You know, this question is one of the most important questions anyone can ask me. And I want to sit with you in it for a second, because most people think being vulnerable means saying “I feel sad” or “I feel hurt.” But it’s actually more specific than that, and it’s scarier than that.
Here’s what I know from sixteen years of sitting with couples.
When you’re in a moment of disconnection with your spouse, something is happening inside you that you probably don’t even fully recognize. There’s a place inside you that longs to be met, and right now, it isn’t being met. That longing, that ache, that is your vulnerability. That is the real thing.
But here’s what most of us do instead. We protest. We blame, we criticize, we shut down, we make a sarcastic comment, we give unsolicited advice, we go quiet for three days. Whatever your particular flavor of protest is, that’s what comes out. And to your spouse, that protest looks like an attack, or like you’ve disappeared, and now they’re hurting too. And then they do their protest. And around and around you go.
So being vulnerable with your spouse means this: instead of leading with the protest, you pause, and you find the thing underneath it.
I’ll give you a real example I use with couples. Someone walks into the kitchen, sees only one cup of coffee made, and inside they touch that place of feeling not considered. Not seen. That is the vulnerable experience. What comes out instead? “Oh, I see you decided to treat yourself this morning.” That’s the protest. It makes complete sense that it came out. But it landed on their partner like a criticism, and now that partner feels like a failure, like they can’t do anything right, and they shut down or fight back.
So vulnerability would sound more like: “Hey, when I saw only one cup made, something in me felt forgotten. And I know that probably sounds small, but I just needed to tell you that.”
That is a completely different conversation.
Now, here’s something I really want you to hear. There is a part inside you, a younger, more tender part, that carries this hurt. I sometimes ask people to picture that part of themselves as a little kid, maybe five or six years old, sitting there feeling scared or alone or like they’re too much or not enough. And I ask them, how would you treat that child? Would you tell them to get their act together? Would you tell them they’re being ridiculous?
Of course not.
So before you can be vulnerable with your spouse, you have to be willing to meet that part of yourself first. To say, hey, I see you. You’re hurting. That’s real. I’m not going to hide you or shame you.
And then, and this is the brave part, you bring that tender place to your spouse. You give them the opportunity to show up for the most real part of you.
One more thing. And this matters enormously. You can’t just decide to be vulnerable in a vacuum. If you and your spouse have been stuck in your cycle for a while, your softening might still land on them as blame, because they’re still inside the hurt of the system you’ve both been living in. That’s why the work is ideally done together, both of you learning to see the cycle as the problem, not each other.
The goal is to get to a place where you can both stand back and say, we are stuck. Not you are the problem. Not I am the problem. We are in a cycle that is hurting both of us. That “we” is where everything begins to shift.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Feeling Disconnected from Spouse? What It Means and What to Do
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