When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.
Bren BrownRead
I define vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. With that definition in mind, let’s think about love. Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow—that’s vulnerability.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Vulnerability in love involves embracing uncertainty and the risk of emotional exposure.
Brené Brown's quote highlights the inherent risks of loving someone deeply, illuminating the complexity of vulnerability in relationships. It emphasizes that to love is to willingly accept the uncertainty of whether that love will be reciprocated or endure over time, and this emotional exposure is what makes love both beautiful and risky.
Themes
VulnerabilityLoveEmotional ExposureRiskUncertainty
In practice
Example use cases
During a relationship workshop, you could use this quote to illustrate the importance of being open and vulnerable.
More from Bren Brown
All quotes →Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from taking flight.
Bren BrownRead
Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.
Bren BrownRead
What we know matters but who we are matters more.
Bren BrownRead
Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.
Bren BrownRead
Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.
Bren BrownRead
Similar quotes
And then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a girl, it is boldness.
Victor HugoRead
I'm a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.
Mother TeresaRead
Consider God's charity. Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out his life for those who have offended him?
St. Catherine Of SienaRead
He's a very nice man and all that, easy to get along with, fun, he never makes me cry. But is that love? I mean, is that all there is to it? Even when you learned to ride your two-wheeler, you had to fall off a few times and scrape both knees. Call it a rite of passage. And that was just a little thing.
Stephen KingRead
On the whole, love comes with the speed of light; separation, with that of sound.
Joseph BrodskyRead
I thought I knew what love was before giving birth to my baby, but whatever I had experienced in the past paled in comparison to the utterly unconditional love I immediately felt for the little bundle I now held in my arms.
Linda ThompsonRead