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You are developing a more spacious capacity to be with difficult and intense things in your life.
Hi, I'm Adrial, creator of the Herpes Opportunity.
Yeah, so I want to be careful around the whole idea of developing a thicker skin. I know what you're talking about there, but that can be a slippery slope that can go into, "All right, I'm just not going to let things affect me anymore," you know what I mean? Where instead of that metaphor, and it may seem trite, but instead of that metaphor of developing a thicker skin, maybe it's more like you are developing a more spacious capacity to be with difficult and intense things in your life.
... Right, can you feel the difference there? It's not like bullets bouncing off your skin, but more like, "Hey, the bullets are going to hit me and I'm still going to keep walking forward. I'm gonna feel the bullets. Okay, ouch. And I have a goal. I'm still walking forward here." You know, it's the difference between... well, it's basically being vulnerable, right? Staying in that vulnerability of like, "Hey, life can hand me anything at any time, and I will meet that thing. I will meet life where it is and I won't collapse. I won't give up. I'm going to still move forward."
... And that's kind of the vulnerable warrior of the heart. That makes it feel like you're invincible, but not because you're bulletproof, but because, "Wow, I can even absorb bullets as they are shot into my chest." You're just like, "Okay, bring it on." The things that I thought would kill me are actually making me stronger, like that cliche says. Like, if I'm willing to really be with it and grow through it, which you have.
... Right, it's not "Nothing's gonna touch me, it's not going to come within a mile of me." It's like, no, I'm right here. Yeah, I feel like the invincibility that you're talking about is a stronger level of trust in yourself to be able to handle situations that life gives you. That's what feels invincible, because it's like, "I trust that I can meet the moment, as impossible as the moment might seem, even a moment that I haven't even experienced yet." I now have the experience of meeting a really hard moment, and many hard moments over the course of months, and I'm here.
... So now I have that much more trust that anything in the future, yeah, I have more trust that I can handle that. More trust than I ever have before in myself, because you've proved it to yourself. And that's strength. That's empowering, right?
... Yeah, and I also want to go back to what you were saying before with your boyfriend, because I think this is a really important piece. Where, you know, it's like, "We still love each other and we're, if anything, we love each other even more because we're going through this stuff together." And even though I can't kiss him for two weeks and he might not be able to have sex with me for a few weeks, we're still here.
... To me, what that reminds me of is proof that there's depth in your relationship. That just because "I can't kiss you," okay, well, "I'm gonna hold it against you," or because "I can't have sex with you," it's like, that's intimacy, right? And so often in our culture, intimacy has become tangled up with sex. But in those moments when you're having an outbreak and actual penetrative sex can't happen, okay, well, "Oh, but we still love each other. Oh, and you're still looking at me with those loving eyes, and you're cuddling me, and you're cooking me dinner." And there are all these other ways that show you in relationship that there's love there.
... And if anything, it's like the absence of being able to kiss you or have sex with you makes it that much more sweet when you're able to in the future again. Especially in those times when you can't, you're still being creative around how you're loving each other. You know, sex is like the easy way of, "Okay, I love you, let's have some sex." That's easy, right? But when that's off the plate, it's like, "Oh, let's get creative."
... And you can also take this literally, of like, if penetrative sex isn't available, what other ways can we have sexual kinds of experiences, right? And there's that kind of creativity. And then we draw these boundaries around, "Okay, we can't kiss, or we can't go below the belt, but what other things can we do together?" And that can be exciting, as opposed to, "If we can't do that, then we can't do anything."
... Right, but then even expanding out from that, even away from the sexual realm, and just like, "Let's be creative about how can I care for you as you're suffering. You're having an outbreak, but I still love you. I still want to show you love." Right? And that creates that depth that all of us are really wanting in relationship.
... But there's the mind-shift that's like, "Well, I mean, if I'm gonna have an outbreak, then we just have to put our relationship on pause because we can't have sex." That is the canary in the coal mine of like, "Oh, maybe this relationship isn't really built on depth." And you're finding the better even in the worse, right? Even in the perceived worse.
... Like, that's the thing. We talk about creativity in relationship, but it's also being creative around reframing, you know? Yeah, of course you wish that it didn't come in the form of a virus that you share together. But like you said, there's this companion to that virus that is vulnerability and being able to show yourselves to each other.
... You know, there's a great quote that I'm gonna butcher, but you've probably heard it before, of the concept of truly being naked together and taking your metaphorical clothes off is so much more rare than just taking our clothes off and being naked together. Right? There's this other layer. Like, after I've actually taken my physical clothes off, then there's this whole other layer of, you know, it's almost like I take my skin off to show you my heart, to show you the inner workings of me.
... Right? And so in that way, we're kind of like onions, especially in romantic long-term relationship, because we're constantly peeling back those layers and revealing deeper and deeper aspects of ourselves. And it ain't always pretty, you know? But there's intimacy in that, of showing that imperfection with each other and being able to love each other even more deeply than we ever thought possible because of that.
... Right, so being creative around that too. Like, "Oh yeah, even though it looks on the surface like ew, it's like, oh, there is beauty here. There can be beauty everywhere."
... I hope you got a lot out of that video. And if you did, please let me know. Please like, comment, and subscribe, and keep an eye out for more videos just like this.
"The things that I thought would kill me are actually making me stronger. If I'm willing to really be with it and grow through it ... it's not about developing a thicker skin. It's about developing a more spacious capacity to be with difficult things."
"Thicker skin" sounds like a good thing, right? But here's the catch: it can become a slippery slope into "I'm not going to let anything affect me anymore." And that's not strength. That's armor. That's shutting down.
Real strength looks more like what we explore in this coaching session: staying open even when life is handing you hard stuff. Feeling the bullets and still walking forward. That's the vulnerable warrior. And when it comes to relationships, this plays out in beautiful ways. When an outbreak means you can't have sex for a bit, instead of putting your relationship on pause, you get creative. You discover depth you didn't know was there. You find out that intimacy was never really about sex in the first place. It was about being truly naked with each other, metaphorical clothes and all.
