Published on November 23, 2025 12:15 AM GMT

What blocks people from being vulnerable with others?

Much ink has been spilled on two classes of answers to this question:

1. Not everyone is in fact safe to be vulnerable around. Not even well-intentioned people are always safe to be vulnerable around; being-safe-to-be-vulnerable-around is a skill which not everyone is automatically good at.
2. Many people have been vulnerable in the past, got burned for it, and so developed emotional blocks against vulnerability. “Trauma”.

There are a lot of people for whom these answers provide the right frame for their problems. This post is not for those people.

I want to focus on a different frame: there are importantly different kinds of things which people are hesitant to expose to others. Some of those things just require finding the right person and being vulnerable with them; these are the “easy cases”, in this frame. But other things pose fundamental difficulties, even when everybody involved has the safe-to-be-vulnerable-around skillset and isn’t particularly traumatized.

Let’s start with an easy example: sex stuff. Fetishes, sluttiness, that sort of thing. Revealing one’s sexual tastes involves being emotionally vulnerable. Moreso the more taboo one’s tastes are, with pedophilia on one end of the spectrum and anything in Fifty Shades of Gray on the other end. I call this an “easy example” because one’s sexual tastes are generally not inherently bad, and in almost all cases there are counterparties who will actively enjoy one’s own tastes. (… Though admittedly pedophiles have it particularly tough on that dimension.) The problem is usually just to find someone with complementary tastes, and then you can be in that wonderful world where someone not only accepts your deep secrets but actively wants you for them.

Now let’s contrast that with a hard example: suppressed temper. (In particular, suppressed PMS is what I’m picturing here, but the point generalizes to other kinds of suppressed temper.) Plenty of people have a temper, they often just want to scream at someone, but day-to-day they keep a mask over it. Taking that mask off involves being emotionally vulnerable. It feels good to have a partner who you can safely let loose at, knowing that you’re safe to do so - i.e. the partner can handle your temper (especially when it’s directed at them) and won’t be driven away by it.

But in contrast to the sex case, basically nobody likes being berated. Being emotionally vulnerable by letting your temper loose will be costly to your partner. Hopefully the relationship can be net positive for both people anyway, but there’s no avoiding that this kind of emotional vulnerability hurts the counterparty, even if their skin is thick enough for the hurt to be mild.

That’s what I’d call a “hard case”, in this frame: a case where you usually keep something hidden from people because exposing it would hurt the people exposed.

What can we do, in the hard cases, to make things work well?

I don’t have general answers, but I’d like to hear what answers other people have.