Quotes About Vulnerability

Only after giving up 'the truth' can we learn to speak our truth.

Men are not raised to be intimate, they're raised to be competitive performers...

The paradox for boys is that in order to be worthy of connection they must prove themselves invulnerable, button down warriors in the world's emotional market place.

Dan now has resources that he lacked as that little boy, like the ability to stand up to his wife, to tell Julia the truth and let the chips fall where they may. I call this letting the bad thing happen.

Everyone gets to go crazy in long-term relationships, but you have to take turns. I call this relational integrity. It means that you hold the (Wise Adult) fort while your partner goes off their (Adaptive Child) rails. It's not an easy practice, but it builds strong relational muscles.

In your close relationships, urgency is your enemy, and breath is your friend.

strength is not the absence of vulnerability. Strength is knowing what your weaknesses are and working with them.

Men's willingness to downplay weakness and pain is so great that it has been named as a factor in their shorter life span. The ten years of difference in longevity between men and women turns out to have little to do with genes. Men wait longer to acknowledge that they are sick, take longer to get help, and once they get treatment do not comply with it as well as women do.

The bonds of silence and protection run deeper, for the moment, than his trust in me.

The paradox of real love is that our capacity to sustain intimacy rests on our capacity to tolerate aloneness inside the relationship.

Sustaining relationships with others requires a good relationship to ourselves. Healthy self-esteem is an internal sense of worth that pulls one neither into 'better than' grandiosity nor 'less than' shame.

Love is not for the faint of heart.

Jealousy injures us with the dagger of self-doubt.

Coffee makes me invincible. But when the cup is empty, I return to mere mortal.

I heard the teardrop hit my pillow before I even knew I was crying.

I like the snot to run a little, the tears to accumulate a bit before reaching for the handkerchief. Then I know I'm really crying. Crying just isn't crying unless it's messy.

Love is when you can be your true self with someone, and you only want to be your true self because of them.

It's hard to defeat a woman in love.

I am in the middle of nowhere. It's nighttime. I am surrounded by crocodiles. The boat motor won't start. Steve will be snatched and eaten by One-Eye right off the back of the boat. Then I'll be alone.

In this culture, there is no ego rewards for standing up in public and admitting vulnerability.

Crying was a sign of weakness. She would not be weak. Not in front of him. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, forcing back the tears. Once she had herself under control, she took a shuddering breath and moved to the side of the bed where a chair had been pulled

You find out in life that people really like you funny. So what do you give 'em? Humor. And then if you show them the other side, they don't like you as much. I find, too, that I can hide behind the idiot's mask being funny, and you never see the sorrow or the pain.

You find out in life that people really like you funny. So what do you give em? Humor. And if you show them the other side, they don't like you as much. I find, too, that I can hide behind the idiot 's mask being funny, and you never see the sorrow or the pain.

When she cried, he would say, "there is nothing wrong with crying. Your feelings tell you who are. They tell what is important. Don't ever be ashamed of them.