Can we be equally vulnerable to each other?

One of my absolute favourite questions to ask on a Saudade date* is “On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most vulnerable you can ever be, how vulnerable are you on an average with an acquaintance?” We then define what 10 means to the date, which usually has to do with how much of themselves they share and expose, the access someone has emotionally, how much effect (and affect) someone has on them, trust and/or readiness for hurt.

After plotting the average, I ask them what the highest state of vulnerable they have actually ever been on this scale, and what that felt like. And then we discuss the different levels of vulnerability in between those points. It is interesting, the ways that we understand those levels, and the way that explains our boundaries in relationships.

The first time I asked this question, I also tried answering it myself and asked the people in my intimate circle. I then plotted them on my scale, and asked them to plot me on theirs and we spoke about the whys of it all.

The numbers were almost never equal. For example, I was sometimes a 4 for my 7. But the jump from the average of 1 to the 4 on their scale, vs. the jump from a 4 to 7 in my scale, vis-a-vis our definitions of the 10s, was hard to quantitatively measure, yet so glaringly illuminating in the way it made me understand the relative positions of our intimacy.

Now, as a feminist studying psychology and researching relationships, equality in relationships has always been a major topic of concern, especially because that is so closely related to our self-concepts, and by extension what we think we deserve and thus expect and accept in our relationships. This exercise really changed how I saw it all, because I was suddenly staring at the relativity of it all so clearly. It wasn’t about how much we share with, do for, or confide in each other, at all. It was about how we connected these relative spaces in our individual continuums.

Obvious as it sounds, to negotiate equality from this perspective is very different from seeking equality in its absolute sense, which was the way I was conditioned to think of it as a confident self-respecting woman/ person. It is fascinating, experimenting with and understanding the access I granted to people in my life, while measuring the equality and the worth of my efforts and feelings through this lens. Exhausting as it sounds, it has been unbelievably liberating doing this.

I did this exercise last night with a friend in reference to my characters and the relationships in the story I am writing and we had a debate about the “worth” of these characters and if we felt what they received was just. A conversation that we also often have in regard to our own relationships, except this context allowed for the objectivity that fiction grants and being able to tangibly assign value to our abstract ideas. Without the didactic pressure of a right or wrong. Which is why that’s the form I chose to tell the things I have learnt in this last year, and why it has been the fun-nest way to put together my questions and hypotheses like these.

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*Saudade date: For my project Saudade, I take people out on “dates”, where I explore how people experience love, intimacy and relationships, and everything in between. More about this on the blog: https://saudadethestoryproject.wordpress.com/