Tag Archives: vulnerability

We Don’t Know: Communicating Below the Belt

There’s probably no feeling in the world more powerful than knowing you’re wanted, especially by somebody you want in return. That feeling in and of itself can serve as a pretty magical aphrodisiac. What you want is sexy, and what you’re going to get is sexy. Even if the first time you sleep with someone you really like isn’t that great, it still feels great because you were with a person you really wanted to be with. Hormones do all the dirty work. That’s just science. Sexy, sexy science.

But what about the next time you do the deed? What about six months down the line? Or heck, six years? We typically give our new paramours a mulligan if they don’t deliver the Cosmopolitan-front-page mindblowing orgasm we’re craving the first time around… But everyone reaches a point at which they absolutely must speak up. Your partner isn’t a mind-reader, even if they’ve gotten to know you insanely well in every other department. If there’s something you like better than other things, or if there’s something you really do not like at all—you need to use your words!

Ugh, but that’s the worst, isn’t it? That feeling of “Oh my God, if I ask her to do this thing, will she think I’m some kind of pervert?” or “If I tell him I don’t want to do it in that position anymore, will he be unable to have an orgasm? Am I ruining sex for him?” This kind of self-doubt can send anybody’s sexual confidence into a tailspin. And we all do it.

But here’s the surprising thing: you know that powerful feeling of being wanted by someone? There’s also that powerful feeling when you ask for something and you receive it. What a high that is! And what about when someone asks you to do something? Isn’t it sexy when a person knows what they want? Confidence is the most underrated turn-on in the history of mankind. Forget all the weird little things people focus on: sexy lingerie, gorgeous makeup, a body that’s a walking replica of Michael Phelps. In the end, if Michael Phelps’ twin can’t ask for what he wants in bed and autopilots through his sexcapades, he will be far, far less admirable than the regular Joe who worked up the nerve to ask his girlfriend for something kinky.

It can be scary to communicate and tell someone what you want in bed, whether it’s a confession about a secret fetish or even the simple “less that, more this.” But if you stay silent, your sex life (and as a result, your relationship or potential relationship) might never fire on all cylinders. Think of all that wasted potential! That’s no way to go through life, for either party. So find a way to say what you need to say, whether it’s in the heat of the moment or in a totally mundane setting. Whatever’s easiest for you, as long as you’re able to get brave and use your words. And who knows? You might learn some very interesting things about their desires as well, leading to better sex for everyone involved. Everyone wins, big time.

Readers, what are some awesome ways that people can learn to be more open with their partners? What has your experience been?

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Photo by Andy Sutterfield

Nobody’s Perfect, Neither Is Sex!

My boyfriend and I have been together for a year and a half. That is long enough for the flames of passion to turn into a mere flicker without a bit of effort. Nothing kills a good boner (of the lady or manly variety) quicker than pressure, self-consciousness, or criticism. The key to keeping sex hot while in relationship is to settle into the fact that you’re going to be doing this act with this person many, many, many, many times, so there’s no need to put pressure on any one roll in the hay to be the best in your lives. Instead, it’s about learning each other’s bodies and continually raising the bar.

You’re creating a sexual relationship with your partner and, like all relationships, it will require communication and a little effort to stay healthy and vibrant. The most toe-curling orgasms aren’t planned out: they sneak up on you. And like many things in life and nature, they’re ephemeral. Subtle differences in mood, context, and connection make each sexual encounter unique. The best we can do is set up an environment that invites this kind of magic.

Here are a few tips to fire up the action in your bedroom:

Unpack your bags. No matter your gender, if you’re over the age of 20 then it’s likely that you have some skeletons of the emotionally traumatic variety hanging out in your closet. It is helpful to know some things about your partner’s history. When you know what the body you’re touching has been through, you can touch that body in a way that subtly acknowledges those experiences. This can be incredibly healing and is the first step to clearing the slate for the relationship that you’re creating now.

The flip side: Don’t feel like you have to rush through this process! At a year and a half, my boyfriend and I are both still working on certain deeply ingrained beliefs and patterns.  If you’re suppressing a thought or feeling because you’re afraid your partner won’t understand, this is either a sign that you need to build the courage to speak up or a sign that this isn’t the right partner for you.

The male ego can be sensitive. In my experience, men often do not receive criticism in the moment very well. I’ve had more than one partner over the years ask me to please bring things up outside of the bedroom. It is so much easier to discuss the anatomical / mechanical aspects of sex when you’re not in the middle of doing them.

The flip side: Men, make sure your lady feels like she can talk to you. Lady parts are highly sensitive and personal preferences are as unique as finger prints; if you don’t encourage your partner to share these details with you (which may feel nitpicky if your ego is in the way), you’ll never fully understand how her body works.

The female sex drive is (often) a slow boil. Men, I suggest you make peace with this fact now. After the initial hump-like-bunnies phase, many women start to feel sexual urges in sync with their hormonal cycle. We’re horny when we’re most fertile, which is a bit of a catch-22 if you aren’t trying to make a baby. The key is to know how to warm your lady up in the in-between times. She may not want to jump your bones on sight, but if you check in with her there are probably many things you could do to heat things up. A few standard ideas: massage, cuddling, kissing, heavy petting, etc.

The flip side: Ladies, your man may sometimes need a reminder that you want him, really want him. Make sure you slow down and lavish your attention on him some of the time, too. It can help to make sure that you proposition him some of the time. Surprise BJs are another option for making your man feel extra happy.

Put your focus on your partner. When either partner is caught up thinking about their own wants and needs, he or she isn’t fully present. The quickest way to get out of your head? Stop thinking about yourself. Put your attention on pleasing your partner and all of a sudden you’ll feel your body light up, too.

The flip side: Don’t focus so much on your partner that you aren’t enjoying what they’re offering. If one of you habitually leads or follows, one way to shake things up is to switch roles and see what happens with a fresh dynamic.

Revel in the beauty along the way. Don’t rush to the big O. As long as time allows, savor every moment with your partner. Remember what it was like seeing them undress the first few times. Remember what it was like to hold each other naked when it was new. Even if you aren’t in the mood to go down memory lane, there are ways to slow down and savor. I once saw an article in a grocery store lady magazine (probably Cosmo or Glamour) that pointed to all the parts of sex that it’s easy to overlook if you’re focused on orgasm: from the moment of penetration to the pleasurable plateau that precedes orgasm—the more your mentality is about absorbing and enjoying the whole experience from start to finish, the more enjoyable it will be.

The flip side: Quickies can be really hot. ;)

A note about gender in this article: this article is written from the perspective of a cis-gender, heterosexual female, since that’s the only perspective from which I can knowingly write. I find the gender binary is useful here in teasing out the differences created by the hormones men and women have in their bodies. That said, I hope these tips will be relatable to anyone anywhere on the gender spectrum.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Let’s Ask: Viewing My Anxiety & OCD As An Addiction

Julia and Erin, two UE writers who have asked that their names be changed to allow for a completely honest conversation, sat down to discuss how Erin has used viewing her anxiety and OCD as an addiction to help her to find mental freedom.

Julia: A week or so ago, you referenced using Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12 Step Program as a method for fighting your anxiety, can I ask how you do that?

Erin: I don’t really use the exact 12 Step Program, but more the ideas behind it put in terms of battling an “addiction” that I see as my anxiety/OCD. So, it is sort of the backbone to my approach. It’s as much about being powerless to the presence of my anxious thoughts (the same way an alcoholic feels powerless to their craving for alcohol) and the choice as to whether or not I listen and/or react to them (like refraining from a drink).

Julia: That’s a good comparison. “How to deal with things out of your control.”

Erin: Exactly. For so long, I thought listening to my anxiety was the only way to feel like I was in “control” of my world. Then I realized I was missing out on all of these things, because the solution to feeling in control was actually letting go of the idea that I could ever be in control. A very hard lesson for a control freak to learn. The Buddhists have been teaching this idea of accepting the groundlessness of life and our situations for thousands of years. They teach that if we can learn to sit with and embrace, rather than try to run away from or control, the inherent discomfort of life, and the discomfort of our fears, we will stop fearing them.

Julia: That does not sound easy.

Erin: Nope, haha. But in her book, Living Beautifully, the Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön talks about how the chemical response that happens in our brains during an emotional situation only lasts for 90 seconds. Any pain longer than those 90 seconds is because we are choosing to hold on to it—so while I can’t control the chemicals in my brain, I can control how I choose to react to them. Of course, it’s not as simple as just waiting 90 seconds. For me, all I want to do is react, react, react, so I have to spend the whole time trying to convince myself that (1) this will only last for 90 seconds, (2) that this whole 90 seconds thing is not bullshit, and (3) that I will actually be capable of letting go of this pain at the end of the 90 seconds.

Julia: So like, “I am experiencing an anxiety attack, and when it is over then I can be productive again?”

Erin: In a way, yes. Amy Mina did a really good job of capturing this in her article about dealing with depression and anxiety. For me, it’s more like being in a dark room, with no lights, no doors–let’s actually make into more of a “dark abyss.” And I’m just sitting there, in the middle of this perceived infinite blackness, and my brain is basically saying, “There are no doors, there is no hope: you will never get out of this; you will always be here. You should just curl up in a ball and cry, because you are a failure, and you will never be free from the clutches of this panic. Ever.” Buying into that idea, by letting myself become the victim or by acting out compulsions to make it better, just perpetuates the situation. So, now, I try to sit with the fear, feel it, embrace, bathe in the discomfort of it, and try my hardest not to react to it. Then I try to let it go with the knowledge that I will be okay, no matter what happens. The stumbling block, of course, is that it’s hard not to believe my brain when it’s in an anxiety state, because it sounds so rational: “There are no doors.”  And even though I know that I am panicking, I look around, and I can’t see any doors, so it seems like my brain is right. My anxiety is part of me, it gets me, and we’ve been together for over 25 years, so of course it knows all the right things to say to try and get me to believe it. But if I can get myself to push past that, and  believe that I am in a room full of doors, and I would be able to see them all if I just stood up and stopped wallowing in this fear/sadness/self-pity/etc., then it’s like finding the light switch, and suddenly all the lights come back on and I can see all of these doors all around me and then my brain and I both can’t believe we ever thought any differently.

Julia: A catch-22.

Erin: Very much so.

Julia: So how does the method of the 12 Step Program help in the midst of an attack? Is it something actionable in-the-moment, or is it more of a perspective for you when you’re not in an attack?

Erin: Again, it’s really less about the 12 Step Program specifically, and more about the viewpoint that my anxiety and the compulsions associated with it and my OCD are an addiction. I’ve never viewed my anxiety as an “attack” or a “panic attack,” I usually call them “spirals,” because sometimes it can happen slowly, even over several days, but once my anxiety grabs hold, it starts pulling me down, and down, and eventually something really sets it off and I’m into that dark abyss. So it’s important that I try and address my anxiety, before I get sucked into a really bad “thought spiral.” It’s at that crossroads, when I have the choice to follow my anxiety or not–when I can feel the panic luring me in, tapping on my brain–that it’s the most important time to employ all the techniques, like the 90 second wait. Because as it gets harder and harder to fight it, I have to do whatever it takes to not give in to a compulsion even though my relief response is telling me, “This is the only way you’re going to get any relief. It’s the only way to make yourself feel better.”

That’s the “addiction,” that short-term pleasure of giving into a compulsion or a fear, instead of striving for the long-term pleasure of living an anxiety-free life. Like taking a drink even though you don’t want to be an alcoholic. So I use that methodology to enforce this idea that I can’t give into any fears or compulsions, because that just opens the door to scarier fears and bigger compulsions.  For example, I have a compulsion to pop pimples. It seems innocent, but if I let myself pop a nice juicy pimple, then it’s like a gateway drug to inspecting the rest of my face and causing more damage.  To allow the “innocent” compulsions is like swearing off hard alcohol but still drinking “just one beer”: it doesn’t work.

Julia: You have to commit to it, and not let your guard down.

Erin: Yes. Because the “little fears” pop up everywhere—like throwing out an onion because it looks a little too yellow and might make me sick—and then I’ve opened the door and suddenly I’m throwing out all the leftovers because they sat out on the stove for a couple hours. Since I’ve lived with anxiety my whole life, it was the lens through which I saw the world. So I just thought it was normal to just be panicked all. the. time. I had to learn to pay attention to what was motivated by fear and what wasn’t. Thinking, “I’m just going to double check pictures of yellow onions on Google,” when I know the onion is fine, is motivated by fear. That’s acting out a compulsion to silence a little seed of obsessive doubt in my head. Instead, I have to be confident in my belief that the onion is fine, in my choice to eat it despite the risk that it might make me sick, and in my knowledge that whatever happens, I will be able to handle it.

Julia: With all of this, you’re really self-aware.

Erin: I am now, but I didn’t used to be. My instinct was avoid, avoid, ignore, avoid, rush to continue avoiding. And, for a long time, I found my anxiety to be really effective. I channeled it into being a perfectionist and it led me to a lot of career success. But I was a complete workaholic and I ran into a concrete wall—as one is apt to do when they are constantly living in fear.  It was just unlivable. But I wasn’t depressed, I was just like “Ahhhhh, brain, why do you hate me?!” It took me a long time to learn the tools to even start to rewire it. A huge part of that was putting myself in a completely new place (because the environments we build when we are in an anxiety mindset can be a big part of what perpetuates that mindset) and paying attention to every action and habit—from the way I processed information, to the way I interacted with people, to where I found self-worth, to how I felt safe—so I could root out all the things I did that were motivated by fear and individually rewiring them. That’s when I learned to be self-aware, and it meant facing a lot of things I didn’t want to face, but it was the only way to root out the real problems. It took a lot of help though, and I can’t stress the importance of a good therapist enough.

Julia: As a friend, is there anything that I can do for someone with anxiety?

Erin: The thing is, even with a great therapist and a wonderful support network and, if helpful, anti-anxiety medication, the only person who can really help someone with anxiety is him- or herself. And believe me, it’s the last thing I wanted to hear and, sometimes still, want to hear. I hate telling myself, in the midst of anxiety spiral, that no one except me is going to make this better. In that moment, it seems impossible—too hard, too scary, too out of control, too everything. And I just want to look around and find something or someone that is going to make me feel better. But, that’s attacking the branches, not the roots.

Julia: What happens when you can’t?

Erin: That’s what I’ve been struggling with the most lately. If I’m in a good place, it’s easy to stay “good,” but once I slip, get stressed out, and start reacting, I can fall back into a spiral and suddenly, all of these old fears pop right back up and seem just as scary as they were when I started. It’s really hard not to look at this and let it shake my confidence and I start thinking, “All of my work has been for naught. I’ve failed and I’ll never be free.” To go back to the addiction methodology (this is another reason I like that metaphor so much), this is my version of “relapsing.” (Macklemore wrote a great song about “Starting Over” with his sobriety, that I find really helpful when I’ve “fallen off the wagon” with my anxiety or OCD.) I hate that place. It’s actually one of my bigger remaining fears.

Julia: You used that same phrase earlier.  What do you mean when you say “fall off the wagon”? How is that more than just an individual panic spiral?

Erin: When I’m having panic spirals consistently, or when my whole mindset has changed and my perspective on the world has turned back into fear, or victimization, or avoidance, I know I’ve “fallen off the wagon.” Often I find myself here because I’ve been too stressed or too tired to sit with the discomfort of my anxiety so I’ve been giving into fears or compulsions and now I’m subsisting on the “drug hits” found in those rushes of relief or from other distracting pleasures. I can usually tell because I’m feeling very anxious, or wired, and I don’t have this sort of warm, sense of patience and calm, that I have when I’m “on the wagon.” That’s really the best way I can think to describe it because it’s something I’m still working on keeping around consistently. It has to come from a sense of self, and not from outside sources (like the drug hits), and that’s really hard. Especially because that takes a while to build up, and every time you “relapse,” it feels like it’s going to be impossible to do it again. But you sum up the will to do it again and soon you find that warm feeling again, usually it sneaks up on me when I stop craving it, and it’s very similar to the moment in the dark, when all the lights come on, it’s just this pure, lasting, relief. It’s freedom. So, that’s my goal, that’s what I strive for every day.

Photo by Sara Slattery

Photo by Sara Slattery

Let’s Go Get The Shit Kicked Out Of Us By Vulnerability

After Dr. Brené Brown gave her first TED Talk, about the power of vulnerability, she woke up with a “vulnerability hangover.” She hid in her house for three days, ashamed of confessing that she’d had a “breakdown” to the over 500 attendees. Knowing her video was headed for the Internet, she told a friend she anticipated another couple hundred people seeing her admission but, “If 500 turns into 1000 or 2000, my life is over.” Her talk has since been watched over 12 million times.

[ted id=1042]

When I think about vulnerability, I imagine something raw and tender. The kind of thing I might boast about embracing but, more often, actually find myself cowering from. When I watch a TED Talk like Brené’s, or read some quotes on Tumblr, I think, “YES! That sounds amazing! I am going to start being vulnerable right now! I am going to let go of all my insecurities immediately, accept my imperfections, be kind to myself, really let go of who I’ve thought I should be for all these years, and embrace the imperfect reality of who I am!” Boom. Done. I am vulnerable. And yet, just saying the words “imperfect reality of who I am” sets off a wave of discomfort. Because that’s the reality of vulnerability: it can be really uncomfortable.

[box] “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” ― C.S. Lewis [/box]

For most of my life, just like Brené, I thought I could “outsmart” vulnerability—that if I just locked it up in a box, made all the right choices, and checked off all the boxes on my list of impossible expectations, I could be perfect. And, obviously, perfection was, well, perfect and when you’re perfect, there’s no need for vulnerability. If only that was true. But I did not see vulnerability as a strength back then, I saw it as a weakness. A big, undefined, pain causing weakness. And this unknown thing was so scary to my brain that the idea of even exploring it was enough to get me to bury anything tagged “could be painful” so deeply, that once I started searching, it took me almost a year before I was even looking in the right place.

The fear that vulnerability induces in me is the kind of terror that dictates my actions without me even realizing it. So, first, I had to not only recognize, but also accept, that so many of my actions were defenses. As if that wasn’t vulnerable enough, then I had this exposed raw, tender, place that I was supposed to stay with and sit with! Patience in my life before: not fun. Patience while sitting with discomfort caused by vulnerability: excruciating.  In her TED Talk, when Brené talks about the “whole-hearted”—the ones who believe that what makes them vulnerable makes them beautiful, that vulnerability is not comfortable or excruciating, just necessary—you need to know that when I started this process, I was not one of them. Whether I was willing to articulate it or not, I was one of the ones who always questioned if I was good enough and I was pretty sure I wasn’t.

[box] “[The whole-hearted] talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They’re willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.” ― Dr. Brené Brown [/box]

Some of the most seemly confident, happy, and/or successful people can still have this voice in their head that makes them believe, in spite of their “accomplishments,” that they are not good enough. On the outside, I denied that I had low self-esteem. Because, honestly, I didn’t think I did. But that was because I only gave weight to the parts of me that I showed to other people and I didn’t count all the things that I only thought to myself.  Look in the mirror and pay attention to your thoughts: Are they kind? Are they accepting? Or do they scan for every flaw? Do they plot how to hide away the things you’re most ashamed of? Do they berate you for not having done more to “fix” something that you consider “wrong”? I was feeding my own insecurities without even knowing they were insecurities. And, worse, I just accepted them as limitations to myself. This was “the way things were” and nothing and no one were ever going to change that. Well, I was right about part of that, no one else was ever going to change the way I saw myself, but I could.

[box] “When you’re raised with the belief that perfection is possible, it’s very hard to let go of that.” – Hannah “Harto” Heart [/box]

Alright, so finally I start digging up my insecurities, I acknowledge them with a curt head nod, and I start trying to sit with them in a very large room (in which I do my best to never directly look them in the eye, because, ow.) Finally, we get closer, we’re not cuddling on the couch or anything, but we’ve started having marginally polite conversations, and then I realize it’s not enough to be aware and sit with my insecurities by myself, to really heal, I have to accept them: out loud. I have to let them be seen by others.

Terror doesn’t come close to describing how I feel about doing this. Because this is not the kind of “being seen” where I get to admit my flaws and then get patted on the back with some reassuring comment to make me feel better. This is the “being seen” where I admit them to a large room full of people and then we all just sit there awkwardly in silence together. Not because it’s awkward, or shameful, or even anything revelatory that they are seeing, but because am so scared of the risk, I create my own fear-fueled reality. But when I figured out that I was actually sitting in the middle of a boisterous vulnerability party and my shame was just sitting on top of the mute button, every thing changed. Of course this also required something else I had been in denial of: the ability to really trust. Because finding self-confidence in your imperfections requires a kind of trust in yourself and others that is not the kind of trust you give your friends when you tell them about that one time you waited outside a hotel to stalk the Jonas Brothers in college, but the kind of trust that is choosing to go on television, naked, to do an interview in which you willingly hand over a flashlight and say, “Please, examine me.” And I do mean choosing, because that was my turning point with vulnerability, when I realized no one was going to roll out a red carpet and escort my vulnerability to the party. That I was going to have to drag her out myself, sometimes kicking and screaming, every day, for the rest of my life.

[box] “We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.” — Pema Chödrön [/box]

Vulnerability is a choice. It’s about making the choice to accept my imperfections, my mistakes, my failures, even when it really stings, when all I want to do in the face of criticism is launch into one of my “Whatever, you’re wrong!” or “OMG, I’ve failed at everythinggg” monologues. When going on Facebook to complain seems like so much more fun than apologizing, when sending an angry and defensive email makes us feel better than admitting that maybe the other person is actually right. It’s never starting a thought with, “I know I said I was going to be vulnerable, and that I need to sit with this discomfort, but that sucks and it is uncomfortable, and I don’t want to feel this, so just this once…” It’s not seeking out a drug hit of sympathy from someone by making sure, “You still love me, right?” It’s not justifying my mistakes so that I can make them again. It’s not going numb in an attempt to forget, ignore, or deny. As Brené says: we cannot selectively numb emotion.  If we numb out pain, grief, shame, disappointment, we also numb our happiness, gratitude, and joy. That’s why taking a risk is such a vulnerability, because the inherent definition of a risk is that there is no certainty, and without certainty, we risk failure. And vulnerability is all about embracing your successes and your failures. It’s actually being yourself in the face of possibly losing everything because of it.

[box] “To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee, to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, ‘Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?’ just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, ‘I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive.’ — Dr. Brené Brown [/box]

There’s an ancient Japanese art form, called Kintsukuroi, that repairs pottery with gold or silver lacquer with the understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. That’s the biggest truth of all this. I still do not have this figured out. I will probably never have it all figured out. I will succeed and fail at vulnerability, and in life, again and again and again. The point it not to actually figure it out but to make the choice to go on that journey, to be broken and put back together. So I am trying, and stumbling, and trying again. And even when I fall into my old patterns, and cycle through the same loops, I just remember that it’s not about the loop, it’s about how much more quickly I can get out of it. And every time I make that choice, as hard as it can be in the moment, I always look back and feel better, stronger, and more alive than I ever did before.

[box] “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt [/box]

If you’re interested in reading more about these ideas, I strongly encourage you to go read all the Pema Chödrön you can get your hands on (apparently the Buddhists have had this vulnerability thing figured out for over 2,000 years) and watch Brené’s other TED Talk, about listening to shame. Brené has also written several books that I have yet to read but are waiting for me on my bookshelf. Or just go watch Love Actually.

Photo by Remi Coin

Photo by Remi Coin

We Don’t Know: Is Love a Choice?

In the description of Martin Ingle’s video, You don’t fall in love, you jump., he admits, “I do my best at trying to explain this. But I really have no idea (don’t tell anyone.)” We feel the same way, we don’t know. So we want to hear from you: do you think love is a choice?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLZ_YiWngXw&w=560&h=315]

Martin argues that love is not something you feel, it is something you do.  That real love is not the fiery passion but the “slow burning embers” and that we must choose to make the effort, to do the work, that keeps those embers burning. That love is not something you know, but something that you are figuring out. An action, not an emotion. Love is a battlefield where fear meets choice. It is not a destination. It is the burn in your muscles after you’ve been swimming up stream.

What do you think?

Photo by Michelle White