The Confession of Vulnerability: An Antidote to Loneliness

“We are all on the verge of insanity. The only person not on this verge, is the person we have just met”

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The Confession of Vulnerability

There is a particular way of discussing oneself that never fails to win friends and comfort audiences… the confession of vulnerability.

There is rarely anything nicer that one can hear about us than an admission that we are down, that we have repeatedly come up short, that we feel vulnerable, that we feel imbued in regret or that we wish we could have acted differently.

An admission of shortcoming has often been thought of as visibly highlighting a stain on one's character — the truth however is more poignant. It is reassuring to know that we aren't alone in the difficulties we face on a day-to-day basis. Hearing a confession of vulnerability serves to dispel any internal thoughts that may be telling us that we are uniquely cursed in our everyday endeavours.

A Tale of Tragedy

We put so much effort into being perfect, but the irony is that its failure that charms.

One of the great tragedies of our time is our unceasing desire to appear as the finished product, devoid of any shortcomings or failures. The obvious truth however is that we aren’t perfect, our dialogue is littered with heuristics and fallacies and our past is flooded with regrettable mistakes.

Upon brief reflections on our own lives, we can surely bring to mind moments, thoughts or decisions that we would rather not have exposed to the wider community.

“Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn’t — it’s human” — Desiderius Erasmus

How do we act in the face of these ubiquitous shortcomings? well, we are taught from a young age to keep them concealed. To try to appear more polished than we really are. We are repeatedly lectured on the downsides of vulnerability but the story that never gets told is the profound upside of being vulnerable and its role in harnessing meaningful connections in life.

The Charm of Failure

So why does vulnerability charm? as mentioned earlier, it is deeply reassuring to know that we are not alone when it comes to shortcomings in life. Confessing vulnerability humanises us in discussion with the next person and builds bridges that are founded on common experience.

The notion that we are more attracted to individuals who are similar to us is one that has been consistently converged upon in the scientific literature. A 2008 review of 313 different studies with over 35,000 participants concluded that similarity was a strong predictor of attraction in the initial stages of a relationship. Not good news for the proponents of the phrase — ‘Opposites attract’.

Others long to hear external evidence of issues that prove that they are not uniquely cursed. They need to hear how difficult our careers are proving, how worried we are at times, and how arduous relationships can be.

The British-Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton notably remarks that revealing any of these internal wounds may place us on vulnerable grounds. Others could judge us or laugh in our faces. But of course, that’s the point. The way we get close to others is through the confession of parts of us, that we wouldn’t want to fall into the wrong hands. Relationships and friendships are built upon the fact that one has entrusted us with information about them that is concealed from the world.

“It’s deeply poignant that we should expend so much effort on trying to look strong before the world when, all the while, it’s really only ever the revelation of the somewhat embarrassing, sad, melancholy, and anxious bits of us that renders us endearing to others and transforms strangers into friends” — Alain de Botton