There are a handful of sentences that sometimes cost more than they should. I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m not really thrilled with myself right now. Simple, true words, and still something in us contracts at the thought of saying them out loud to someone else — especially sometimes someone we love. Why does something so plain feel so dangerous?

It’s vulnerable.  In the context of a relationship, “vulnerable” is a word that’s loaded with meaning.  You could say it has both a positive and negative valence and we rarely notice which one is running the show. In one sense, it means exposed in the bad way — weak, unguarded, a soft place someone could take advantage of. In another sense, it’s an openness that let’s another into our world – it’s the basis for real connection.   Which side of the vulnerability coin we end-up feeling depends almost entirely on context: who’s listening, what happened the last time we opened up like this, whether the space around us has earned enough trust to make the risk worth it?  Maybe the safety is felt now, but will it be 3 minutes from now?  3 weeks?

There’s a physical version of this I think about often.  When you literally extend your arm toward someone, you open your side — ribs, soft belly, underarm, all exposed for as long as the arm stays out. I remember this from my limited experience as a raft and canoe guide.  A reach to rescue or -be- rescued exposed your side to massive rocks, paddles, the possibility of being pulled out… It’s a picture of what happens every time we say something true about how we’re feeling — something in us opens, undefended, until we see what lands on the other side.

There are two reaches at the center of every close relationship, and both cost something. There’s the reach for help — I need you, come closer, I can’t do this alone right now. And there’s the reach to soothe — I’m here, let me help, you don’t have to carry this by yourself. We tend to assume only the first kind is vulnerable — the person asking for comfort is the one taking the risk, right? But watch someone reach out to comfort a partner who is shut down, who might not take the hand, might turn away, might say “I’m fine” in the voice that means the opposite. Offering comfort carries its own exposure. You might reach and find nothing there.

This is the part good couples work has to make room for, hold space for: the fear that shows up the instant a reach becomes possible. In session, I’ll often watch someone get right to the edge of it — voice softening, a true feeling almost named — and then something closes. A joke. A pivot back into the argument. A retreat into whatever posture kept them safe a moment ago. That closing is old protection — the body understandably doing what it learned to do the last time an opening didn’t go well.

Most of the couples I work with aren’t really fighting about the dishes, the calendar, or who said what on Tuesday. They’re fighting about whether it’s safe to open up, whether the last time they did, something landed there. So they’ve found other ways to ask for what they need — a raised voice, a cold silence, criticism standing in for I miss you. These are reaches too, just armored ones. Part of the work is learning to hear the reach hiding inside the protest, and finding the courage to try the unarmored version again.

That courage doesn’t come from being told the reach is safe. It comes from discovering, slowly, in the presence of someone steady, that the true feeling can survive being said out loud. What are you afraid will happen if you tell her you’re worried? What are you afraid will happen if you offer comfort and it isn’t enough? Sitting with those questions, instead of rushing past them to the fix, is much of what happens in the room — until the fear itself becomes a little more speakable.

I’d like to say it becomes easy – but I don’t think that’s often the case.  What is more true to say is that we realize that our loved one and our relationship…and our deep comfort are worth the risk and the more we try, the more our nervous systems find a new path to “together” rather than the old strategies we’ve learned and put so much hope in.  

The next time you feel the pull to say something true, and the equal pull to swallow it back down, it’s worth pausing to be aware of that hesitation. It’s the whole vulnerable, hopeful architecture of connection, caught in a single unfinished motion.  

If you and your partner are ready to practice reaching for each other in a space built to hold it, I’d love to have you at Created for Connection, a couples retreat I’m hosting October 3–4 — a weekend set aside for exactly this kind of honest, guided opening. Learn more and save your spot at www.flourishvt.com/retreats.  To connect with me about couples counseling, visit https://flourishvt.com/couples-counseling/.