Making Friends Later in Life: Episode 9 Vulnerability — How to Open Up Without Overexposing Yourself

Making Friends Later in Life: Episode 9 Vulnerability — How to Open Up Without Overexposing Yourself

You can’t build real friendship without vulnerability — but the older we get, the riskier it feels.

In Episode 9 of our Making Friends Later in Life series, Jennifer and Jackie talk about why vulnerability is essential for deep connection, why it feels scarier in midlife, and how to open up without trauma dumping or overexposing yourself.

Because here’s the truth:
If you never let people in, you’ll only have activity buddies.
But if you open up too fast, you might scare off the very connection you’re hoping for.

In this episode, we break down:

• The difference between vulnerability and trauma dumping
 • Why surface-level friendships feel safe — but lonely
 • How to “test the waters” before sharing something deeply personal
 • Healthy vs. unhealthy responses to your vulnerability
 • How to build trust in layers instead of emotional leaps

We also share real examples from our own friendship — including how we rebuilt trust after a 15-year gap and why slow vulnerability made our connection stronger.

If you’ve ever been hurt, misunderstood, or burned in friendship, this episode will help you open up wisely — not fearfully.

Because vulnerability isn’t about spilling everything.

It’s about revealing yourself slowly enough to see who can handle it.

💛 Series Reminder:
 First the work on you. Then the work on connection.

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This episode of Slightly Unsupervised was brought to you by the creators of Bestiemony®—the original friendship ceremony that proves soulmates don’t always come with a marriage license. Hosted by Jennifer and Jackie: best friends, business partners, and co-founders of the movement celebrating real, ride-or-die love.

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Transcript

Jennifer 0:00

Hey there, I'm Jennifer.

Jackie 0:01

And I'm Jackie.

Jennifer 0:02

And welcome to Slightly Unsupervised. We're best friends, business partners, and the chaos behind vestimony, a ceremony we created to celebrate the kind of soulmates who don't come with a marriage license.

Jackie 0:10

This podcast is all about that friendship energy, the deep stuff, the messy stuff, and the laugh till you snort stuff.

Jennifer 0:15

So whether you're driving, folding laundry, or hiding in your car for some peace and quiet.

Jackie 0:19

You're in good company. Let's get slightly unsupervised.

Jennifer 0:21

All right, everybody, welcome back. We are on episode nine of our Making Friends Later in Life series, and this one is vulnerability. How to open up without overexposing yourself. Women need to understand why vulnerability is essential for real friendship, why it feels risky later in life, and how to test the waters safely so you can build trust without trauma dumping or overexposing yourselves.

Jackie 0:44

Why this episode matters. You cannot build a real friendship without vulnerability. You just can't. But the older we get, the scarier vulnerability feels. We've been hurt, we've been betrayed, we've been misunderstood. So now we either overshare or we don't share at all. And neither one builds safe connection. So today we're talking about how to open up without blowing yourself open.

Jennifer 1:05

Good. Which is important that uh I will say for sure that if you don't have vulnerability and you have a friendship and you don't really share anything with them, and they're not really invited into the inner parts of your mind or the inner parts of your life, that you have an activity buddy. Somebody that's like a surface level conversation that you're polite, you know? Good example. Yeah. It's great over here. They'd have no idea what's going on in this house. And I don't have any idea what's going on in that house. But that's sort of like surface level stuff. Like it's not a friendship. It's not a friendship. It's an acquaintance, really. I think if you don't have some vulnerability with some people, it's really hard to you gotta be able to be like you have to bite some people into your head, right? Your heart. Do you have any like surface level friendships, Jack, that you could think of that are like that you wouldn't do that?

Jackie 1:56

I would say yeah, like your neighbors, but I do have some neighbors that we really like too in their family that we know more of what's going on there. They know what's going on here.

Jennifer 2:04

Or like old family friends.

Jackie 2:06

Or even like work. Work people friends could be that way.

Jennifer 2:09

Yeah.

Jackie 2:10

What's been really interesting is what like actually on that recently, um, because I used to work in one of the girls that was a um uh what you call it to help the doctor, anyways. She moved down where I'm at now and she's had a baby. So we've like off and on, I'll like send little things on her Facebook how cute he is, da-da-da, and all this. And I actually got uh an invite to his first birthday the other day.

Jennifer 2:33

That's cool.

Jackie 2:33

And so I just thought about it, I'm like, you know what? It would be nice to see her because she was one of the girls I really liked that I talked a lot with. But when COVID came and everybody had to go away and then everybody came back, she didn't come back. She straight out she ended up going and moving down the hill and and um getting off the hill. So at that point, we just, you know, it would just be little chats, maybe through Facebook or whatever. But um, I thought that was really sweet. And I I was like, and I had to think about it. I'm like, okay, is this something I really want to do? Am I doing it for conven, you know, just because to be nice, or do I really want to go maybe get this uh relationship back again? Right. And I'm like, I think I want to go. I do. We should have a good time. We could I could talk to her. I mean, she's younger, so um, they used to talk more to me like a mom, you know, and ask me questions and stuff like that. So I'm like, yeah, I think I can do that.

Jennifer 3:20

You're an elder.

Jackie 3:21

I'm excited about it.

Jennifer 3:22

You're an elder person, so you get to be the wise one, the one that has.

Jackie 3:26

I know on at Ross's on Tuesdays, I get my senior citizens 55 and over. Did you know that? No, every Tuesday.

Jennifer 3:35

You catch me in Ross, there's gotta be like somebody with a gun behind me chasing me in there because I hate Ross. Oh my God. I used to love Ross when I had no money. I loved it. Because it was like I could dig through hours. It was like shopping for something that that was in a huge like warehouse. You had to find it, right? So you could spend like three hours at it, fine. But now I'm like, oh my God. No, it's a mess. I haven't been in a Ross in so long where it hasn't just been everywhere.

Jackie 4:03

I guess I have nicer Ross's around me than you do.

Jennifer 4:05

Well, when I where I used to live, I had a Marshall's and that was a nicer Marshalls than most. Now I go to Marshalls here, I'm like, I don't like it. But when I lived where I in Monterey, where I used to live, I liked the Marshalls. It was the place everybody went. So it just depends on where you're at. Everything has a name. But no, there's a gun behind there's a gun in my head, and somebody's bringing me into Ross if you find me in there these days, girl. All right. So anyway, so vulnerability. I just want to give you the definition of being vulnerable because some maybe some people don't really understand it. But it's susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm. So you are leaving yourself in a position that people can reciprocate back or they can attack you or harm you. And so it is a it is somewhere you can be easily hurt and attacked. So it is hard to do, and nobody here is telling you any differently that, you know, when you share something with somebody and the reciprocation is negative, or they attack you, or they blame you, or whatever it is that happens, and you know, everybody's gone through it, it's not something new. That's when you retreat. Be like, I'm never sharing anything again with anybody because nobody understands me. And it's just the person you're speaking to that doesn't understand or doesn't have the capacity to care that you have to realize that that it's not a blanket thing. Literally, you could be with Jackie and I. We could be, let's put ourselves somewhere where where you're in your environment or I'm a mine. We could be at a casino table. Let's give us that because Jackie likes to make friends with everybody. You could be at a casino table with Jackie and I, just the three of us, let's just say. And the three of us are having a game or whatever. And you could say to the group, like, you know, could say something that's a vulnerable thing, like, I can't believe um husband did this or that. Jackie would probably ignore you because she'd be like, That's why we're here. We're here to gamble. Like, and I'd be like, oh my god, what happened? Like we're two different people, right? But we're really good friends. But I'm more like invested in what's happened. Jackie's like, I don't care. Are you gonna roll the dice or what? Like or roll the.

Jackie 6:00

Are you playing in this game or are you leaving? Because somebody else is waiting in for your spot.

Jennifer 6:03

Exactly. So they're two, even in between the dynamics of us, I'm much more interested in people's well-being of how they're doing and evolving or whatever than Jackie is. But on the other hand, Jackie and I have to be vulnerable. We had a conversation yesterday, Jack, right? We were vulnerable. We had to be vulnerable. She needed my she told me something. It doesn't matter what she told me. It wasn't that point. The point is I had been through it and I was like, look, here's what you need to expect. I'm not saying it's gonna happen that way, but here is the part of yourself up.

Jackie 6:35

It's probably not gonna be you the outcome that I want, but I had to like vent it out and say it, yes.

Jennifer 6:40

Right. And I very nice.

Jackie 6:41

And sleep on it.

Jennifer 6:42

Yeah, I'm like, look, it's probably what it is you think it is, because this is happening with other people and it's done. So prepare yourself. That's what I said, right? You might want to prepare yourself for that because I think that that's what this means. And so But she had to be vulnerable by telling me. I had to be make sure that she knew that I cared and gave her back some reciprocation about it and said, even in a nice way. I wasn't like, Oh, I think you know, you'll be okay, nothing's gonna go wrong. I didn't say that to her because that's not really being a friend. That's like telling you things that you want to hear. You want to hear. And I wanted to prepare her, give her some grace to give some time to deal with this situation before the situation had to be actually dealt with, which is coming, right? So vulnerability. We can do it, we have to do it. It's part of the friendship relationship. It's something that you know you're gonna find people that are much more receptive to listening, me. And then people that are less receptive want you to come up with some solutions on your own, Jackie. But either which way, it's going to be But in my offense.

Jackie 7:47

If you do me need me, I'm there. There's other things that called, yeah.

Jennifer 7:52

But I'm just giving the contrast because I'm like, oh my god, what's happened? Tell me. Like, two coffees over here, let's go. Like, tell me the story. And you're like, do we need to really talk about that? You know what I mean? Like, they're just a little different than me. So it's okay.

Jackie 8:04

I need to dust my table while you're telling me your story.

unknown 8:08

Yeah.

Jennifer 8:08

Diggie's cleaning while the story's going on. But it builds trust because once you go through something vulnerable, then you see how the other person reacts. Then you go, oh, okay, my heart is safe, my mind is safe, my thoughts are safe, my whatever's happened is safe or it's not safe, right? And it's it's the only way to get deeper. You gotta get vulnerable, right? You can't be surface level all the time. You know, you talked about this in the last episode, and we're gonna talk about it again. When we became friends again from our 15-year break, we didn't start with everything that happened to us in 15 years, right? We we didn't even talk about it really, probably. We started from where we were and we moved forward. And then slowly we brought some stuff from the back forward, being like, oh, well, this came or this happened. And we still learn. It's we're still learning. We do this podcast with each other once a week or try to at least, and we still find out things because there's a 15-year gap there, right? Where things happen to us. And she didn't need to trauma dump on me, and I didn't need to trauma dump on her about everything that had ever gone wrong between those 15 years. It was just sort of a let's build slowly and let's bring some stuff up that's happened so that we can talk about it or understand it.

Jackie 9:14

And like with the podcast, some things have come up that we both said, Oh, I didn't realize that ever happened. I didn't know that happened to you because we hadn't discussed it until we started digging in with our podcast on things.

Jennifer 9:25

Right. Which we call therapy too, right? So but we are here we had to start slow, we had to tr build trust, and then we, you know, are comfortable telling each other almost anything anymore. It doesn't really matter anymore because I know she's not gonna she has no harm for me and I have no harm for her, but it takes time and it took some thing. And be careful because vulnerability is not trauma dumping. Trauma dumping is when you wanted to give everybody the entire story of your life and generally it's been bad. Trauma is trauma. And you're going to scare the shit out of somebody if you do that, because you give somebody something, they either take it, do whatever they want with it, hand it back to you nicely, or discuss it with you. But if you just dump on somebody and trauma dump and girls, we do it. We are setting ourselves up for failure there too, because that's too much sharing, right?

Jackie 10:17

And that would be, yeah, I'd have a problem with that, definitely. I if I'm meeting someone and then like the first few things we've done, all I do is hear of you complain about your marriage or complain about everything. I'll be like, this is not fun. Because that's me. I want to have some fun. I don't want to sit here. Yeah, I of course I want to be there for you, but that's too soon. Way too soon. Right. And maybe eventually I most of the time if you do become good friends, the other one does start seeing it and they will ask you questions too. Right. They notice what's going on, you know. Oh, hey, I noticed this. You want to talk about it? Right.

Jennifer 10:48

Right. Right.

Jackie 10:49

So yeah, don't throw all the bad stuff right away. Because probably you're gonna get uh ghosted, at least if you're with me. Because I'm like, I don't got time. I got my own stuff too. So and I'm not putting it all on you, you know.

Jennifer 11:00

Right. But even with me, you would probably lose me too, because eventually I'd be like, you don't have anything, you're not growing from anything. You're just traumatizing me. And you're I listen to what you're saying, and I will, I am one of those people that will say, Well, what about what's your ass? What do you think about that? Do you think somewhere in there you might have had some part of that? Like, because I want you to grow, right? That's important to do. Like, you gotta grow. If I blamed everybody in my life of everything that's ever happened to me, I don't even know where I'd be. I just moved on. Like, well, move on. I don't stand around and talk about everything that's ever bad, that's ever happened to me, and either does Jack. But you have to grow from it. You have to say, Well, this happened and this is what it taught me, and this is what it did. So that for me at least to be with it, if you're just trauma dumping, it's like, okay, well, I'm sorry to hear that. I don't know what to do with that, but I'm sorry to hear that and I hope life goes better. And I'm out too. So, and I'm more the one that wants to listen to it. So even I, who is a little more receptive to that, would still knock you out for being too much trauma dumping on me. So a little at a time. Like a little bit. Like you can't you can't get drunk on drama the first night. It's too much.

Jackie 12:12

And like I said, if you just keep doing it too. I mean, yeah, I have friends now that sometimes it's like just and I'm like, can't we just get away from that? Can't you just have one fun night with just me and not have to focus on that? We've gone over this story a hundred times. Right. You know, it's not a fun story. We're not laughing and having a good time. We're getting depressed and not like, let's go to bed. You go your way, I'm going my way.

Jennifer 12:36

So if you're gonna travel dump on Jack, you gotta have some fun in between. You like dance on the tables and then talk about it. Then dance on the tables and talk about it. But vulnerability later in life is risky, and here's why, right? We have more history now. Jackie and I, when we were kids, had some history together, but it was a lot of the same history because we had grown up together, and then we got friendship later, and then our history had changed. There was a lot of history now, right? That we hadn't experienced together in our lives. And even though we had grown, we hadn't grown together. So we have more history, so it's more vulnerability. If you had told me all your problems at 20, they'd look different than if you had told me all your problems at 40, right? So you are more susceptible to me being uh judgy or whatever it is we want to do, whatever we want to call this, but when you're vulnerable and you don't get what you want from somebody, and then we've all experienced betrayal. The older you get, the more you have in your backpack meaning. You're carrying it around. So I don't make everybody you can't put everything that's ever happened to you all in one person, they're all the same. Like that's such a bad outlook on life. You've got to judge people for who they are and not for your experiences prior to them and bringing that on to them and putting that on there. We've all been judged. Come on now. We were grew up in the 80s, we got judged. We're still get judged. We got judged first, period. Hell, we might get judged walking into the school. What are you wearing? Like our generation generated X. We are we were judged left and right, right and left. Like we had to toughen up. And we've all seen friendships end, of course. And we all don't want to look too needy, right? You don't want to look like I need you so much that I'm gonna do whatever it is it takes to make you my friend. Please just try to stay in the spot. A good place to be if you can, if you're in a place for being vulnerable, is just to drop a little nugget. Have a coffee, and maybe we're just talking Jackie, and I'm like, man, I really really having a hard time at at work or something. Just something that isn't maybe personally tied to you, something that's kind of third party related, and be like, Jackie would be like, oh yeah, well, good luck with that. Or she'd be like, Well, what is it? Maybe I can help, or something, you know what I mean? Like it's a good place because it's a third-party vulnerability. It's not necessarily something that's in your house or in your personal life. It's, you know, like everybody has a problem with something outside of it. So those are kind of a good way to see if you've got somebody that is gonna be receptive or at least cares, you know, if they just ignore you or they look past you or they don't even acknowledge the fact you said something, that'd be a red flag for me, wouldn't it be a red flag for you? Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. Maybe this person really isn't like gonna be safe for that kind of conversations. Then you're a back to surface level friendship, right? Which is just you kind of know each other.

Jackie 15:17

And if that's what you want, that's what you that's what you get. I mean, I mean I think some people do just want that. So it's your choice. If you want it deep, like we're trying to help with as much as we can. I mean, we're not specialists, but this is how we feel and everything. But um, yeah.

Jennifer 15:34

So just, you know, take it layered, let let it let it come out a little bit. Don't, you know, dump it all in somebody in one night. And I think maybe a good part would be maybe to share something that's not totally 100% personal. That's, you know, like I said, something that's third party that, you know, you can talk about that maybe people do. Politics, I don't suggest anybody talking about politics these days, but it's a third party event that happens that you could, you know, anymore, any more object. We're at to the point where if you don't agree on politics in my world, you guys can't be friends either.

Jackie 16:07

It's too volatile.

Jennifer 16:09

Do you think?

Jackie 16:10

Yeah, we don't talk about any pol politics with the group. I mean, I think what we do with our with maybe us girls, but when you don't get the husbands involved, and that's a thing. But yeah, no.

Jennifer 16:20

I like to stay away from that. It's a third party thing to talk about that maybe you could say something little about it or something to see, but I don't know.

Jackie 16:29

If you don't know them that good, I wouldn't even touch that. I was we were brought up that way.

Jennifer 16:33

This is like to see if you have even the same common interests. Because I'm telling you, anymore, you can't be friends with somebody who has a totally different political view from you. It doesn't appear to be that it's it's one of those safe places.

Jackie 16:45

Everybody wants you to take a side now. And then you don't need to take a side.

Jennifer 16:48

Well, yeah, take a side, but you better take the side alike. Because if we don't take the side alike, you don't want to be friends with you either. So, you know, these are some new things that have happened in the world. I'm pretty sure back in the thousands of years ago, this wasn't about politics. What happens we have about religion. If you don't believe what I believe, I can't be friends with you. I think when in the religion world it's kind of calmed down, but in the political world, it's all charged up. So share something, kind of see how it's going. If they don't respond, it's not because it's something wrong with you. Sometimes it's the the the point is there's something wrong with them. They don't have the capacity to be a deep level person or they don't want to be a deep level person. And if that's what you're looking for, you gotta be receptive to understand that and get back out of something pretty quickly so that you don't leave yourself too vulnerable into something. What it looks like if somebody's gonna be responsive, and these are just the responses, Jack. Do you want to go through the healthy responses look like?

Jackie 17:37

They listen, they don't interrupt, they don't minimize, they don't compete, and they don't gossip about others.

Jennifer 17:43

So unhealthy responses look like one up in your pain, making it about themselves immediately, offering unsolicited fixing, dismissing it, or sharing your story with somebody else. So their response tells you a lot about whether it's safe to go deeper or not. So these are the things to kind of keep your keep watch on and kind of see where you're at. We don't want you to to give it all away the first date or the first time you beat them, but you know, test things out. You don't you wouldn't do this in the first one anyway. Vulnerability comes like a few months down the road. It doesn't start with vulnerability, I don't think it starts.

Jackie 18:15

I don't think it does.

Jennifer 18:16

Yeah, you you build into vulnerability when you get more comfortable with somebody. So that is our episode for today. If this episode hit you in the fields or made you laugh way too hard, we consider that a win.

Jackie 18:25

Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your ride or die.

Jennifer 18:28

And when you're ready to make your friendship official, book your bestimony at rhinestoneweddingchravel.com.

Jackie 18:33

Because the best love stories don't always come with the ring.

Song 18:57

Reuniting's like we never been apart, and every single time we're out of iron heart to heart.