Human interactions can be viewed as transactions. Suppose I enjoy your company and you enjoy mine. We are using each other for the company when we are together. When you get employment, the management is using you for their ends (to create a product) and you are using them for your end (to get a pay check). Evil occurs when the transaction is unequal. The powerful and rich sometimes abuse the poor and meek. That is what you are thinking of as “using others.”
But the best part of being human is being able to connect with other humans. We’re hardwired for it. We live in tribes and families, work in groups, love as couples, and thrive in friendships. The drive to connect is in all of us whether we acknowledge it or not.
Vulnerability is the driving force of connection. It’s brave. It’s tender. It’s impossible to connect without it. Vulnerability is the path to genuine human connection. As Robert Glover said in No More Mr. Nice Guy, “Humans are attracted to each other’s rough edges.”
Typically, the confusion manifests itself in one form: using vulnerability as another “tactic” to get people to like you/find you attractive/sleep with you/give you money/etc. But what it means is manipulation.
The problem here is that it’s not genuine, and therefore it’s not vulnerable. Not only are you continuing to be fake and inauthentic, but you’re now whoring out some of your most cherished life memories to try to get someone to like you or even to sleep with you.
Love and attraction aren’t voluntary. I love the idea that we could just sit around and write down a list that says, I want someone funny, who gels up with my friends, who is sharp and creative. But somewhere down the line, we all know that it isn’t our checkboxes that draw us to someone, it’s this feeling of magnetism. I bet we’ve all had this experience of being drawn to someone who doesn’t check all the boxes, and also has some red flags, but you just can’t help it, there’s something that’s just going on there.
I am drawn to people in the moments where they are most vulnerable, where they profess to have a problem that they don't know how to deal with. The type of people I tend to be with are the most vulnerable around me seeking help for the problems in their life. When people come to me and there’s something that they don’t know what to do with, and are struggling emotionally, that is when they get my 100% attention. What I realized in time was that the more I spent time and energy on the same, I started conditioning that behaviour in them.
Being a guy, I was always hardwired not to cry, keep my emotions to myself, don't get emotional, tough it out and walk it off. For years I and many guys didn’t shed a tear and didn’t share an emotion like that, but growing up I realized I started attracting people who wore their emotions on their sleeves.
This is why they say opposites attract. We tend to go from people who have expressed and experienced the aspects of ourselves that we had to repress or deny to become who we are today.
“If you have that psychological need for some kind of affirmation from people you’re interacting with, it must be very seductive.”
We all want to be complete. We want to be someone who doesn’t have to hide or deny any of their experiences whether that’s being shy sometimes, being sad or happy or joyous. But because we have learned that we can't be all of those things to grow up and to get the love we require or the attention we desire, we become all outgoing, we become all quiet, we become all strong, or all weak.
Whatever it is, we don't have that rounded balance and therefore we seek someone else to be with that is like that which is fantastic in the beginning, and you might have heard people say “you complete me, ” But what tends to happen is that there is still a part of you that doesn’t like the thing that they are. So, after some time, the confidence that drew you to them now seems like arrogance.
So that’s a part of our blueprint for someone else and this is why we tend to look for people who hurt us because they are not just hurting us, they’re hurting us in the same way we have been hurt our whole life.
“You become a hero to fringe people, and then they embrace you.”
There are no guarantees. There never have been. But what is certain is that we deserve more than to have our vulnerability – the greatest vehicle to connection – shut down by fear. We cannot guarantee the outcome, but we can have faith in our ability to cope with it. Living and loving with a vulnerable, open heart will bring its own rewards. There is no daring more honest and more courageous than that which comes with respecting our vulnerability, embracing it, and acting from it.
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