be worth it. I think it just might.
Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If you have been enjoying this podcast, please leave me a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Your honest, heartfelt feedback means the world to me and the more great reviews we have, the more people will be able to find the show. The more people who find the show, the bigger our community becomes and the larger this content conversation about empowerment in midlife can be. Also tell your friends about the show that is how things catch fire.
Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey.
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