I haven’t always been happily married.

After a very (very) difficult 13th year of marriage in 2013, Melissa and I now have a powerful connection and friendship, much deeper than we’ve ever had. Often, traumatic situations, or more importantly the pressure from traumatic situations, causes meaningful change.

I credit many things for our new-found connection.

The foundation, in my opinion, is vulnerability with boundaries. Vulnerability requires me to expose myself, which seems a lot like weakness. In fact, the dictionary defines vulnerability as powerlessness. But as it relates to relationship, I believe vulnerability is far from weakness; it requires a lot of courage to dig into myself and realize what I’m actually feeling.

Vulnerability:
Daring to “feel” and embrace my emotions, and then
revealing them to others close to me.

The notion of vulnerability originally came from reading Danny Silk’s Book: “Keep Your Love On” and I have since determined that vulnerability is the key to good relationships. But vulnerability has levels, and setting clear boundaries is critical to defining the type of information you share with each relationship.

I’ll explain how this works for me:

I’ve learned that in order to be powerful as a person, I must take care of myself first. This is different than selfishness. This is about taking care of my mind, body and spirit.

I’ve committed myself to 5 things every day. I read, meditate, think, laugh, and exercise. (I know I’m getting older when I call it exercise). These are the areas that give me energy and a positive attitude. If I have a bad attitude and no energy, life sucks. It‘s no fun for me or anyone around me.

With energy and a positive attitude, I am inspired to do a lot.

My next level of vulnerability is with with my wife. I connect with her in the morning, a text or two during the day, and before we go to bed. Even if I’m out of town, we touch base each day. This is for my happiness, and hers.

And I don’t offer this level of vulnerability to anyone else.

From there, I offer my leadership focus to my kids by connecting with each of them individually, every day. This may be as simple as an enthusiastic bedtime story or looking them in the eye and asking them what the best part of their day was. My highest professional focus goes to my business partner. It’s important to me that I have a meaningful connection with him once a day. My parents and siblings come next, then close friends and so on.

My levels of vulnerability and connection have become so important to me, that I created a Personal Boundaries diagram. I’m a creative person, so this is what works for me.

This diagram helps me define what’s going wrong if some of my relationships are dysfunctional. For instance, if I’m offering more vulnerability to my parents than my wife, I’m indirectly hurting my marriage connection.

Defining these boundaries is the tricky part.

For example, I’ve defined that I read my articles to my wife before posting. She doesn’t expect me to, and I might have thought this was controlling in the past, but now I realize that it’s offering my thoughts to her before releasing it to the public.

This kind of stuff takes effort.

But this kind of effort gives me more energy. So the effort becomes intensely rewarding. And when I’m rewarded, I’m more interested in putting in the effort. So the viscous circle of emotional heartache, can be reversed to a perpetual circle of inspiration.

When my boundaries are in order, my life is better.

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