There is no intimacy without vulnerability

10 min readPublished on March 12, 2021

Intimacy is the basis for us to know God and our neighbor, which also includes our spouse. But it is difficult to put into practice if we have not learned to have intimacy in our families.

Sadly, history tells us that Adam and Eve disobeyed and sinned by breaking their close relationship. Sin is an enemy of intimacy. The first four commandments deal with going against intimacy with God. And the other six are about going against intimacy with our neighbor.

Intimacy and vulnerability between God and mankind

When the intimate relationship that existed between God and mankind was broken as a result of disobedience, the intimate relationship between men and their neighbors was also broken.

Gen. 3:7 says: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings” (NKJV).

The expression “the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked” speaks of the powerful effect of guilt. This is the emotion that is felt when we have failed God, our neighbor, or ourselves. When we violate God’s trust or our neighbor’s, guilt is experienced.

“Their eyes were opened” refers not to the physical transformation, but the knowledge of good and bad. It means that they recognized that they had sinned, and the result of their discovery was experiencing guilt and shame. This feeling of guilt led them to understand that they were naked before God and their neighbor.

Emotions that influence our intimacy

Guilt is a primary emotion. Primary emotional responses are immediate reactions that help us respond to a situation. If guilt is not dealt with properly, it can lead the person to feel shame. This is what we see in the story. The last part of verse 7 says that they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings because they were ashamed of their nakedness. Shame makes intimacy harder, because it pushes us to hide.

The maladaptive or secondary emotions are also reactions to situations, but they no longer help the person deal with the situation that provoked them constructively. Rather, they interfere with effective functioning.

Secondary reactive emotions follow a primary response. In the secondary emotions, Adam and Eve reacted against the initial primary adaptive emotion (guilt), and it was replaced with a secondary emotion, shame. This “reaction to reaction” darkens or transforms the original emotion (guilt) and leads to actions that, again, are not entirely appropriate for the situation.

Before sin, it was natural for them to be naked before God and their neighbor, but guilt showed that they had broken God’s trust and their neighbor’s, and they felt ashamed. They now had something to be ashamed of, something to hide. They could no longer afford to be transparent because being so would lead to judgment.

Shame and vulnerability

What is shame? Researcher Brené Brown describes it as the intensely painful feeling of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Shame gives a sense of worthlessness, a sense of having failed and not being capable enough as a human being. For many people, it feels like bleeding inside.

That is why our insecurities push us to put on some clothes, to cover ourselves so that we are not known and rejected, just as Adam and Eve did. We want to avoid being hurt. We try to keep things as quiet as possible, so we do not share anything that someone could question about us. Many of us have covered ourselves with emotional clothes.

Emotional clothes that prevent intimacy

Does all this sound familiar to you? Many times, we feel the same way Adam and Eve did, ashamed of what we have done, for having broken our intimate relationships, either with God or with others.

Sometimes it happens that our spouses have no idea who we are. Our thoughts, desires, frustrations, and feelings are all buried under protective layers because we have not established an intimate relationship. We have been hurt, and sometimes we hurt others. Many people respond by adding another layer of isolation and hiding from their spouses, children, friends, and church members, and that is one reason intimacy is so hard to find today.

If you have lived through abuse, it was not your fault, and you do not have to carry it alone.

Three reactions to shame

Dr. Linda Hartling, building on the work of Karen Horney, describes three ways people respond to shame. There is the group we just mentioned, the ones who leave, hide, or retreat. The other group are those who move toward other people, but not to be intimate, rather to appease and please. These are the ones who become addicted to pleasing others but do not get intimate.

The last group moves against others by trying to gain power over them, being aggressive and using shame to combat shame. These are the ones who may have problems with anger, who are aggressive, who use any means they can to produce shame in those around them, to calm the emotional pain they feel from their past.

The pain that is felt due to rejection and shame, the pain that leads us to hide and avoid intimacy at all costs, is very deep.

In 2011, a brain-imaging study of people who had recently gone through an unwanted breakup (Kross and colleagues, published in PNAS) found that intensely evoked social rejection activated brain areas that also respond to physical pain. Researchers still debate how to interpret that overlap, but it helps us understand why rejection and shame can hurt so much. This is the pain that leads many to react the way they do.

Shame is an enemy of intimacy

Shame makes intimacy harder, because it pushes us to hide. The deepest wound carried by a person driven by shame is often the difficulty of establishing intimate relationships.

Do you understand now why when God approaches Adam and Eve to talk to them, they run and hide? There is no intimacy when shame leads you to hide your true identity.

Why might it seem difficult to be intimate with God? Your family’s shame, mistakes, tragedies, trauma, abuse, and generational shame may have led you to distance yourself from God. Or maybe all of this has led you to seek God but not in the right way, or perhaps your shame has led you to rebel against God, blaming Him for the sad things that have happened to you.

Sometimes it is hard to be close to our children because shame keeps us hidden behind perfectionism or the fear of being seen, and we may end up demanding from them what we have not been able to live ourselves.

Vulnerability with your children

How can you be intimate with your children when your shame leads you to live a false life? How can you experience true intimacy with your spouse when you hide the truth of your past from him/her? God did not create sex just to satisfy a glandular desire. You cannot be intimate as long as your true self is hidden behind emotional clothes.

When intimacy is missing in our families, children can grow up finding it harder to trust and to feel close to others. Attachment patterns are not a life sentence, and safe relationships can help them change.

Intimacy helps couples stay close and work through conflict, though no single thing protects every marriage. And intimacy never means staying in a relationship where you are afraid or being hurt.

The secret to regaining intimacy

In Genesis 3:9-13, God is looking for Adam and Eve. They were afraid and hid because they were naked. What would have happened if they had not come out from hiding? If we analyze it, Adam and Eve made themselves vulnerable before God, they showed their nakedness and told Him what had happened.

Therefore, the first element of the formula is to be vulnerable. But there is a false concept: I cannot take the risk of revealing my deepest feelings. If I let others know what I am, I might be rejected. This false concept stops many, preventing them from becoming vulnerable and thus achieving intimacy.

What does the word vulnerability mean?

Have you ever wondered what the word vulnerability means? It comes from a Latin word meaning “to wound”. Being vulnerable means being open to attack, exposed, and powerless.

Vulnerability in a relationship requires the courage to love openly, to be honest regarding your feelings and doubts. It also involves the willingness to risk exposing the truth about a painful past and some emotional difficulty. Vulnerability is being open to pain, but it also opens the door for the blessing of intimacy. It is best practiced with people who have shown they are safe.

To you

A dear friend who is reading these lines.

I invite you today to take your mask off and have the courage to be imperfect and to love yourself. Have the courage to let go of what you believe you should be, so you can become what you are. And how can you do it? By being authentic and asking for Heavenly help, and, if necessary, professional help. Besides, if you accept negative emotions, you will be on your way to true intimacy with God and others.

Have you ever experienced the benefit of allowing vulnerability in your life, in your interpersonal relationships? What changed for you? You may reflect on these questions privately or with someone you trust; please do not share health information in the comments. God bless you.

Would you like to talk with a professional? Call (407) 559-7093 (Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern) or find professional help here. For general questions that are not an emergency, write to drduany@zodugroup.com. Please do not send health information by email.

If you are in crisis or thinking about hurting yourself, do not wait. Call or text 988 (988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24 hours a day, free and confidential). If there is immediate danger, call 911.

This article is for education only. It does not offer diagnosis or personal advice, does not replace evaluation or treatment by a health professional, and reading it or writing to us through this site does not create a therapeutic or pastoral counseling relationship. This site is not an emergency service and is not monitored continuously: do not send health information through comments or public forms. The author is a licensed psychotherapist and pastor, and is part of ZODU.

Sources

Kross, E., Berman, M. G., Mischel, W., Smith, E. E., & Wager, T. D. (2011). Social rejection shares somatosensory representations with physical pain. PNAS, 108(15), 6270–6275.
Brené Brown, description of shame (research on shame and vulnerability).
Scripture: Genesis 3:7, New King James Version (NKJV), copied from BibleGateway.

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