Here’s Why You Need To Let Yourself Be Vulnerable In An ‘Almost Relationship’

You know those relationships that aren’t even technically a relationship? You know the one- it’s the one you want to work out more than anything in this world and you don’t know how to go about doing it.

You play it cool and you let it ride out, hoping that one day that person will realize you’ve been putting your effort into them and hoping that they see straight through the lie of you being okay with just “being friends” … they’re the ones that you hope will turn around one day and tell you “I’ve been loving you for the longest time” … but, it never seems to work out that way, does it? These non-relationship- relationships have the ability to cause the most heart wrenching heartbreak and it’s the worst kind too – it’s the kind you can’t really be upset about… because you weren’t dating that person, right?

I’ll admit, recently there was someone who broke my heart and I mean he tore it to shreds. We never dated and he broke my heart more than someone I dated for a multitude of years. The situation was unique, we spent a great deal of time together, we went through some personal things together, we had mutual friends, etc etc etc. Although a lot of this was a situational type of thing, for months on end – that was my person that I talked to day in and day out. I will never forget the day I realized our “situation” was officially coming to a close, the day I realized that I wasn’t going to be talking to him day in and day out, the day I realized that one day I’d have to face seeing him with someone else.

With the way I’m talking, you would think these feelings would be two sided, right? I mean what kind of person can feel so strongly for someone who does not feel that way towards them? I wish I knew the answer. It’s hard to be on the “feelings” side of things, it’s hard to be the one who can see things so clearly, it’s hard to have your heart occupied by someone who has no idea that they’re all you think about. It’s even worse when your non-relationship- relationship ends because:

1. These things never really have a clear cut ending, most of the time they just fade and you spend your days wishing things could be different, wondering if maybe you gave up too soon.

2. You’re stuck dealing with a broken heart that you can’t explain, you can’t talk to that person about it because you never had enough courage to tell them they had to ability to break it to.

In a situation like this, it always seems to be that we’re frustrated with that person because THEY didn’t see what you were seeing. But did you ever think, maybe they did and you were both too scared to talk about it? I have to wonder how many great loves have been passed by or postponed because of our inability to talk to others about feelings.

I know it’s scary, I know it’s vulnerable – there’s a chance that it is really one sided, I’m not saying that it’s always going to turn out in your favor, and I’m honestly in no place to give advice on this topic. But, I know that at this moment, my heart is broken in a way that breaks me to my core and I’d give anything to tell this person just how important they are to me.

A lot of the time, when you’re the one with the feelings, it’s because you’ve seen something in this person that you know a lot of other people haven’t seen. It’s because this person has opened up a unique part of themselves to you , this person has allowed themselves to be vulnerable around you.

Once you’ve seen that part of a person, you can’t unsee it, it will forever be engrained in your memory of what kind of person they CAN be. I have to wonder; did they show you this because they’re testing the waters of opening up to you?

If you’re anything like me, vulnerability is just not something that happens. I do not vocalize my feelings if I think there’s even a slight chance that they’re one sided. I’ve been told that I have my guard up so high that I wouldn’t know how to let someone in if I wanted to.

I disagree, I think when the right person comes around, that guard comes down. That’s what happened with me, anyways, I let my guard down and this person has probably seen me at my most vulnerable. So why was I able to let him in, yet not communicate how much he meant to me? I’ll never know the answer to that and most likely, this is something I’ll be thinking about for a while.

If you have someone: someone that you know is a part of your life for a reason, someone that just gets you, someone that you’re not afraid to apologize to when you’ve screwed up, also someone who is forgiving when you’ve made a mistake. If you have a person that has stolen your heart, tell them. Don’t end up, sitting up at 12:30 in the morning, missing someone so bad that it hurts. Be honest, be vulnerable, say what you feel – because guess what? In the end, you can’t say you didn’t try.