“I guess there’s part of me that really wants your validation right now.”
Cringe, right?
I was in my room with a woman I’d met through friends. We’d connected a lot throughout this beautiful early-summer day in LA.
I wasn’t even fully believing how well it was going with this one. She was so damn good-looking and had this edgy, Hollywood-cool vibe going that I loved…but was also simultaneously intimidated by.
If I’m being real with you, there was and sometimes still is that part of me who feels like the clueless, somewhat awkward kid in high school. Not really belonging.
And in over my head with Hollywood types.
But we’d hit it off amazingly smoothly all day.
Until it got a little more real for her there with the two of us alone, in my room.
She had conflicting emotions coming up around a very recent ex and wasn’t sure whether we should stay in there with me or we should go back outside where the rest of our friends were.
I don’t remember exactly how or why it came up, but as we talked it through, the realization about wanting her validation bubbled up.
And yes, the thought of admitting that to her did make me cringe internally, but I was learning to let go of filtering myself so much, trying to impress, strategically choosing my words, etc…I was learning to be more and more real and own who I was and how I was feeling regardless of what any woman – or anyone else, for that matter – thought.
“Just say it,” a mix of my intuition and my conscious desire to keep growing nudged me.
So I did.
And minutes later…I’ll let your mind fill in the details. It was a good night.
The key is that when I said it, I owned it. At least in that moment, I wasn’t coming from a place, underneath the words, of asking for her to validate me even though I was admitting I wanted her validation. I admitted it, but without emotionally asking her to fix it or make it ok.
(If you’re brand new to this idea that vulnerability isn’t weakness at all and can actually be powerfully attractive, check these out: 1 – Why Vulnerability is So Damn Attractive to Women 2 –Dealing with Nervousness Around Women – How to “Own It”)
But there’s something else you should know.
Years later, I was on a date with another woman who intimidated me. But this one wasn’t going so well.
She brought her friend (yup :/ ) and very quickly, it was feeling like she was there for my wallet more than for me. It felt awful and got me pretty ungrounded.
So I asked her: “Do you even want to be here?”
Her: “What??”
Me: “It just kinda seems like you’re really not that into me.”
But there was no falling-all-over-me-for-my-courageous-vulnerability moment here.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
Things got worse and MORE awkward.
This wasn’t vulnerability in quite the same way as my admission to the girl at the start of this post because I was calling out something I felt from her, but trust me, doing that – calling out that it didn’t seem like she was actually very interested in me…with her friend alongside her, no less – felt vulnerable as hell.
Now, some of that awkwardness was probably just a result of me stepping into tension and confronting her about it…it created tension. But some, if not a lot of it, was also where I was coming from emotionally.
I was highly attached to outcome, ungrounded, and hoping for a result–>aka needy. I wasn’t really owning it. I was pretty heavy about it and the emotions and attachments were owning me rather than me owning them.
That’s just one example of when I’ve “screwed up” “vulnerability”…and I’m sure there will be more in my lifetime.
It and the aftermath were painful, but so is missing a big, important shot in basketball.
Are you not going to take the shot because you don’t want to miss? You’ll never get anywhere that way.
So let yourself get out there and practice being more real and vulnerable and let yourself screw it up.
When you do “get it right,” it’s a powerful force, unmatched in some ways, for deepening connection and drawing people to you like moths to a flame.
But more than that, the right people, because vulnerability is you really owning who you are and being the real you – “just being yourself.”
That by itself can feel amazingly freeing. And when you’re free, you have much better connections, people and relationships in your life, and a better experience of life all around.
