The Price of Vulnerability 7/7
What If He Actually Wants Me — and What If I Dare to Believe It
Maiken Ringkjøbing has always believed in and dreamed of love. She has simply struggled to dare to pursue it. In this personal story, Maiken Ringkjøbing explores why the fear of being hurt can outweigh the longing for love. What does it do to a person to protect themselves so much that no one is ever truly allowed to get close?
The Price of Vulnerability is her story about love, fear, and a constant escape from losing control. About growing up with the ideal of great love while simultaneously being terrified of it. Through conversations with psychologists, her parents’ love letters, and her own experiences, she has explored why some of us long for love yet still struggle to surrender to it.
This is the seventh and final part of The Price of Vulnerability by Maiken Ringkjøbing.
My parents jumped into love without guarantees. I am still trying to learn how.
It feels strange to write this, but yes — I am actually dating someone.
And with him, for once, it feels different.
Not because it is easy. In fact, it is the hardest thing I have ever done. But he is neither emotionally unavailable nor someone with whom nothing is truly at stake for me.
There is actually a lot at stake.
I am trying to stay.
I am trying to surrender.
I am trying to say it out loud when I miss him.
Maybe love is not about feeling completely ready, but about daring to choose each other anyway.
And somewhere in the middle of all this, I realize that I need to hear from people who actually did it — who threw themselves into love. Not only with love itself, but with doubt. Risk. Gut feeling.
And I want to hear it from them thirty years later — not only through their letters.
My parents.
So I call them.
I want to understand how they dared to do it back in 1995, when my mother quit her job, gave up her apartment, and moved to a town in England for a man she barely knew.
I ask them what made them simply... jump.
You would think they knew each other a little too well, because without hesitation they both look at each other as though the other person should answer first.
My father smiles slightly and says:
“What was the worst that could happen? That it would not work out. And then we would have figured it out. But we also had the feeling that it could become something.”
My mother nods and answers the question still lingering on my lips:
“That whole fear of getting hurt... I honestly did not think about it back then.”
And I can feel those words hit something deep inside me.
The fear I struggle with today was not something they carried with them. Maybe because they both grew up in homes where love was not necessarily shown as safety — but they knew they wanted something different.
As my father says, he always knew he did not want a marriage like the one his parents had.
My grandparents.
He wanted something better.
And it suddenly struck me how different that is from my own approach.
I have been surrounded by great love my entire life — and still, I am the one afraid of making it impossible.
“If you create the problems before they even exist, then it will never work,”
I hear through the phone.
Why is it that everyone else understands this logic except me?
Because I do know all of this already.
And yet I have caught myself searching for reasons to leave before anything has even truly begun.
And if I am being honest, I have already looked for reasons to run away — more than once.
Because it is fucking hard to unlearn patterns, even when you know they are not helping you.
And somehow, he has managed to make me stay. To calm down. To fall deeper and deeper every time we spend time together.
“You should not be afraid to give yourself fully,”
my father says, interrupting my spiral of thoughts.
“Maybe it will not last. But that is still better than pulling away. Because that is when things actually go wrong.”
“And if he cannot accept you exactly as you are,”
my mother says calmly,
“then he is not the right person.”
They know me.
Far too well.
I do not know whether this will become what I have a feeling it could become.
But he makes me happy.
And I am trying.
I am trying to enjoy it and stay present in it anyway.
I am trying not to protect myself to death.
I am trying to be honest — both with him and with myself.
I am trying to let things happen without controlling them.
And maybe that is exactly what my parents have done all along.
Not loved without fear — but loved anyway.
Dear Me,
You have been afraid.
You held on where you should have let go.
And let go where you longed to stay.
You tried to be cool, free, independent —
but you were lonely in it.
At the same time, it was difficult to share that vulnerability with anyone because you feared your friends and family would also see how unlovable you were afraid you might be.
But you are here now.
And even though this journey does not solve everything, the key word is practice.
You are practicing staying.
You are practicing loving.
And I want to tell you something important:
You are not wrong because you are sensitive.
You are not too much because you hope.
You are not weak because you long.
And you are certainly not unworthy just because not everyone is able to see your value.
You have so much to be grateful for.
And so many truly wonderful people who choose you and love you every single day.
Remember to tell your younger self that once in a while.
She is still hiding in there.
You deserve to be chosen.
By others — but also by yourself.
So I am doing that now.
I choose you — choose myself.
With all the fragile parts.
With all the stubborn parts.
With all the imperfect parts.
With my whole heart.
Love,
Me
This was the seventh and final part of Maiken Ringkjøbing’s series The Price of Vulnerability.