Vulnerability Isn’t What You Think It Is

Discover why vulnerability isn’t sharing more information- it’s revealing what’s true, and why that is the foundation of intimacy, connection, and oneness.

You can talk for hours and still feel disconnected.

You can share your schedule, your plans, your frustrations, and everything that happened during your day… while never revealing your heart.

In this episode, Chelsey  unpacks one of the most misunderstood concepts in marriage: vulnerability. Learn why intimacy requires more than communication, how hiding began in the Garden, and why vulnerability is less about sharing everything and more about revealing what is true.

Because information doesn’t create intimacy.

Revelation does.

Transcript

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Welcome back to the High Level Wife Podcast. I am Chelsea Holm, your hostess, and we do Marriage God's way here. And today we're going to kick off a new series on vulnerability. And this is coming from a comment that I received on one of my reels this week about how women want to save space and how that's put on the man to create that space and vice versa. And honestly, I think vulnerability may be one of the most interesting misunderstood. Apparently, I can't say misunderstood. Vulnerability may be one of the most misunderstood words in marriage. And I'm going to tell you why. And actually, this guy's question on my reel, he said, What does vulnerability look like for a man? What are some ways that a man can be vulnerable? And I was like, that's a great question. Let me go create some podcast episodes about that, right? And some real content. Thank you, sir, for planning out my content. I love it. I love it. I love it. All right. So when we talk about vulnerability, everyone talks about it. You've had, if you've ever been to see a therapist, right? Counselors are talking about it, podcasters are talking about it. Yours truly. Marriage books talk about it. And people, you'll hear them say things like, We need more vulnerability, right? I just want him to open up. I wish she would be more vulnerable. But if I asked 10 different people to define vulnerability, I'd probably get 10 different answers. Why? It's because some people they think vulnerability means crying. Like some think that it means sharing their entire life story or talking for hours or confessing something bad, while others meet things think that it means admitting that you're wrong. And while vulnerability can include those things, that's not actually what vulnerability is. In fact, I think many couples spend years having deep conversations without ever becoming vulnerable. I know because that was me. For years, my husband and I had conversations, lots of conversations. And a lot of times I had it in my mind that I needed that quote unquote vulnerability of a long conversation before we could be intimate. And guess how much frustration that created for both of us? Because I'm going to reveal to you in a second what we were doing. And it wasn't being vulnerable with one another. But, you know, we talked about all the things. We talked about schedules and kids and works. And honestly, for me, like I wanted, as a someone who wants to get to the thing or the thing that's actually the thing, like, I wanted to talk about dreams and hopes and goals and problems and ministry and marriage and everything. But what I realized and what my husband realized at the culmination of a lot of frustration was that with more than 20 years together, there came a point where we didn't need more information. I had confused vulnerability with information, sharing information with each other. What we actually needed was more revelation. And this is a daily thing that we do to foster intimacy. And I'm going to tell you where that comes from. But it's not about more information, it's actually about the revelation. And there's a massive difference. Information tells me what happened, while revelation says what's happening inside of me, what's happening inside of you. And that's actually vulnerability, right? If you think about like a war, right, where you are a city protected by walls, it would be extremely vulnerable to take your walls down to expose what's actually going on inside. And the way that a siege would work is that the outside enemy would essentially starve out the city, right? They would cut off access to water, they would um do all these things, they would starve them, but they didn't actually know what was going on inside the walls, so they have no idea what resources were available there. They have no idea how much the people the opposing force, the one within the city, is actually hurting, right? So inside High Level Wife, we have a whole lesson on this on vulnerability, and we define it as exposing the inside of what's happening. It's not about sharing more facts, it's about revealing more truth. And let me say that again. Vulnerability is not sharing more facts, it's revealing more truth. Because here's the thing: you can tell your spouse everything that happened during your day and never reveal your heart. You can talk for an hour and never reveal what you're actually feeling. You can explain yourself perfectly and give your whole origin story and still remain hidden. And many of us do exactly that. We share information, but we hide revelation. Why? Because revelation is risky. Information is safe, information costs very little. I mean, come on, we live in the era of Google. It doesn't cost anything for us. I mean, you have to have your phone and whatever. You can go to the library and it's free for you, right? It costs somebody something somewhere. But revelation costs something because revelation means allowing someone to see what is happening underneath the surface. And it sounds like I feel lonely or I feel disconnected, I miss you, I feel rejected, I'm scared, I don't know what to do here. I need help, I need reassurance, I want to feel chosen. Do you see the difference? I mean, think about this even in sharing your testimony. You could give an accurate data point account of your testimony, of your history, and never actually reveal any part of the revelation behind it of what God did that you couldn't do, right? Like I could say, yeah, you know, we put our house in the market, we sold it, we moved to Texas in 2014, we stayed there a year, we moved to Pennsylvania in 2016, 2015, I don't even know. Um, not good with data points and math, right? We stayed there for a few years, then we moved to Missouri for six months, then we moved to California for uh a few years, then we moved to Illinois, and we've been here for four years, right? There's the whole data that doesn't tell you anything about what God has done over these years of our marriage. So, do you see the difference? One is the information, the other is revelation. Versus, if I tell you the story of we were on the brink of divorce before we moved to Texas, and God did a miracle the night my husband was going to leave. As I'm sitting there praying, kind of just accepting that my husband is gonna get out of that shower and he's gonna leave, God was doing a mighty work in my husband that I could never do. He was reminding him of the truth that it would be unbiblical and it would be downright sinful for him to leave the wife of his youth. There was no way he could justify it. The truth is the truth. And so he came out and he said, I am going to stay. I know that it's wrong for me to leave. And there was a lot of work over a lot of years that the Lord did in and through us and is still doing in and through us, right? But that was the first miracle. The second miracle was we began praying for a new direction and a mission together. So God opened the door for us to move to Texas. And not only that, God sold our house in the middle of Wisconsin in the middle of winter, where I had three kids under three, where I would literally, when we had a showing on the house, I would pack them up in our van while it was heated up and running, and everyone was strapped into their car seats because they were all so little, and and they would watch a movie. Well, I tidied up the house to get it ready for a showing. But God sold our house during that time, two weeks before Christmas. Okay, that's that's unheard of. Nobody buys houses then, but God did it. And we moved to Texas. We didn't have orders yet. We left, we sold our house, and we we had a storage unit for half our house because we were moving to a really small house. It was under a thousand square feet. Um, and we had years of stuff that we had never gone through, right? So we had a storage unit, we went to Texas, no orders yet. Didn't get orders until we actually got there. Okay, like that that's crazy. We paid to move ourselves. The military didn't pay us, right? So we stepped out in faith, and look what God did through our obedience. And then we get there and we find out it's only a year long. We knew it was a year long, but we thought that we could extend it, okay? But we couldn't. By God, God had a plan. Zach got picked up after getting looked over for AGR, which is what he does now in the military. That's his full-time job. Okay. Got picked up, got a call. And we are moving to Pennsylvania in the first step of a long career of being an officer in the United States Army and the Army Reserves. Like, God did all of these things, okay? There is more, so much more, but the revelation of what was going on under the surface of what God was doing, of the hurts that we still continue to bring on each other, and how God continued to expose and reveal those. That's the revelation. Right? That's what I think is fascinating. So when we go back to Genesis, before sin entered the world, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. Not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, relationally. There was no hiding, there was no covering. That didn't come until after sin, right? There was no protecting, no pretending, no managing perceptions, no image to maintain, and no walls. It was just complete openness before God and one another. Then sin enters the chat. And what's the first thing they do? They hide, they cover, they protect, and humanity has been doing it ever since. Which means vulnerability isn't some trendy relationship concept. It's actually God's original design: being known, being seen, being fully present without hiding, without covering, without self-protection. And that's why vulnerability feels so difficult. Because vulnerability is a spiritual act of obedience, of daily practice, of worship, not of each other, but of God as a reflection of intimacy that He desires for us, that all of this is pointing to, of how we will be restored to this oneness in heaven. We're fighting against the instinct to protect ourselves. The instinct says, don't say that, don't let them see that, don't admit that. Definitely don't reveal that. Keep it together, stay strong, protect yourself. But here is what I've learned self-protection and intimacy cannot coexist. You can protect yourself or you can be deeply known. But eventually, every marriage arrives at the same crossroads. And the couples who experience the deepest intimacy are not the couples who never get hurt. Okay? They're the couples who continue choosing vulnerability despite the risk. This was my husband and I. We have lots of hurts towards each other. Okay. So it is not the couples who never get hurt, but the couples who continue choosing vulnerability despite the risk with trust. And it starts first and foremost with trust in God. Matthew 6 33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Trust in God. Trust that he is able to heal what we reveal. Trust that he is able to restore what we've hidden. Trust that he is able to meet us in the places where we most want to cover. So let me give you a practical challenge this week. So instead of asking, what happened today? Ask what's happening inside of me. Instead of telling your spouse more information, right? When they say, Well, how was your day today? Right? Reveal one thing that is true, one feeling, one fear, one need, one desire, one place where you've been hiding. Like, how did that show up in your day today? I was in the car today with a bunch of cheerleaders, high schoolers, and there was, you know, some underlying like identity stuff of, you know, old Chelsea, old self would have like put on their music, blasted it over the thing, you know, to try to kind of like fit in. But why would you want to fit in with high school girls? You know what I'm saying? But honestly, I just want to create a safe space for them where they can um be fully known, you know, essentially, and in whatever that looks like in the car ride that we have. Okay? So I can tell my husband that, like, hey, you know, this was this was today. It's not just what happened, but it's what is happening inside of me today. Because vulnerability is not revealing everything, vulnerability is revealing what is true, and that is where intimacy begins. It's not with information, but with revelation. I will see you on the next episode.