Serendipity

Vulnerability—it’s a word that’s been thrown around a lot lately. Too often, it’s associated with weakness and pain. Scroll through social media, and you’ll find endless clips reinforcing this idea: how women find vulnerability in men unattractive, how men don’t feel safe expressing their emotions because it makes them seem less of a man.

It’s disheartening to see how deeply ingrained this mindset has become. I understand it well because, for a long time, I believed it too. Vulnerability meant being less than. It meant weakness. It meant exposing the parts of myself that weren’t perfect. I can’t pinpoint exactly where this belief took root—maybe it was how I grew up, how I saw the men in my family carry themselves, or how I interpreted what it meant to be a man.

But as I grew older, I began to see vulnerability for what it truly is. It’s not weakness. It’s the rawest form of the heart—the cracks, the scars, the self that exists beyond ego and persona. And when I understood that, I also understood why men hide it, why women sometimes recoil from it, and why I eventually grew to reject the idea that vulnerability should be hidden at all.

If I were to offer my vulnerability—my glass heart—to someone, I would do so with care. I would offer it to my wife, my sister-in-law, my parents, and my sister, because I know they would not shatter it. Vulnerability is a gift, and when I give it, it comes with trust and love.

This understanding did not come easily. It took eleven years—of love, of trust, of breaking, of being tortured by my own mistakes. Eleven years to finally realize why vulnerability is not something to fear, but something to embrace.

In therapy, I speak with vulnerability because it allows me to process why my heart has become fragile in the first place. I uncover the cracks I had never seen before. Vulnerability, in the right space, is a step toward healing—toward making sense of the fragility that exists within. But not everyone deserves access to it. It is something to be shared with a select few, with those who will honor it.

There will always be those who see vulnerability as weakness. There will be those who define their masculinity or femininity by rejecting it. But then, there are those who will embrace it. Those who will hold you through the pain, who will shelter you while you heal—who will make you stronger, better, and someone both they and you can be proud of.