In order to be healthfully vulnerable, we must have self-love. It is only when we love ourselves that we are able to freely share ourselves. Through sharing a piece of ourselves with another who also shares themself with us, we both make each other more complete. But when we push ourselves to be vulnerable when we haven’t learned how to love ourselves first, then we become attached; we depend on the one we are vulnerable with to love a part of us that we don’t know how to love yet but that has that deep need to be loved.
We are meant to be loved, but we should not expect to be loved. It is when you expect to be loved that everything fails. When we don’t expect to be loved, when a stranger leaves a kind note on our car, we feel so touched, so loved by that simple act of kindness! So much of this is because it was an act that we were not expecting.
Do you have expectations of how you should be loved? Let them go. Are there parts of yourself that you need to love more fully? Give yourself the grace to do so. Through these practices you will find more abundance than you could ever dream of.