Vulnerable Marriage Quotes

Love is a commitment that will be tested in the most vulnerable areas of spirituality, a commitment that will force you to make some very difficult choices. It is a commitment that demands that you deal with your lust, your greed, your pride, your power, your desire to control, your temper, your patience, and every area of temptation that the Bible clearly talks about. It demands the quality of commitment that Jesus demonstrates in His relationship to us.

When words don’t add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons: 1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them. 2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control. 3. They don’t know the truth themselves. 4. They are undecided. 5. They refuse to let their guard down and be vulnerable because you or someone else have hurt them tremendously. 6. You are not being told all the information because of a break down in communication.

So many of my friends judged potential mates from the outside in, focusing first on their looks and financial prospects. If it turned out the person they'd chosen wasn't a good communicator or was uncomfortable with being vulnerable, they seemed to think time or marriage vows would fix the problem. But Barack arrived in my life a wholly formed person. From our very first conversation, he'd shown me that he wasn't self-conscious about expressing fear or weakness and that he valued being truthful.

People are going to break promises, and they will have every right to till the point you realize that you don't change plans based on someone else's words.

I only hope, for the sake of the rising male sex generally, that you may be found in as vulnerable and soft-hearted a mood by the first eligible young fellow who appeals to your compassion.

Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men. They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ” Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.

There is lovemaking that is bad for a person, just as there is eating that is bad. That boysenberry cream pie from the Thrift-E Mart may appear inviting, may, in fact, cause all nine hundred taste buds to carol from the tongue, but in the end, the sugars, the additives, the empty calories clog arteries, disrupt cells, generate fat, and rot teeth. Even potentially nourishing foods can be improperly prepared. There are wrong combinations and improper preparations in sex as well. Yes, one must prepare for a fuck--the way an enlightened priest prepares to celebrate mass, the way a great matador prepares for the ring: with intensification, with purification, with a conscious summoning of sacred power. And even that won't work if the ingredients are poorly matched: oysters are delectable, so are strawberries, but mashed together ... (?!) Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts use cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes--only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay--but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure--there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris--but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; and honest caring, however singled by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison.

Vulnerability creates unimaginable space to build each other up, as much as it creates ample room to tear each other down.

Still, as a straight person, you might say, "This just isn't my fight." No, it isn't. Unless you care about the kind of society we have. Unless you want the society of which you are a part to be a just one. Unless you believe that a free society, not to mention a godly religion, should fight injustice wherever it is found. Unless your religion tells you -- as our entire Judeo-Christian heritage does -- that any society will be judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable. Unless you care about our children. Unless fairness matters to you. Unless violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people concerns you. Unless "liberty and justice for all" is something you believe applies to all our citizens.

Prayer is such an intimate act, a place of vulnerability. It is, hopefully, when we are our least guarded, our most honest selves. And this is good, of course; this is as it ought to be. When we come to God, we certainly want to come as honestly and openly as we can; we want to be our truest selves before him. Prayer lets us be in a place of need.

Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts used cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes - only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay - but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure - there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris - but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison.

Given that narcissists can often be quite vulnerable, again, because their self-esteem is so fragile and reliant on the judgments of other people, depression is not a surprising part of this picture. At times when they are depressed, especially for men, it is quite possible that their mood will be even more irritable than usual, or they will become more withdrawn, and seemingly more focused on themselves. The big-ticket symptoms we would like to see changed—the lack of empathy, the chronic entitlement, the grandiosity—tend to be most resistant to change, since they are linked so strongly to the core deficits of the disorder, such as an inability to regulate self-esteem.

What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we’re holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it. Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison.

The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rainforest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do - the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organization so tight and sacrifice so complete there is little need for males and they are seldom produced. When they are needed, it is deliberately done by the queen who surmises, by some four-million-year-old magic she is heiress to, that it is time. So she urges a sperm from the private womb where they were placed when she had her one, first and last copulation. Once in life, this little Amazon trembled in the air waiting for a male to mount her. And when he did, when he joined a cloud of others one evening just before a summer storm, joined colonies from all over the world gathered fro the marriage flight, he knew at last what his wings were for. Frenzied, he flied into the humming cloud to fight gravity and time in order to do, just once, the single thing he was born for. Then he drops dead, having emptied his sperm into his lady-love. Sperm which she keeps in a special place to use at her own discretion when there is need for another dark and singing cloud of ant folk mating in the air. Once the lady has collected the sperm, she too falls to the ground, but unless she breaks her back or neck or is eaten by one of a thousand things, she staggers to her legs and looks for a stone to rub on, cracking and shedding the wings she will never need again. Then she begins her journey searching for a suitable place to build her kingdom. She crawls into the hollow of a tree, examines its walls and corners. She seals herself off from all society and eats her own wing muscles until she bears her eggs. When the first larvae appear, there is nothing to feed them, so she gives them their unhatched sisters until they are old enough and strong enough to hunt and bring their prey back to the kingdom. That is all. Bearing, hunting, eating, fighting, burying. No time for dreaming, although sometimes, late in life, somewhere between the thirtieth and fortieth generation she might get wind of a summer storm one day. The scent of it will invade her palace and she will recall the rush of wind on her belly - the stretch of fresh wings, the blinding anticipation and herself, there, airborne, suspended, open, trusting, frightened, determined, vulnerable - girlish, even, for and entire second and then another and another. She may lift her head then, and point her wands toward the place where the summer storm is entering her palace and in the weariness that ruling queens alone know, she may wonder whether his death was sudden. Or did he languish? And if so, if there was a bit of time left, did he think how mean the world was, or did he fill that space of time thinking of her? But soldier ants do not have time for dreaming. They are women and have much to do. Still it would be hard. So very hard to forget the man who fucked like a star.

i don’t mind if he’s already married but if he isn’t married then what the hell am i doing letting this soul of a dude walk down the streets completely bloody single out in the open like that all vulnerable like that for just any woman’s charm to hook him like that

The strength of love lies in its vulnerability.

These secrets are not secrets per se but are truths hidden from public view. I had to write this book. There had to be a reason I survived to tell this story.

Women, the men in your life will definitely be more loving, compassionate, and nurturing if you can understand and accept their vulnerability to shame and reduce the ways you trigger it.

Commitment can be expressed in many ways. Traditionally it is solidified through marriage, owning property, having kids or wearing certain types of jewelry, but legal, domestic, or ornamental undertakings are not the only ways to show dedication. In a 2018 talk on solo polyamory at the Boulder Non-Monogamy Talk series, Kim Keane offered the following ways that people practicing nonmonogamy can demonstrate commitment to their partners: - Sharing intimate details (hopes, dreams, fears) and being vulnerable with each other. - Introducing partners to people who are important to you. - Helping your partners with moving, packing, homework, job hunting, shopping, etc. - Having regular time together, both mundane and novel. - Making the person a priority. (I suggest defining what 'being a priority' means to each of you.) - Planning trips together. - Being available to partners when they are sick or in need. - Collaborating on projects together. - Having frequent communication. - Offering physical, logistical or emotional support (e.g. at doctor's appointments or hospital visits or by helping with your partners' family, pets, car, children, taxes, etc.).

No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity's enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle's supposedly unique trajectory—a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story.

The wholehearted identify vulnerability as the catalyst for courage, engagement, and a clear sense of purpose. In fact, the willingness to be vulnerable emerged as the single clearest value shared by all of the women and men whom I would describe as wholehearted. They attribute everything—from their professional success to their marriages to their proudest parenting moments—to their ability to be vulnerable.

Vulnerable partners cannot (and do not want to) maintain the initial level of energy they brought to an earlier phase of your relationship, once they disengage it can be extremely frustrating for a partner.

The very concept of trying to “teach” a lover things feels patronizing, incongruous, and plain sinister. If we truly loved someone, there could be no talk of wanting him or her to change. Romanticism is clear on this score: true love should involve an acceptance of a partner’s whole being. It is this fundamental commitment to benevolence that makes the early months of love so moving. Within the new relationship, our vulnerabilities are treated with generosity. Our shyness, awkwardness, and confusion endear (as they did when we were children) rather than generate sarcasm or complaint; the trickier sides of us are interpreted solely through the filter of compassion. From these moments, a beautiful yet challenging and even reckless conviction develops: that to be properly loved must always mean being endorsed for all that one is. Marriage

A girl alone of marriageable age and who is beautiful but with no family to protect her is the most vulnerable of all people. If something happened to Fatima, Shakila would be at the mercy of any man in the camp who could claim her.

Many people think less of a man if he cries because it supposedly shows a sign of weakness, but I beg to differ. A man that’s in touch with his feelings is absolutely beautiful! I admire, respect, and appreciate their braveness to be vulnerable. Crying is NOT a weakness. We cannot expect our men to be strong all of the time. That’s SO unfair! They have feelings, too. Don’t ever make a man feel less than just because he cries. Comfort, love, and support him. Show him that you genuinely care.

You never really know. You hope for the best, but when you commit to a marriage, it's always a risk. You can never truly predict what is going to happen when you take two people and tie them together, and blindly throw them out into the great big world.

All lovers, even the most faithful lovers, are vulnerable to abandonment against their will. I know this simple fact to be true, for I myself have abandoned people who did not want me to go, and I myself have been abandoned by those whom I begged to stay.

But we protect our spouses from things that cause actual harm—abuse, violence—not our inherent vulnerabilities and needs. Those are there for them to love and complement. If not,” she says pointedly, “it comes at the cost of our intimacy, our connection…our love.

It is appealing to think that once you survived it you will never repeat it. Be aware of your vulnerabilities and start looking for the qualities that make for a better long-term partner—compassion, kindness, respect, and empathy— rather than the flash in the pan qualities of charisma and ego. The risk of the narcissistic relationship is that it transforms you so profoundly and painfully that you feel that you are no longer you. Slowly over time you have cut off bits and pieces of yourself, so you feel as if you have lost your true self.

Even if my acquaintance at the publishing party was certain that she herself would never abandon her husband, the question was not entirely up to her. She was not the only person in that bed. All lovers, even the most faithful lovers, are vulnerable to abandonment against their will.

Within a month the ring was gone, pawned to pay a debt, and I realized what I had done. I had shackled myself to a man who could not be trusted, upon whom I could never truly depend. Too late, I understood the magnitude of a woman's vulnerability in marriage, how every particle of her happiness depends upon her choosing well. And I had chosen unwisely.

Nothing between us was ever planned - not even you. We were both twenty-four years old when you were born, the normal age for most Americans, but among the class we found ourselves, we ranked as teenage parents. With a whiff of fear, we were very often asked if we planned to marry. Marriage was presented to us as a shield against other women, other men, or the corrosive monotony of dirty socks and dishwashing. But your mother and I knew too many people who'd married and abandoned each other for less. The truth of us was always that you were our ring. We'd summoned you out of ourselves, and you were not given a vote. If only for that reason, you deserved all the protection we could muster. Everything else was subordinate to this fact. If that sounds like a weight, it shouldn't. The truth is that I owe you everything I have. Before you, I had my questions but nothing beyond my own skin in the game, and that was really nothing at all because I was a young man, and not yet clear of my own human vulnerabilities. But I was grounded and domesticated by the plain fact that should I now go down, I would not go down alone.

It seems to me, then, that vulnerability and and self-disclosure are at the heart of what we understand about the nature of God. And the reason I believe gay and lesbian people are spiritual people is that we too have participated in vulnerability and self-disclosure, especially in the process of coming-out. When someone shares with you who they really, really are, it is a special offering. To do so when it risks rejection is a profound, holy gift.

He would never marry again. Marriage was for idiots. It was a bygone solution to a property problem he didn’t have. It was a social construct invented by religious people (whose other values he mostly rejected) whose participants lived not past age thirty at the time it was implemented. So, no. He was not going to be falling into that particular trap again. He would have relationships and excitement and he would never put his emotional health into somebody’s hands like that ever again.

At sixteen, the youngest Hathaway sibling was at that vulnerable age between childhood and adulthood. A sweet-natured little scamp, she was as inquisitive as one of the many pets she had accumulated. Since Amelia's marriage to Rohan, Beatrix had been begging to go to finishing school. Kev suspected she had read one too many novels featuring heroines who acquired airs and graces at "academies for young ladies." He was doubtful that finishing school would turn out well for the free-spirited Beatrix.

Starting a family doesn’t mean we leave the fight. It means we dare to rebuild our nation, even on a battlefield. I believe that in a world so often restless and cynical, saying yes to romance, to love, to the everyday tasks of marriage and family is its own quiet revolution. Defying the forces of evil, one man and one woman making a little home where vulnerability, tenderness, and laughter can thrive is a subversive act. It also means creating a family is the supreme act of defiance—a celebration of life in the midst of war.

Those who say marriage is no different to cohabitation are perhaps less sensitive to issues of continuity. Legally and socially, marriage provided us with an framework, struts: as a tradition, it predates history. And yet it is still trivialised as no more than “a piece of paper”, or by the perception of it as a kind of country club from which those demarcated as undesirable are excluded. But marriage is not about religion or gender; it is an admission of vulnerability, a commitment to the perpetual evaluation of priorities and a social stabiliser.

HERE'S THE PROBLEM: Many men have an exaggerated fear of commitment. If you are a contemporary woman, there is a very good chance that you are going to be involved with at least one man, possibly more, who chooses to walk away from love. It may be the man who doesn't call after a particularly good first date; it may be the ardent pursuer who woos you only to leave after the first night of sex; it may be the trusted boyfriend and lover who sabotages the relationship just as it heads for marriage, or it may be the man who waits until after marriage to respond to the enormity of his commitment by ignoring your emotional needs and becoming unfaithful or abusive. However, whenever it happens, chances are you are dealing with a man who has an abnormal response to the notion of commitment. To him something about you spells out wife, mother, togetherness —forever— and it terrifies him. That's why he leaves you. You don't understand it. You don't see yourself as threatening. As a matter of fact, you may not even have wanted that much from this particular guy. If it's any consolation, he probably doesn't understand his reactions any better than you do. All he knows is that the relationship is "too close for comfort." Something about it, and therefore you, makes him anxious. If his fear is strong enough, this man will ultimately sabotage, destroy, or run away from any solid, good relationship. He wants love, but he is terrified—genuinely phobic—about commitment and will run away from any woman who represents "happily ever after." In other words, if his fear is too great, the commitment-phobic will not be able to love, no matter how much he wants to. But that's not how it seems at the beginning. At the beginning of the relationship, when you look at him you see a man who seems to need and want love. His blatant pursuit and touching displays of vulnerability convince you that it is "safe" for you to respond in kind. But as soon as you do, as soon as you are willing to give love a chance, as soon as it's time for the relationship to move forward, something changes. Suddenly the man begins running away, either figuratively, by withdrawing and provoking arguments, or literally, by disappearing and never calling again. Either way, you are left with disappointed dreams and destroyed self-esteem. What happened, what went wrong, and why is this scenario so familiar to so many women?

All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naïveté, inexperience, or foolishness. Like a shrewd tracker, Bluebeard senses the youngest daughter is interested in him, that is, willing to be prey. He asks for her in marriage and in a moment of youthful exuberance, which is often a combination of folly, pleasure, happiness, and sexual intrigue, she says yes. What woman does not recognize this scenario?

Like every other element of the Christian worldview, however, the recognition that unborn babies are fully human and therefore infinitely valuable belongs within a much larger story, a story in which the most vulnerable are the most important, a story in which no human being is unwanted, a story in which all of us are sexual sinners and only Jesus has the right to judge, a story in which sacrifice for others is the only path to joy, and a story that ends—for those willing to accept the offer—with a marriage of such beauty and intimacy that it makes the best human marriage seem like a heart emoji compared with a Shakespeare sonnet.

THE KIND OF FATE HARDY BELIEVES IN IS ALMOST LIKE BELIEVING IN GOD—AT LEAST IN THAT TERRIBLE, JUDGMENTAL GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. HARDY HATES INSTITUTIONS: THE CHURCH—MORE THAN FAITH OR BELIEF—AND CERTAINLY MARRIAGE (THE INSTITUTION OF IT), AND THE INSTITUTION OF EDUCATION. PEOPLE ARE HELPLESS TO FATE, VICTIMS OF TIME—THEIR OWN EMOTIONS UNDO THEM, AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF ALL KINDS FAIL THEM. “DON’T YOU SEE HOW A BELIEF IN SUCH A BITTER UNIVERSE IS NOT UNLIKE RELIGIOUS FAITH? LIKE FAITH, WHAT HARDY BELIEVED WAS NAKED, PLAIN, VULNERABLE. BELIEF IN GOD, OR A BELIEF THAT—EVENTUALLY—EVERYTHING HAS TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES … EITHER WAY, YOU DON’T LEAVE YOURSELF ANY ROOM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL DETACHMENT

Vulnerable Love (The Sonnet) Choose me if you feel something, not because it's convenient or glorious. I have neither the interest nor the strength, to go out again and look for someone else. If you choose me, you are stuck with me, through thick and thin, through everything. It won't always be clear and sunny, sometimes it'll be blue, sometimes boring. True love is not something you find, True love is something you nurture together. Once you rediscover yourself in someone, Never turn your back, come hell or high water! Any ape can find escape in romance novels, It takes a human to be the living pillar of love. While every robot seeks emotional maturity, Be the human who cherishes vulnerable love.

Years of strengthening my independence, perhaps believing on some level that my fate was to be forever solitary, had made me a strong and capable woman. I feared change. But did marriage demand a drastic change in my nature? No. Why should it? Strength of character wasn’t a flaw or an enemy to marital happiness. Yet I feared becoming a different person—a vulnerable, reliant, weaker person. Dompier had insisted change had already occurred in me to some degree. I did in fact feel susceptible emotionally around Thaddeus and yet without a total loss of myself. Is this what love did to people? Disarmed them with lures of peace and happiness? But if peace and happiness and companionship were indeed to be the outcome, why fight it?

People who learned Eric and I wanted to adopt a child often told us stories of adoptions gone wrong. The adopted child incapable of attachment. Who became a drug addict, a runaway, who drained bank accounts, ruined marriages. "I have a friend who adopted," these stories began. "It was a nightmare."... And their stories did make me afraid, convinced me I was the vulnerable one whose life was at risk. Listening, I'd forget the abandoned, the neglected, the children curled on the floor of some empty-cabinet kitchen or crying in some school bathroom stall or shaking in some crib. I'd forget that these children belong to all of us. If they wield knives in the dark or hit heads against walls or refuse to speak, they signal our failure, not theirs.

To lovers out there …. Some people think being single means purity. It means you are a good , innocent person. It means that you are doing better in life, and everything is good. It means you are a strong person. You can manage everything that you don’t need anyone in your life. Having someone it doesn’t mean you are incapable, weak, vulnerable and you are dependent. Being in a relationship with the right person. It is life changing. It is the best thing that everyone should hope for. Two is always better than one. It is twice of everything good, with less effort, strength and time. Being single and alone should not be by choice, but should be circumstantial . Love it is a powerful and beautiful thing . You can benefit a lot from it and it can do lot of things for you.

Women in troubled marriages frequently try to work out their problems through their children. Whether a woman does this through the extremes of overwhelming demands, severe rejection, or smothering control, the results are the same: the boy becomes too dependent on her. Without realizing it, in adulthood he transfers this dependency, as well as the conflicts and fears that go with it, onto the woman in his life. The misogynist saw his mother as having the power to frustrate him, to withhold love from him, to smother him, to make him feel weak, or to make insatiable demands on him—and he now views his partner as having those same powers. The father who doesn't provide his son with any alternative to his mother's influence leaves the boy alone with his fears and his panicky feelings of vulnerability and neediness.

You like restraining me, don’t you?” Between him tying her hands when he’d spanked her and again this evening with the pearls, bondage was becoming a common theme with him—one she enjoyed, as well. “Yeah, I do,” he admitted huskily. “Why?” She was curious to hear his explanation, to know the reasons why having her at his complete mercy excited him so much. He absently skimmed his fingers up and down her spine in a feathery caress. “Because it forces you to relinquish complete control, to let me do whatever I please so you don’t have a choice and no desire remains hidden,” he replied honestly. Ahhh, but she knew she always had a choice—along with a safe word he’d immediately heed. That was the safety net that allowed her to let go of her own inhibitions, to make herself vulnerable to him in ways that deepened the emotional bond between them.

THINK OF HARDY AS A MAN WHO WAS ALMOST RELIGIOUS, AS A MAN WHO CAME SO CLOSE TO BELIEVING IN GOD THAT WHEN HE REJECTED GOD, HIS REJECTION MADE HIM FEROCIOUSLY BITTER. THE KIND OF FATE HARDY BELIEVES IN IS ALMOST LIKE BELIEVING IN GOD - AT LEAST IN THAT TERRIBLE, JUDGMENTAL GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. HARDY HATES INSTITUTIONS: THE CHURCH - MORE THAN FAITH OR BELIEF - AND CERTAINLY MARRIAGE (THE INSTITUTION OF IT), AND THE INSTITUTION OF EDUCATION. PEOPLE ARE HELPLESS TO FATE, VICTIMS OF TIME - THEIR OWN EMOTIONS UNDO THEM, AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF ALL KINDS FAIL THEM. DON'T YOU SEE HOW A BELIEF IN SUCH A BITTER UNIVERSE IS NOT UNLIKE RELIGIOUS FAITH? LIKE FAITH, WHAT HARDY BELIEVED WAS NAKED, PLAIN, VULNERABLE. BELIEF IN GOD, OR A BELIEF THAT - EVENTUALLY - EVERYTHING HAS TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES... EITHER WAY, YOU DON'T LEAVE YOURSELF ANY ROOM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL DETACHMENT. EITHER WAY, YOU'RE NOT BEING VERY CLEVER. NEVER THINK OF HARDY AS CLEVER; NEVER CONFUSE FAITH, OR BELIEF - OF ANY KIND - WITH SOMETHING EVEN REMOTELY INTELLECTUAL.

That trust takes time. But when you love each other, it shouldn't be scary to be vulnerable and it shouldn't be hard to compromise. I'd like to share with you what we like to call SACRED HEALING. We use it every day of our marriage, and it hasn't failed us yet! When you have something you need to communicate, those words are SACRED: 1. STOP when you register something's wrong. 2. ADMIT that you have an issue to discuss. 3. CALMLY express your feelings. 4. REFLECT on why you're feeling this way. 5. ENGAGE with your partner to actively fix the issue. 6. DEVOTE time after conflict to returning to a loving state. And when your partner is saying something SACRED, it's your job to get the leader of the HEALING: 1. HEAR your partner's words. 2. ENGAGE with your questions for clarification and understanding. 3. ACKNOWLEDGE that what they're saying is important. 4. LOOK BACK on your own role in the conflict. 5. INITIATE discussion without anger or defense. 6. NEGOTIATE a solution with pure intentions. 7. GROW as partners and individuals by fixing the problem as a team.

I think that today young people come toward marriage as growing, searching men and women; and suddenly marriage and parenthood is represented as a stoppage of all that. I mean, young married people become members of a social community, and come under the authority of a political community. Once children come, even some of our more radical youth feel themselves no longer so free to protest various wrongs - because they need work and on their children's account feel more dependent on, more vulnerable to, the power of a town or city or county. They are expected to join with other consumers. They are expected to prepare the next generation for the next wars and for an expansion of the same, the very same community... I think the Church as I have experienced it during, let's say, thirty years of membership in my order, the Church is speaking less and less to the realities before us. Just one instance is the Church's failure to face and deal with the social and political difficulties of believers. And then when one moves out to another scene, as I have been doing, and meets the people of very mixed religious and ethnic backgrounds, one sees how tragically unresponsive the Church has been - because it has not heard and been moved by the ethical struggles of people on the 'outside,' yet maybe nearer to Christ's own struggle. More and more I see the need for flexibility in the Church. And I feel that one's responsibility to the Church can no longer be expressed by the priest's or parishioner's traditional compliance before powerful and sometimes corrupt 'authority.' I would like to see the resources of the Church brought to bear upon the realities that the Church alone cannot deal with - though it can shed certain light upon many troublesome issues. It is such matters I am discussing now with the families I stay with. I hope we can come upon something new, which will help us in the very real and new situations we are facing, I hope there is a spiritual breakthrough of sorts awaiting us, so that we can learn to live together in a new and stronger and less 'adjusted' way - 'adjusted' to the forces in America which plunder other countries and our own country as well.

About Danielle, I remember, my feelings were no more specific than pleasant anxiousness. She hadn’t caught me, obviously enough, at a very erotic moment in my life. I had never been much of a pickup artist—a few ghastly encounters in my twenties had seen to that—and the alternative prospect of a euphoric romance not only exhausted me but, in fact, struck me as impossible. This wasn’t because of any fidelity to my absent wife or some aversion to sex, which, I like to think, grabs me as much as the next man. No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity’s enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle’s supposedly unique trajectory—a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story.

Echad is first mentioned in the garden. It says a man and a woman, when they join together, become echad, or “one.” But that word echad is more explosive with meaning than just one flesh. It can literally mean to fuse together at the deepest part of our beings. Two becoming one, completely glued together, completely meshing. I still remember one of the hardest conversations I have had with Alyssa. We were just starting to date again, and were sitting in the car after a wonderful date night. We knew marriage was a possibility on the horizon, and I felt like I finally had to share things in my past that would affect her if we got married. I was incredibly nervous, as well as terrified of rejection or hurt, but I realized that if intimacy were to grow, I had to get vulnerable. For marriage to be what it truly is—two people becoming one in mind, body, soul, and spirit—I had to be honest. I remember sharing with her many things, but specifically some details of my sexual past. My teenage years were littered with me almost worshiping sexual fulfillment in pornography, partying, and girls. And I say worship, because that was where I got my worth, value, and purpose as well as what I most lived for (which is what the definition of worship is). I had to apologize and ask forgiveness from Alyssa for things I had done before I even knew her because of echad—one form of complete and utter intimacy. Because of that beauty, mystery, and power, God created it to function best in a man and a woman coming together for life and constantly echading or fusing together. I needed forgiveness because I had betrayed echad. I had betrayed oneness. I had betrayed intimacy. And if I wasn’t honest about it, it’d be a little part of my life or heart that Alyssa didn’t know—thus blocking echad. But something really peculiar happened in that moment. With the grace and forgiveness of Jesus, Alyssa forgave me. She heard all that I was and am, and still wanted to walk this journey with me. I still remember the tenderness in her voice as she spoke truth and forgiveness over me. In that moment I was exposed and known, and yet because of Alyssa’s grace, I was at the same time loved. And that is where intimacy is found—to be fully loved and to be fully known. To be fully loved, but not fully known will always allow us to buy the lie that “if they only knew the real me, they wouldn’t want me anymore.” And to be fully known but not fully loved feels sharp, painful, at a level of rejection that hurts so bad. But to be fully known and at the same time fully loved, now that is intimacy. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Intimacy is certainly romantic in some aspects, but at its deepest level, it’s much more than that. It can be experienced with friends and family, not just spouses and loved ones.

Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging. This definition is based on these fundamental ideals: Love and belonging are irreducible needs of all men, women, and children. We’re hardwired for connection—it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The absence of love, belonging, and connection always leads to suffering. If you roughly divide the men and women I’ve interviewed into two groups—those who feel a deep sense of love and belonging, and those who struggle for it—there’s only one variable that separates the groups: Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. They don’t have better or easier lives, they don’t have fewer struggles with addiction or depression, and they haven’t survived fewer traumas or bankruptcies or divorces, but in the midst of all of these struggles, they have developed practices that enable them to hold on to the belief that they are worthy of love, belonging, and even joy. A strong belief in our worthiness doesn’t just happen—it’s cultivated when we understand the guideposts as choices and daily practices. The main concern of Wholehearted men and women is living a life defined by courage, compassion, and connection. The Wholehearted identify vulnerability as the catalyst for courage, compassion, and connection. In fact, the willingness to be vulnerable emerged as the single clearest value shared by all of the women and men whom I would describe as Wholehearted. They attribute everything—from their professional success to their marriages to their proudest parenting moments—to their ability to be vulnerable.

No one acts in a void. We all take cues from cultural norms, shaped by the law. For the law affects our ideas of what is reasonable and appropriate. It does so by what it prohibits--you might think less of drinking if it were banned, or more of marijuana use if it were allowed--but also by what it approves. . . . Revisionists agree that it matters what California or the United States calls a marriage, because this affects how Californians or Americans come to think of marriage. Prominent Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, no friend of the conjugal view, agrees: "[O]ne thing can be said with certainty [about recent changes in marriage law]. They will not be confined to adding new options to the familiar heterosexual monogamous family. They will change the character of that family. If these changes take root in our culture then the familiar marriage relations will disappear. They will not disappear suddenly. Rather they will be transformed into a somewhat different social form, which responds to the fact that it is one of several forms of bonding, and that bonding itself is much more easily and commonly dissoluble. All these factors are already working their way into the constitutive conventions which determine what is appropriate and expected within a conventional marriage and transforming its significance." Redefining civil marriage would change its meaning for everyone. Legally wedded opposite-sex unions would increasingly be defined by what they had in common with same-sex relationships. This wouldn't just shift opinion polls and tax burdens. Marriage, the human good, would be harder to achieve. For you can realize marriage only by choosing it, for which you need at least a rough, intuitive idea of what it really is. By warping people's view of marriage, revisionist policy would make them less able to realize this basic way of thriving--much as a man confused about what friendship requires will have trouble being a friend. . . . Redefining marriage will also harm the material interests of couples and children. As more people absorb the new law's lesson that marriage is fundamentally about emotions, marriages will increasingly take on emotion's tyrannical inconstancy. Because there is no reason that emotional unions--any more than the emotions that define them, or friendships generally--should be permanent or limited to two, these norms of marriage would make less sense. People would thus feel less bound to live by them whenever they simply preferred to live otherwise. . . . As we document below, even leading revisionists now argue that if sexual complementarity is optional, so are permanence and exclusivity. This is not because the slope from same-sex unions to expressly temporary and polyamorous ones is slippery, but because most revisionist arguments level the ground between them: If marriage is primarily about emotional union, why privilege two-person unions, or permanently committed ones? What is it about emotional union, valuable as it can be, that requires these limits? As these norms weaken, so will the emotional and material security that marriage gives spouses. Because children fare best on most indicators of health and well-being when reared by their wedded biological parents, the same erosion of marital norms would adversely affect children's health, education, and general formation. The poorest and most vulnerable among us would likely be hit the hardest. And the state would balloon: to adjudicate breakup and custody issues, to meet the needs of spouses and children affected by divorce, and to contain and feebly correct the challenges these children face.

If sex oppression is real, absolute, unchanging, inevitable, then the views of right-wing women are more logical than not. Marriage is supposed to protect them from rape; being kept at home is supposed to protect them from the caste-like economic exploitation of the marketplace; reproduction gives them what value and respect they have and so they must increase the value of reproduction even if it means increasing their own vulnerability to reproductive exploitation (especially forced pregnancy); religious marriage—traditional, correct, law-abiding marriage—is supposed to protect against battery, since the wife is supposed to be cherished and respected. The flaws in the logic are simple: the home is the most dangerous place for a woman to be, the place she is most likely to be murdered, raped, beaten, certainly the place where she is robbed of the value of her labor. What right-wing women do to survive the sex-class system does not mean that they will survive it: if they get killed, it will most likely be at the hands of their husbands; if they get raped, the rapists will most likely be their husbands or men who are friends or acquaintances; if they get beaten, the batterer will most likely be their husbands—perhaps 25 percent of those who are beaten will be beaten during pregnancy; if they do not have any money of their own, they are more vulnerable to abuse from their husbands, less able to escape, less able to protect their children from incestuous assault; if abortion becomes illegal, they will still have abortions and they are likely to die or be maimed in great numbers; if they get addicted to drugs it most likely be to prescription drugs prescribed by the family doctor to keep the family intact; if they get poor—through being abandoned by their husbands or through old age—they are likely to be discarded, their usefulness being over. And right-wing women are still pornography just like other women whom they despise; and what they do—just like other women—is barter. They too live inside the wall of prostitution no matter how they see themselves.

APRIL 6 Don’t be discouraged at the spiritual war you’re called to fight every day. The Lord almighty is with you and wars on your behalf. Between the “already” and the “not yet,” life is war. It can be exhausting, frustrating, and discouraging. We all go through moments when we wish life could just be easier. We wonder why parenting has to be such a continual spiritual battle. We all wish our marriages could be free of war. We all would love it if there were no conflicts at our jobs or in our churches. But we all wake up to a war-torn world every day. It is the sad legacy of a world that has been broken by sin and is constantly under the attack of the enemy. The way the apostle Paul ends his letter to the Ephesian church is interesting and instructive. Having laid out the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ and having detailed their implications for our street-level living, he ends by talking about spiritual warfare: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. (Eph. 6:10–20) When you get to this final part of Paul’s letter, it’s tempting to think that he has entirely changed the subject. No longer, it seems, is he talking about everyday Christianity. But that’s exactly what he’s talking about. He is saying to the Ephesian believers, “You know all that I’ve said about marriage, parenting, communication, anger, the church, and so on—it’s all one big spiritual war.” Paul is reminding you that at street level, practical, daily Christianity is war. There really is moral right and wrong. There really is an enemy. There really is seductive and deceptive temptation. You really are spiritually vulnerable. But he says more. He reminds you that by grace you have been properly armed for the battle. The question is, will you use the implements of battle that the cross of Jesus Christ has provided for you?

Ten years older than me, he spoke of writers who inspired him, like Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson, and how they brought a spirit of adventure to everything they did. It was something he emulated. Nothing was ever average with him. It had to be the best night of your life, or it wasn’t worth doing. This wasn’t a performance. He made me feel that spirit of adventure as he asked me about my life. Not just my present, but about who I wanted to be. I could share the deepest authentic thoughts with him, and he didn’t roll his eyes at me. He actually liked that I was smart and embraced my vulnerabilities. He didn’t make fun of me, he laughed with me. He believed in me and made me feel like I could do anything. And the only person who had ever made me feel that way was my dad. Certainly not my husband. We were open about the challenges of our marriages and why we felt we had to honor those vows by sticking with the marriage. He had a daughter, and he spoke of her like his life began and ended with her. I had never seen someone’s eyes shine like his did when he talked about his child.

If both people could catch themselves at these critical moments, turn toward their spouse, and seek the closeness they long for, the descent into marital disillusionment could be interrupted. If they could accept and tune into their own and their partner’s vulnerable needs and wants, without covering them over with bossing or blaming, the public health impact could be huge. Turning toward each other, no matter how fumbling, draws people closer, especially if they manage to recognize and admit their own role in whatever the problem was and genuinely apologize for causing pain. If they turn toward each other, couples stay in touch with their desire to be close, rather than insidiously

Is my partner taking care of my emotions?” We can hardly keep from jumping there. But in the process, we can lose track of a prior step: the need to engage our caretaking capacities on our own behalf. We need to use our developed capacities for thought, sustained attention, patience, sensitivity, and tact in the service of expressing our own deep, tender, and body-based emotions. It’s both staying in touch with our vulnerable emotions and acting as a caretaker and communicator of these emotions that I consider to be the hallmark of emotional maturity.

Sankara argued that a society that oppressed women couldn’t be a successful one, and committed himself to women’s rights: banning forced marriage, polygamy, and female genital mutilation. He argued that the poorest on the globe were the most vulnerable to climate change and started a tree-planting initiative to stop the encroaching desert.

We see this even more in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), with Mercer again at MGM, collaborating with composer Gene De Paul. This one has a real Broadway score, every number embedded in the characters’ attitudes. Ragged, bearded, buckskinned Howard Keel has come to town to take a wife, and a local belle addresses him as “Backwoodsman”: it’s the film’s central image, of rough men who must learn to be civilized in the company of women. The entire score has that flavor—western again, rustic, primitive, lusty. “Bless Yore Beautiful Hide,” treating Keel’s tour of the Oregon town where he seeks his bride, sounds like something Pecos Bill wrote with Calamity Jane. When the song sheet came out, the tune was marked “Lazily”—but that isn’t how Keel sings it. He’s on the hunt and he wants results, and, right in the middle of the number, he spots Jane Powell chopping wood and realizes that he has found his mate. But he hasn’t, not yet. True, she goes with him, looking forward to love and marriage. But her number, “Wonderful, Wonderful Day,” warns us that she is of a different temperament than he: romantic, vulnerable, poetic. They don’t suit each other, especially when he incites his six brothers to snatch their intended mates. Not court them: kidnap them. “Sobbin’ Women” (a pun on the Sabine Women of the ancient Roman legend, which the film retells, via a story by Stephen Vincent Benét) is the number outlining the plan, in more of Keel’s demanding musical tone. But the six “brides” are horrified. Their number, in Powell’s pacifying tone, is “June Bride,” and the brothers in turn offer “Lament” (usually called “Lonesome Polecat”), which reveals that they, too, have feelings. That—and the promise of good behavior—shows that they at last deserve their partners, whereupon each brother duets with each bride, in “Spring, Spring, Spring.” And we note that this number completes the boys’ surrender, in music that gives rather than takes. Isn’t

I’m able to be more vulnerable with friends, because when I show them my true self it somehow feels less of a risk. There are so many societal expectations of what a romantic relationship should be: becoming ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’, moving in together, marriage, children.

Intimacy doesn't mean sharing nudity, intimacy means sharing vulnerability.

His shame is too great to allow him to understand her fear, and her fear keeps her from seeing his shame. When they try to alleviate their feelings of vulnerability in opposite ways—by talking and not talking—all they end up sharing are disappointment and heartache. Your relationship can fail with neither of you doing anything wrong, if you do not understand the extent to which fear and shame drive your disconnection from each other. Understanding each other's core vulnerabilities and learning how to manage them will give you a new perspective on your relationship—a dual perspective based on both points of view—that leads to compassionate connection and love beyond words.

Deception is dangerous, but, even worse, if it comes from self. We're all vulnerable until Christ becomes our guard and trust, then we wait upon Him. We're not as good as we think; let Christ be the one who sees the need, lest our faith be shipwrecked.

Has your perception of being gay changed? One hundred percent. I now think it’s the biggest blessing. I feel bad for my straight friends. For example, they have to deal with the expectation of marriage and kids by a certain age. To some degree, they probably have to continue to adhere to those expectations I’ve held myself to—of being a professional of a certain kind. Achieving a certain kind of success as externally defined, rather than internally defined. Which, when you come out, you unshackle yourself from. Straight men are wonderful, but a lot of them keep each other at arm’s length. They don’t get too close, aren’t that friendly, feel they’ve got to be a certain idea of what it means to be “macho” and a “man.” And a man is solid and not that nice. If they have an emotion, it’s anger and no other emotions besides that. Being gay has helped me understand that, no, being friendly is great. You should be friendly to everybody, you should make relationships with people: straight men, women, nonbinary people, whomever. It’s helped me understand how to not be judgmental. It’s helped me understand how to try to make my own way in life and not to find success according to money or a title, but according to fulfillment. Empirically speaking, when I look at straight men in the world, so many of them seem boxed in by toxic masculinity and this idea of being strong, tough, and not vulnerable. And that’s bullshit. Being gay helps you get out of that toxic masculine vortex and start thinking, What are my values? What kind of person do I want to be? For most, that helps us be friendlier, more open, more positive, more inclined to be supportive of people, and less inclined to judge. Being gay has shaped who I am in a huge way and made me a more positive and optimistic person; someone who can deal with people better, who can be more mature, and more self-confident. I am also a white guy though. I am a beneficiary of that privilege, too, and it behooves me not to put this all on homosexuality as if I get to claim minority status and not recognize the rest of my privilege.

Pursue intimacy not just sex.

We don't want to wake your dad and Priya." He parted his legs, forcing hers to follow, leaving her vulnerable to the exquisite sensation of his hard shaft pressing against her beneath his fly. "They aren't here." Her breath was already coming too fast, her body going liquid. She'd wanted to control this encounter, but the minute he touched her she couldn't think. Liam froze, his hands mere inches away from her breasts. "Then why didn't I come in the door?" "Because you left me and broke my heart," Daisy said. "And I liked watching you climb more than I would like to see you grovel or eat five containers of Shark Stew." "Wicked woman.

Beware of men who will neither respect you nor cherish you, as a way to keep painful distance between you. They are afraid of intimacy. Superficiality is the goal of nonintimate people. Getting money and having sex are the goals of superficial couples. Sharing feelings and thoughts are the goals of truly loving, vulnerable men and women.

Primitives (so-called) know these facts and surround all the points of imprint vulnerability with rituals, “ordeals,” “rites of passage,” etc. well designed to imprint the desired traits of a well-integrated member of that tribe at that time. Relics of these imprint ceremonies survive in Baptism, Confirmation, Bar Mitzvahs, Marriage Ceremonies, the Masonic “raising,” etc.

Haidt and his colleagues call this idea “moral foundations theory.” [4] Drawing on evolutionary biology, cultural psychology, and several other fields, they show that beliefs about morality stand on five pillars: Care/harm: Children are more vulnerable than the offspring of other animals, so humans devote considerable time and effort to protecting them. As a result, evolution has instilled in us the ethic of care. Those who nurture and defend the vulnerable are kind; those who hurt them are cruel. Fairness/cheating: Our success as a species has always hinged on cooperation, including exchanges that evolutionary scientists call “reciprocal altruism.” That means we value those whom we can trust and disdain those who breach our trust. Loyalty/disloyalty: Our survival depends not only on our individual actions, but also on the cohesiveness of our group. That’s why being true to your team, sect, or nation is respected—and forsaking your tribe is usually reviled. Authority/subversion: Among primates, hierarchies nourish members and protect them from aggressors. Those who undermine the hierarchy can place everyone in the group at risk. When this evolutionary impulse extends to human morality, traits like deference and obedience toward those at the top become virtues.[5] Purity/desecration: Our ancestors had to contend with all manner of pathogens—from Mycobacterium tuberculosis to Mycobacterium leprae—so their descendants developed the capacity to avoid them along with what’s known as a “behavioral immune system” to guard against a broader set of impurities such as violations of chastity. In the moral realm, write one set of scholars, “purity concerns uniquely predict (beyond other foundations and demographics such as political ideology) culture-war attitudes about gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, and pornography.” [6] Moral foundations theory doesn’t say that care is more important than purity or that authority is more important than fairness or that you should follow one set of foundations instead of another. It simply catalogs how humans assess the morality of behavior. The theory is descriptive, not prescriptive. But its descriptive power is considerable. Not only did it reshape my understanding of both human reasoning and modern politics; it also offered an elegant way to interpret our moral regrets.

Many—maybe even most—relationships that deteriorate do so in part because we avoid discussing private, vulnerable thoughts and feelings for fear of judgment or rejection. This fearful reluctance to share ourselves honestly results in our partners believing things about us that aren’t true. It’s difficult to have trust when one or both of us don’t know the truth. And without trust, everything falls apart. Not sometimes. Always.

Marriage isn’t easy, Inara. It’s a messy, dirty, get-in-the-grime-and-dig kind of work. Sometimes it takes tearing down our carefully constructed walls in order to fall more in love.

Widows are clearly one of the most disadvantaged groups in Burundian society. We heard sad stories of widows abused by family members, ostracized by their communities, losing access to land, and living in destitution. We also heard repeated references to unmarried and married men having covert relations with widows – a way to have sexual relations with a woman without having the financial responsibility of marriage. A group of young men from the Ruhororo IDP camp explained to us, ‘sometimes men see [a euphemism for having sexual relations with] a widow in her own house, but they would not build a second house for her. Widows often have relations with married men, because they need to financially.’ Windows, financially vulnerable, are less desirable for having already been married and are not given the same level of respect as unmarried young women.

The great men. The great men are those who embody the marriage between heaven and hell, hard and soft, strength and vulnerability, Who do not cower before the truth or from telling it, who are able to see beauty where normal eyes cannot, Who are disciplined enough to refrain from envy and do not revel in adulation. Who are have not the physical but mental energy to aspire to greater heights and are not fearful of sacrifice or being wounded. These are the great men.

What does an equal partnership look like? One significant study showed that when partners see that they can influence the other person, they both have the experience of being heard and recognized. This mutual influence fosters open communication and the greater likelihood of sharing feelings, needs, and vulnerabilities. As a result, better intimacy is created in which both partners benefit and feel satisfied with the relationship (Steil 1997). However, as Gottman recognized in his long-term research on marriage, husbands were far less willing to be influenced and often stonewalled or distanced themselves verbally and emotionally from conversations (Gottman and Silver 2000). He also determined in his studies that 81% who are not willing to be influenced by their partner are at risk for divorce. That women seem more interested in a balanced relationship between partners might account for the findings that more women instigate divorce (Coontz 2005).

Marry me,” he said, searching her eyes for some sign, some indication of how to proceed. Her gaze held his. His heart beat in his chest like a drum. “Why should I?” she asked, her voice hushed and oddly hopeful and terribly vulnerable. He swallowed, feeling lost and uncertain. “Well,” he said, trying to sound reasonable, “I’ve got a few more horses now.” She stared up at him, the blood draining from her face. Then she slugged him.

Nothing between us was ever planned--not even you. We were both 24 years old when you were born, the normal age for most Americans, but among the class we soon found ourselves, we ranked as teenage parents. With a whiff of fear, we were very often asked if we planned to marry. Marriage was presented to us as a shield against other women, other men, or the corrosive monotony of dirty socks and dishwashing. But your mother and I knew too many people who'd married and abandoned each other for less. The truth of us was always that you were our ring. We'd summoned you out of ourselves, and you were not given a vote. If only for that reason, you deserved all the protection we could muster. Everything else was subordinate to this fact. If that sounds like a weight, it shouldn't. The truth is that I owe you everything I have. Before you, I had my questions but nothing beyond my own skin in the game, and that was really nothing at all because I was a young man, and not yet clear of my own human vulnerabilities. But I was grounded and domesticated by the plain fact that should I go down now, I would not go down alone.

We are, to varying degrees, foolish, weak, and often just plain inexplicable — and always will be. As Kant put it: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” People with a crooked timber mentality tend to see life as full of ironies. Intellectual life is ironic because really smart people often do the dumbest things precisely because they are carried away by their own brilliance. Politics is ironic because powerful people make themselves vulnerable because they think they can achieve more than they can. Marriage is ironic because you are trying to build a pure relationship out of people who are ramshackle and messy. There’s an awesome incongruity between the purity you glimpse in the love and the fact that he leaves used tissues around the house and it drives you crazy.

Nothing gives your average bored Sunni bigot surfing the web more instant gratification than zooming in on sigeh to condemn the Shia as debauched heretics, but there could be few more vulnerable moral high grounds where he might pitch his flag of religious superiority than this particular spot in cyberspace. The Sunnis, after all, have their own versions of this arrangement, called in Saudi Arabia a misyar (or visitor’s marriage) and in Egypt an urfi (or customary marriage). It is true that both misyar and urfi differ from sigeh, primarily in that they are not supposed to last for a predetermined period of time (which in most cases they nevertheless do);35 and, again unlike sigeh, they are theoretically required to satisfy all four main conditions for marriage of the Sunni canon: mutual consent, two male witnesses (or two female and one male), some form of public announcement, and the payment of a dowry (although the latter can be symbolic and thus

Still, as a straight person, you might say, “This just isn’t my fight.” No, it isn’t. Unless you care about the kind of society we have. Unless you want the society of which you are a part to be a just one. Unless you believe that a free society, not to mention a godly religion, should fight injustice wherever it is found. Unless your religion tells you—as our entire Judeo-Christian heritage does—that any society will be judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable. Unless you care about our children. Unless fairness matters to you. Unless violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people concerns you. Unless “liberty and justice for all” is something you believe applies to all our citizens.

Unless you acknowledge your vulnerability for sin, you won’t pray against it and you’ll end up experiencing defeat. The most effective weapon the enemy has against you - is you

The Bible teaches that God has given us government for our good. Government exists under God’s authority. According to God’s design, government is to reflect the morality of God, who cares for the weak, the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable who are least able to protect themselves. The fundamental purpose of government under God is to promote the good of all its people. Government does this by making and enforcing laws that reward good and punish evil. Many people today say, “It’s not the government’s job to legislate morality.” This is a sham argument, though, and we all know it. The state not only has the right but also the responsibility to legislate morality. The state should most definitely say that stealing, lying, murder, and a host of other things are wrong. This is foundational to its purpose. Government imposes morality on people every day, and this is a good thing.

Of course marriage is going to be difficult—for there is no other relationship on the face of the earth which has more power to expose us and make us vulnerable, and arouse our longings and desires. Of course marriage is going to require your daily mercies and your steadfast love.7

I love you, but I hate your overeating" doesn’t help a marriage. It's not helpful because hatred is a powerful emotion (a posture, really) that is not easy to wield or maintain carefully. Hatred is more a bludgeon than a scalpel. Our ability to distinguish sin from sinner, especially in others, is so limited, so vulnerable to our own unexamined subjectivity.

Yes, many women who had pursued careers and not families experienced loneliness. But the question of whether that loneliness would be ameliorated by marriage -- any marriage -- was one that didn't get attention, even when another executive explained to the paper that some choices about remaining unmarried were made expressly to escape the unhappiness of an earlier generation of married women: "When you think of your mother as helpless, unable to choose her own life, you become determined never to be vulnerable.

A great marriage is when two full grown adults feel safe and vulnerable enough to allow the little children within themselves to come out of their respective houses and talk and play with one another. If

Too late, I understood the magnitude of a woman’s vulnerability in marriage, how every particle of her happiness depends upon her choosing well. And I had chosen unwisely.

God’s Design for Sex The problem here is not sex. Sex is not a bad thing. It’s actually a very good thing. Sex was God’s genius invention. He made us male and female. He made our parts and made them fit the way they do. He placed the nerve endings where they are so that sex would feel the way that it does. It is God’s creation, and it is good! The problem is that we stopped following God’s design for sex. Sex is designed for marriage. It is wholly unsuited for any other context. This is apparent when you honestly look at what sex is and what it does. Sex is the most physically intimate thing you can do with another person. In sex, you are fully exposed, fully vulnerable, and fully connected. That is why, from the very start, sex and marriage were described by God as a man and wife becoming “one flesh.”c When you get married and when you have sex, the two of you become one unit, one body, which should no more be separated than half of your body should be cut off.d

A house in the country to find out what’s true / a few linen shirts, some good art / and you.” This is intimacy: the trading of stories in the dark. Marriage has a bonsai energy: It’s a tree in a pot with trimmed roots and clipped limbs. Mind you, bonsai can live for centuries, and their unearthly beauty is a direct result of such constriction, but nobody would ever mistake a bonsai for a free-climbing vine. Marriage as an institution has always been terrifically beneficial for men. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of that.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to be pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you.” When you become infatuated with somebody, you’re not really looking at that person; you’re just captivated by your own reflection, intoxicated by a dream of completion that you have projected on a virtual stranger. People are far more susceptible to infatuation when they are going through delicate or vulnerable times in their lives. The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely fall in love. Infatuation alters your brain chemistry, as though you were dousing yourself with opiates and stimulants. And infatuation is the most perilous aspect of human desire. Infatuation leads to what psychologists call “intrusive thinking”—that famously distracted state in which you cannot concentrate on anything other than the object of your obsession. An old Polish adage warns: “Before going to war, say one prayer. Before going to sea, say two prayers. Before getting married, say three.” “Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.” We derail our life’s journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time.

Donald Trump appeared at a moment when evangelicals felt increasingly beleaguered, even persecuted period. From the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate to transgender bathroom laws and the cultural sea change on gay marriage, gender was at the heart of this perceived vulnerability.

The first days are always okay, That’s not why I’m afraid. It’s the eighth day, in the middle of May, When we look at each other And have nothing more to say.

There were, in fact, countless things he appreciated about AnnaLee. He liked her wildness, the way she carried herself like a great ship through the world; her grief, and her great mind; the way she listened in church, her strange vulnerability to her mother. She had a resilient, perfectly normal marriage, she was afraid to drive, and she dreamed primarily in smells. She interested him.

a few words on something that I believe affects both Obsessional Jealousy sufferers and ROCD sufferers alike--the fear of losing the marriage. Often, what hides behind the intrusive thoughts is a deep-seated fear of the relationship not working out. In my case, I saw my parents go through a painful and messy divorce after twenty-five years of marriage. In Hugh’s case, his self esteem had taken a heavy blow a few years before meeting me, when his girlfriend at the time left him for another guy. He began having ROCD thoughts shortly after that relationship ended. The fear of commitment that ROCD sufferers experience might stem from trauma, and the wish to avoid feeling vulnerable again. Commitment to a relationship means trust and trust means vulnerability. The fear of being vulnerable is at the heart of OCD.

Conscious partnership is the path of vulnerability, openhearted curiosity without assumption, and a willingness to say the things you most want to hide. It means facing what you have been hiding from yourself first, and then once excavated, sharing it with your partner.

FIONA DE LONDRAS: We have lots of things that are very good about having a referendum on the constitution. The fact that the constitution should reflect our values, and so on, but what’s the flip side? What’s the cost? When we have a referendum like this, we literally have to stand in front of our friends, family, neighbours and say, ‘Recognise me.’ The risk is that they say no. And that causes problems; that’s hard; there’s a massive social cost to that. And me or you, we can do it, but we’re used to it, this is part of the give and take of our everyday life. We are not the typical person who needs this. We’re the atypical person. So I think about the 14-year-old in school who’s listening to this stuff on the radio. Or the 65-year-old closeted farmer in the middle of Cavan. And people are talking about us, and it’s our lives and it’s part of our lives we have no control over. That’s a massive cost. Most things are not about a core attribute of a person. That cost has arisen when we had an abortion referendum, when we had that egregious citizenships referendum, that must’ve been what it felt like for people then too. But where there was another option, I cannot fully comprehend why the government would have asked us to bear this social cost. Now, the social benefit that comes afterwards in enormous, because we’ve all these vulnerabilities we’ve exposed ourselves to, and our fellow citizens say, ‘You’re equal,’ and that is good. And it will give a level of democratic legitimacy that a Supreme Court wouldn’t give. But my God, it’s going to cost.

At the beginning of our marriage, I loved how vulnerable you were with me. Remember that time you split your pants at the theater but you still wanted to go to drinks afterward so I spent the whole night standing right behind you so no one would see your bottom?

This book will empower you to make better partner choices and increase your chances for a happy, fulfilling marriage. It will help you raise your level of conscious awareness, understand your vulnerabilities and avoid the destructive behaviors which often lead to divorce.

When someone becomes authentic and vulnerable, there’s power in their story to transform everyone who hears.

realized that being vulnerable would always create a great opportunity to connect with others and encourage them to acknowledge their deepest pain, sin, and shame.