One way that the actual “exposure to being wounded” part could be good is for its signalling value. If we each expose ourselves to being wounded by the other on certain occasions and the other is careful not to wound, then we’ve established trust (created common knowledge of each other’s willingness to be careful not to wound) that could be useful in the future. Here the exposure to being wounded is the actual valuable part, not a side effect of it.
In my idioculture, these descriptions are ambiguous between intentions I would consider good and intentions I would consider bad. Roughly, I’d say it’s very important that the action is good / makes sense / is healthy / is wholesome on the concrete object level, without the signaling stuff, in order to be a good signal. Otherwise what you’re actually signaling is stuff like “I’ll do needless damage to myself for the sake of this relationship”, which, I don’t mean to just generally derogate that stance because it sounds like it might come from deep love / devotion / need / other important things, but also I would say that it’s not in fact healthy, and is not good for you or for the other person (on the assumption that the other person is a good person; if they are not a good person, they might enjoy or even specifically target that sort of self-damage).
In other words, I think the signaling is unhealthy if you’re trying to signal that way, rather than accepting the exposure because you trust them and because you have to accept some exposure due to constraints.
Separately, I think I more often hear people advocate “willingness to be vulnerable” than “being vulnerable”, and it sounds like you’d probably be fine with the former (maybe with an added “if necessary”). Maybe people started out by saying the former and it’s been shortened to the latter over time?
It’s more that I want people to have two totally separate concepts for [vulnerability as such, i.e. exposure to harm] and [vulnerability, all that openness / unguardedness / working with tender areas / trust / reliance / doing hard things together stuff]. These things are related, as has been discussed, but separate conceptually and practically.
One way that the actual “exposure to being wounded” part could be good is for its signalling value. If we each expose ourselves to being wounded by the other on certain occasions and the other is careful not to wound, then we’ve established trust (created common knowledge of each other’s willingness to be careful not to wound) that could be useful in the future. Here the exposure to being wounded is the actual valuable part, not a side effect of it.
I think that yes, this is technically an exception in that it’s a benefit of the risk itself, but even in this case I think you still want to be decreasing that vulnerability, because otherwise you’re signaling something else. Quoting from my comment https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fKoZmewSEwpfHj5Rg/easy-vs-hard-emotional-vulnerability?commentId=rvWiawrmQGapjJQrz :
In other words, I think the signaling is unhealthy if you’re trying to signal that way, rather than accepting the exposure because you trust them and because you have to accept some exposure due to constraints.
Maybe. I’ll have to mull it over.
Separately, I think I more often hear people advocate “willingness to be vulnerable” than “being vulnerable”, and it sounds like you’d probably be fine with the former (maybe with an added “if necessary”). Maybe people started out by saying the former and it’s been shortened to the latter over time?
It’s more that I want people to have two totally separate concepts for [vulnerability as such, i.e. exposure to harm] and [vulnerability, all that openness / unguardedness / working with tender areas / trust / reliance / doing hard things together stuff]. These things are related, as has been discussed, but separate conceptually and practically.