The Price of Vulnerability 5/7
Sherlo(ve)ck Holmes
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 fifth part of The Price of Vulnerability by Maiken Ringkjøbing.
Why does it have to feel so terrifying to actually show someone who you truly are on the inside?!?!
I have decided to go full-on hardcore love detective on myself.
It feels safer to talk about feelings with my girlfriends and family — perhaps because it is not quite as vulnerable. So there is not a single doubt in my mind about who I want to discuss all of this with:
My friend Sara.
Sara and I both grew up in nuclear families with parents who are still together after many years. We are both afraid of love, yet long for it — and I have decided that my own soul-searching is not enough.
I want to understand why.
That is why I contacted Anja Gundelach Brems. She is a licensed psychologist and couples therapist — and she immediately agreed to help me understand everything a little better.
The first thing I ask Anja is whether children from stable nuclear families can also struggle with love, contrary to the common narrative surrounding children of divorce.
Her answer surprises me.
Many people feel a hidden pressure to live up to their parents’ “perfect” image of love. Just as someone may feel like a failure for not following a certain career path, they can also feel like a failure for not finding “the one.”
When she says it, I feel relief wash over me.
It is not the first time she has heard about these kinds of expectations, and it feels incredibly liberating to have it confirmed. Liberating to know that it is not abnormal to struggle with these feelings, even if your upbringing has been “good” and stable — perhaps like yours too, dear reader?
The pressure is also very present in my conversation with Sara.
Her parents have always been close and never argued in front of her and her brother, which gave her the impression that love should simply be rosy and conflict-free.
She tells me that, when she was younger, she believed in lifelong love. That you met someone at twenty and then simply stayed together forever.
Today, she understands that it is not only about staying together — but about being happy together.
She has realized how the absence of visible conflict in her parents’ relationship made her believe that love should be frictionless — and that belief made her arrogant in her own approach to love.
But maybe that is simply how life works?
Anja explains that this pressure makes it difficult to stay present in the moment and truly experience connection in a new relationship. We evaluate and judge far too early, and that makes us afraid that the relationship will not live up to our ideals.
And honestly, that makes far too much sense.
Too much planning can sabotage love before it even has a chance to exist.
But the all-consuming culture of romantic films — filled with either happy endings or devastating goodbyes — teaches us an all-or-nothing understanding of love. And to me, both outcomes are frightening.
Because one inevitably leads to the other.
Loss of control.
Whether through love itself or through heartbreak, it is still a loss of control.
Completely naked.
Completely vulnerable.
Completely open to rejection — and to hearing the very thing you have feared all along:
That you are not enough.