We can state the matter starkly: we cannot be good lovers if we don't know how to be vulnerable.
We make ourselves psychologically vulnerable whenever we let a partner know some of the ways in which we are weak, needy, scared, immature, incompetent or just plain odd — that is, some of the ways in which we are human.
To be vulnerable is to dare to take off the usual cloak of normality and sensibleness with which we navigate the world and for once, to show someone who we really are, with all the fragility and unusualness implied.
We might, as vulnerable people, admit to a desire to be mummied or daddied, to curl into a ball, to cry over a so-called small thing, to be reassured about an apparently minor flaw, to call up our lover every ten minutes, to suffer from anxiety or paranoia, to speak in a regressive voice or to hug a favourite stuffed animal.
It's a hugely complicated step to confess — in front of someone we fundamentally want to impress and secure the affection of — that there are basic ways in which we fall short of what a proper adult is meant to be like.
A certain kind of no-nonsense partner might well tell us sternly to grow up, complain about us to their friends and make hasty moves to end the relationship.
As a result, we often lie in love, not for advantage or thievery, but in order to hold on to a love we desperately depend on.
We pretend to be strong and unafraid.
We put on a show of being someone else.
Such acting works in many contexts.
