“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. To love is to be vulnerable.”
Movie Inspiration: He’s Just Not That Into You
Apart from the obviously important message this movie sent out, I found one story in the movie especially alarming. Remember Ben (Bradley Cooper) and Janine (Jennifer Connelly)? For those of you haven't seen the movie—they are a married couple and Ben has an affair with Anna (Scarlett Johansson). When Ben confesses, the first thing he says is that he wants to move out whereas Janine is the one who thinks that they could work it out.
One couple I know is getting divorced because they are/were in a similar situation- she wanted to make it work and not the other way round. Now, why the guy wants to leave is a completely different argument altogether and I'm not getting into that, it's his prerogative. What shocks me is the complete indifference that the person who cheats doesn't even care enough to sort it out or explain to his/her partner. There is no apparent guilt, if at all there is any real guilt.
So Janine here (like the woman in the couple I know) runs after Ben trying to get him to explain to her what she did wrong. Sheesh. If you ask me, that is all the way down to strike 3- making oneself so very vulnerable. When I saw this happening to someone close to me, my first reaction was again a mixture of helplessness and frustration- something I think was a projection of her feelings on to me. But gradually (it's been a couple of months), I have realized that it's okay to be vulnerable. In fact, sometimes, it's better to be vulnerable in love because no matter how foolish it makes you feel, it rules out the chances of regret. Janine tried. Period.
A feeling of vulnerability might also come from little things. For me, it was the first time I cried in front of my boyfriend that I felt so exposed. I felt that I was giving him a sense of power over me and making myself vulnerable. I'm comfortable now, trusting him with that power- knowing he wouldn't misuse it. It doesn’t take as much of an effort to be calculative and hold back as it does to let yourself go and be vulnerable. And sometimes it just takes an act of vulnerability to build trust.
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