To Love Is to Be Vulnerable: Why Locking Your Heart Away Doesn't Keep It Safe — It Changes It | Ft. Ashley Negron

Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, strengthen your habits, and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show. I'm joined again by my co-host Ashley, my wife, and we've recently gone through all the new Harry Potter books in Audible, the full cast editions, which I— we highly recommend. They are so fun. And then unfortunately they were over, so we were like, well crap, what do we do now? So, uh, we got the Tales of the Beedle the Bard, some themed children's stories that JK has written, and they're very folky and, and weird, but in that universe. So it's funny to listen to them. And there was one story in particular that caught our attention just based on Just the kind of the lessons it teaches, called The Warlock with the Hairy Heart. And so the general story is that a young warlock watches people around him and they fall in love and they get hurt, and he realizes that he wants no part of that cycle. It seems to be— he's like, well, if you don't love, then you can't get hurt. And so he uses dark magic to remove his own heart.

Mm-hmm.

And he locks it away, and then it works. He feels nothing. He's untouchable. He's admired. Years later, he decides that he wants a wife. Now, this is purely as an acquisition. It's not— he doesn't crave it, a wife or anything like that, but it's purely kind of like a status move for him in that story. And when she asks where his heart is, he takes her down to show her his prize and kind of how he's achieved this great feat. And in that moment in the story, he decides to put the heart back in. But what's been sealed away in the dark all of these years has become something entirely different and something in the story that's Described as monstrous and no longer human. And unfortunately, in the story, it destroys them both quite intensely, might I add. It's a pretty gruesome story. And so the detail that matters most here is that his heart didn't die in the box. It actually changed. The lesson in that, I think, is teased pretty obviously. Now, it's a little intense that it's aimed towards kids, because initially when you read it, you're like, wow, that's pretty graphic. But it caught my attention because I think Oftentimes kids in that age, they, they already know this truth, right? It's like kids get in these, you know, the best— they're betrayed by their best friend and, and all of these like dynamic things that happen when, you know, the cost isn't as, as severe as it is in adult relationships. And, or, or they might have something truly tragic happen, like, you know, a divorce in the, in the family. And that might be a moment where they decide to take, uh, you know, therapists talk about this, where people take these, and we'll talk about later in the episode, but when people make these vows to themselves, like, I'll never allow, or I'll never do this. Those kinds of things are very similar to this magic described in the story. Ashley, what did this story make you think about when you, when you heard it?

I do. I think you're right. I think that we all have circumstances and situations in our lives that it feels like it would be easier to just lock away our heart and to never extend that grace again. You know, we've all, we've all been hurt by somebody at some point in our lives. And we, we have to convince ourselves to actually not just lock that away, right? That has to be a choice to go, you know what, I'm gonna keep choosing to love, or I'm gonna extend this olive branch, or I'm gonna choose to not follow down the same path, or I'm gonna choose to break the cycle that I've watched for a long time. Whatever that issue may be for you, you know, I think it's a conscious choice and a conscious effort to say, nope, I'm gonna take a chance on love again because I think that it's worth it.

And it is. And what, what this really made me think about is a quote that I read from C.S. Lewis many, many years ago. He wrote it back in The Four Loves in 1960. And I'll just read the full quote because it's very poetic, but it gets to the same point in a different way. And he says, To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. My goodness. And in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

Yeah, there's a lot in there.

Such a powerful quote. Absolutely. And You know, he, he brings this distinction of that vulnerability isn't a risk of love. It's, it's the same thing as love. You can't have love without vulnerability. Like, they're, they're, they're both required. They're in the same recipe. And that the alternative isn't actually safety. It's, it's all of these— and I love how he describes it— hobbies and little luxuries, avoiding entanglements, you know, those surface-level butterfly relationships. That's, that's similar to what the warlock was described in having in that story. He had no deep meaning meaningful relationships. And then when he described the good things, that it becomes unbreakable, initially it's like, oh, well, yes, that sounds great. And then he goes impenetrable, and that's like, you start to kind of get the sense that maybe this isn't the best play. And then the last word, irredeemable. And just like in the story, it was too far gone. It was so changed, so different, so not human that it destroyed not only him, But her as well. So it becomes at some point like beyond rescue unless some major, major shifts occur. And so to bring it together, both stories talk about how a sealed heart doesn't stay preserved, right? 'Cause like if you're preserving food, you're wanting it to remain unchanged and the same so that you can eat it later, right? But not so, the heart doesn't work that way. So if you lock it up, you cannot preserve it. It changes, it transforms, into something terrible. So let's talk through some of the things that people can do that cause them to justify taking these kinds of actions, right? So for example, like I just mentioned, some people will have these surface relationships. Some personalities are more prone to these than others. Like we've talked about before, the social personality types, depending on the test that you take, like the color code's the easiest one, the yellows, for example, they are very social, they're fun-driven, they're motivated by fun. And so one, Disadvantage, unless they work on it intentionally, is that they can have a lot of shallow relationships, which avoids accountability, but also avoids fulfillment and deep meaningful relationships. But this isn't just personality related. It can be a result of someone who's been hurt, who knows that if they just remain surface level in all of their relationships, that they can't be hurt. Like people who use humor as a defense mechanism when people get too close. Like we all know, right? We've all interacted with people who, when you get too deep, They have some way of kind of bringing it back to some shallow surface, right? Humor is an easy one to point to, 'cause that's a common play that people will just, you ask a serious question and they'll just make a joke and shrug it off and then it's over, right? Now what's crazy is some people can even do this in a marriage. How would you frame that, Ashley?

As a female who is highly independent and likes to do things on my own, you definitely have to work at not closing yourself off to that. It's so easy to ask for help, But then give you 0.5 seconds to get up and do exactly what I asked you to do, right? Like, there's a reason that there's all of those reels and memes about that. But I think, you know, there's also a reason that there's all these other reels and memes about the fact that I used to be this highly independent woman and then my spouse came along and now I get mad when I have to go get my own coffee and I have to drive myself somewhere and I have to put in my own directions and I have to whatever, right? Like, those are just all silly things. But when you allow someone into that space within your heart, you learn that you don't want to do everything by yourself, and you don't want to be the only person to do that, and you want to include them, and you want to continue to build that relationship together. And so yes, that's a funny way to look at it, but you definitely want to not wall off your spouse in that way and try to just do everything on your own, but yet allow them to help you and to help each other, not just one direction or the other.

Absolutely. Another one that we had talked about off camera of how people do this is sometimes people avoid the vulnerable moments. Like, for example, if, if someone who's grieving or having a hard time, sometimes it's, it's too easy to avoid reaching out to them. And the common thing is that people are like, well, I don't know what to say. So I'm just not going to say anything. When in that moment, it's just as powerful to that person who's grieving to know that someone's thinking about them.

Mm-hmm.

And so sometimes if you worry that you're going to say the wrong thing, and you don't want to say something stupid, like anything that starts with at least, Uh, please can that. Absolutely. Then an easy cheat is letting someone know, hey, thinking about you. That's an easy one to do that.

And so, yeah, I think about how many people reached out to us, you know, after, after we lost Sarah, who didn't know Sarah, you know, um, no, no connection whatsoever, but, um, people who just said, hey, I'm really sorry to hear about your friend. I'm thinking about you, praying for you, whatever that, that looked like. Um, it meant a lot for them to acknowledge that loss or for people to go, hey, how are you today? Um, and so that, um, Those conversations were, were so, so nice and so helpful. And to know that like people were thinking about us and that they cared.

Yeah, that was huge. Uh, sometimes people choose less important things than, uh, than human relationships to kind of replace that kind of thing. So I mean, it can be anything like the things that C.S. Lewis talks about. It can be anything from a pet to a hobby, a routine, and these days a screen. You know, we see families that, you know, go out to dinner and then they're all on their cell phones, you know? And so what kind of, what kind of vulnerability and intimacy is going on there while they're breaking bread, you know, on their cell phones? Another one is using cynicism as armor. I think we talked earlier about humor. Cynicism is also another powerful way to kind of detach. This is a little bit more like sophisticated, where it's kind of, kind of cool to be aloof. And avoid that, that connection. And, and, and it's just kind of comes— that's just kind of how people project themselves. And, and then the last one we had talked about is just staying busy. You know, we're all busy, we all got stuff going on, and, uh, that makes it very, very difficult. We noticed that, you know, throughout the years, throughout the decades, being intentional with relationships takes intentionality and, and focus to, to schedule, find time together. And the busier that you get through life, and, you know, when, when people have kids and certain ages that are starting sports, and the parents have to sometimes be in 3 different places at once. It's crazy. And so, so getting that time with them is, is very difficult to find time where all the schedules match up. Sometimes we schedule stuff out a couple months ahead of time with people just so we, we can make sure and have some time with them. And, and I know for you and I, that has been something very valuable throughout the decades as we've grown in our relationships.

Yeah, as, as an adult, we, you know, we always laugh that like, man, it takes us 27 business days to be able to hang out, right? But you have to be intentional with that. And you do have to, um, you know, as you were sitting here talking, I literally thought of a list of like 5 people that I need to text and be like, hey, when can you hang out between now and October? Because that's where we're at, right? But like, I want to make time for those people. I love those people. I want to hear what's going on in their life. I want to invest in them. I want to feed them. I want to— Mm-hmm. Play a game, whatever that looks like, right? And so it does just take intentionality. And I think probably in today's culture, that single piece and then our phones are probably 2 of the biggest things that keep us from connection, because it's so much easier to just pick up your phone and to just swipe and scroll. And it is easy to get busy and not realize like, oh my gosh, I haven't seen that person in 6 months. Right? Unless you're in that same social circle, or unless your kids play the same sports together, um, or they are in some activity together, or you're intentional, you're, you're just not gonna see people. And that can be its own form of hurt. You know, I think about like adult friendships, and like sometimes it can feel so one-sided that you're the only person like reaching out, asking, um, but you have no idea what that other person is struggling with, what they're thinking about. Maybe they just genuinely don't have the capacity, or that's an area that's really not good for them, and they rely on other people for that invite and are always down to say yes, but they rely on other people. And so I think that's probably one of the biggest things when it comes to this, like, don't let your heart be hardened. Like, you're gonna probably be rejected and you may be forgotten from something, but like, ask the questions, be the human to reach out, um, be the one that says, hey, I want to spend time with you, I want to do this. Like, look for ways to do that, or invite people into your home, right? You may have to be the one that's taking that initiative and not always relying on other people. And it can be so easy to do that. And I think we are all so guilty of it. And so it just takes time and intentionality.

Yep. When you were saying that, it made me think of how tempting it is in your head to start keeping that scoreboard of, you know, well, I've asked the last blah, blah, blah times. And just that humility and that grace is so, so important. I had a dear, like one of my oldest friends, the best man at my wedding. He was very honest with me. He's like, hey man, I was a military kid. And when I— it's out of sight, out of mind. It's nothing personal. Like if I don't see someone, I don't think about them. And you know, you can have your opinions about that, but if you're thinking of it in the way that I would recommend that you do, you don't think too deeply about that at all. It's someone admitting to you that it's not their strong suit. Some people don't even just— they don't— they're not even aware of that. And so does it really matter? That's not a question that I can answer for you, but I I know in some of my relationships, the scales sometimes tip the opposite way and it's like, hey, okay, well, if it's a relationship that I think is valuable and one that I want to maintain, then why would it matter who's the one that's— it's just something I want people to think about. And so getting consumed by the head trash associated with things like keeping score, I mean, we can talk about that in a marriage too, how that's not great. I'm also an introvert. And so if I had my natural choice, sometimes I don't want to be around people. And so, and it's because sometimes people are like, oh, I didn't even know you were an introvert. And when I'm around my people, I'm way more extroverted or omnivert or whatever you want to call it. But there are times that I would rather just default to staying home, not going out, even if it is with my people. It's like, you know, can we just stay in? I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to go do anything. And so out of all those things, sometimes it doesn't have to be anything on that list. It can just be, I don't want to go out and do anything, or I don't want to be with anyone, or I don't want to see anyone. And so it's okay to wrestle with any of these things. But like we talked about in these stories, there, I think it is valuable to find out if you've made any personal policies with yourself. That come out of the pain or the hurt that you've experienced? Because if that's the case, then that could be holding you back in your relationships. And I think that is something that would be fruitful work, that if you really start digging into that either by yourself or with a therapist, these are things that they specialize in, in identifying ways, little promises you made to yourself, commitments, policies that you've built, uh, to use some kind of Like work language. These are things that you've decided because you got hurt. People can make these like promises to themselves. Well, I will never allow someone ever again to have this power over me or, or whatever. And this is— this goes right along with, with these stories. So the, you know, the warlock, he's, he's not stupid. He watched people get destroyed by love. And he drew from his perspective a very rational conclusion. He's like, well, grief is real, betrayal is real, and some people are bad people, you know, bad actors out there. Jordan Peterson talks a lot about the power of malevolence on people and how it affects and destroys them. He's like, it's not even, it's not even, you know, hardship and suffering. He's like, those, those two are tough, but sometimes life is just hard.

Mm-hmm.

He's like, malevolence is really what messes people up and causes, causes some Some severe damage because malevolence is when someone else out there is doing something with bad intent. You know, we've all been hurt by someone who's like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to. And they genuinely mean that, they didn't mean to. It was an accident, a misunderstanding, something like that. But let's not be naive. You will run across people, or if you haven't already, you have, in this world that are not— that do not have your best interest at heart. And those are the worst that can cause the things that these stories both talk about, that can cause you to decide, you know what, I'm not gonna allow myself to be hurt again. And so we don't— we wanna be— we wanna recognize those moments and not take those lightly. If you've been severely hurt by someone, this is something that you should do. If it's severe enough, you should do with a professional, because we don't wanna minimize those things and just be like, no, just put yourself back out there. It doesn't matter. There's a reason why you have impulse to protect yourself because you were hurt by a bad actor. So that being said, it goes back to the heart of the question. If we know that the risk is not always worth the reward, we all know the math, if you will, the emotional math. Why would people open up anyway? You know, and we've talked about in previous episodes, you know, the loss we've experienced recently of someone very dear to us. And this is a scenario where, you know, we weren't mistreated or anything like that. It's just the pain that we all feel when we love someone and, and then they're no longer with us and the pain that we feel. And at any stage of this, did I ever think, man, well, that wasn't worth it. But conceivably, the more you, you love someone, the more, the more pain I feel like you could feel when they're not here anymore. So we've talked about that before. And I saw a quote here that grief is the tax on having loved, which is, which is a cool way to put that. I've heard it also said like that grief is a love with nowhere to go. There's a couple other quotes that people told me around that time that I was like, oh, that's, that's, that's really cool. But by Lewis's logic here, it says that the only way to have avoided this pain is to not have loved them altogether. And again, like I said, that is not a trade that I'm up for. Negative.

Yeah.

One of the most beautiful relationships we've ever had. And so, Ashley, you talked a little bit about in previous episodes the journey of getting off of social media. In this day and age, that's another type of connection that people are like, well, I have, you know, I've got 2,000 Facebook friends. How has that journey of you getting off there, has it helped you connect with people in reality versus social? Like, how's that been for you?

Right. You know, it is in our world today, it is so easy to be like, yeah, I'm connected to everybody at my fingertips. I can just reach out, do whatever. But I started to notice that first of all, my algorithm was very much controlling who I was seeing and what I was getting fed. First of all, I— it became more about like ads and political posts and, you know, or whatever crazy mass chaos was going on in the world rather than like the things that were going on in people's lives. And knowing that like, like anybody else, we— most people only post the good, right? Like, they only post the, the shiny, happy, polished version of themselves, not the real thing. And so one of the only ways that you're gonna know what's actually going on in someone's life is to spend time with them, to sit down, to eat a meal together, to reach out, to, to listen to those little nudges that say, hey, you should text that person and check up on them. I found anytime that that is, um, you know, that that person pops into my head, I'm like, you know what, I really need to do that. And later I find out that there's a You know, they're they're going through something, or there was something happening at that moment that they just needed that encouragement. And so, when you build actual deep relationships with people, it changes the way that you look at life. And every time that we have built deep relationships with people, I have found that yes, I'm gonna get hurt. Yes, it is going to be hard. And every time, it is so so worth it. You know, the things that I have learned about myself, about being a friend, about how to take care of other people, about But showing up when it, when it's hard, those things matter, right? You know, I'll, I will never forget the people that showed up at our house the day that we lost your mom. Like our house was flooded with people to take care of us who were here, who showed up, who put their own lives on hold. Right. And what, how different that that day might've been had we not been investing in those people before life got hard. Had we not built and formed a friendship before it got hard so that when it was hard, we weren't carrying that burden alone. We weren't walking down that path alone. You know, our friend Holly had lost her daughter, um, you know, like I think 2 months before your mom, right? Maybe even only a month, maybe 2. No, it was 2. And she showed up that afternoon with a basket of things that she knew that we were going to need because she had just spent the last 2 months living that experience and didn't want us to have to figure all that out on our own. Now, Yeah. You don't get that when you wall yourself off to people, when you put your box, your heart in a box and you say, this isn't worth it. Because I can promise you, even in the midst of the hurt, it unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, is worth it. And I think the older that I get and the longer that friendships go, the more that I see the value in those friendships and in adventures together, in eating food together, spontaneously going to a movie, which we did with Brynn. this last week, right? Like, all of those things are so important, and they bring a level of joy to life that is unmatched. Again, doesn't mean that they're not going to be times of sorrow and pain, but boy, is it better to walk along that path with other people than by yourself.

Yeah, it's like if you, if you get rid of, if you get rid of relationships, you're like, your emotional wavelengths are like dampened.

Mm-hmm.

And you're just, you know, you don't have any highs, you don't have any— like, it's just, uh, from a relational front. And so you're protected from that, you know, certain pains, but all the blessings, uh, are also walled off, no access. And the— I, I like when I pull that little string there where you talked about, you know, when you get prompted to text someone when you're thinking of them, man, the hilarious coincidences that are associated in those moments. It's comical at this point. I made a commitment, I mean, I wanna say 5 or 6 years ago where it was like, anytime I get a prompt like that, I will just go ahead and send the text, make the phone call. It's usually a text. And it's so easy. It doesn't cost you anything. You just send a message like, hey, thinking about you. Are you doing all right? Whatever. And lo and behold, so many times people are like, oh my gosh, like I was, you know, this is what's going on and I can't believe you reached out and whatever. You can overemphasize that, I guess, if you want to, but I think there's something there. You could— that's probably a whole nother episode. But, and we, it's funny because we had talked about in episode 44, um, you know, just our observations of one of the World Cup games, right? And, and just kind of the position that puts you in when you're protecting the win and you're not playing to win, you're, you're playing it safe. And this is like an ultimate relational version of playing it safe, right? Where you're just like, no, I'm gonna protect it. I'm not gonna let anyone in. Uh, and then that's gonna make sure that I'm good.

Mm-hmm.

But are you good? So maybe there's multiple calls to action here that you can, that you can do. So again, if it's, if it's been something in your past, I, if I, if I reference that, you're probably thinking of it right now. If that definitely has a strong influence on your ability to have meaningful relationships, then that, that definitely might be something that would benefit from the help of a professional. And that is work that I've personally done. So I highly encourage you to take that step and do that. For others, if that— if you just notice yourself, you know, using cynicism or humor as a, you know, keeping people at bay, whatever your motivations might be behind that, everyone's a little bit different, but it stems from similar places of woundedness and hurt by others. You know, hurt people hurt people. I would encourage you to look at those things and try to kind of dig and uncover if there's someone that you're keeping, you know, at a comfortable distance If it's someone that you actually care about, you can start making some intentional steps and don't, you know, make the step to close the gap. Don't keep score. You know, if you're the only one taking steps, well, guess what? You're still getting closer. It doesn't matter. You know, you don't have to be like, well, it's 12 steps from me and only— you've actually went backwards. No, I'm just kidding. So, you know, make the call, send the text, ask the real question, give a response that's meaningful and real.

Mm-hmm.

And, and, you know, say the thing, whatever it might be. Vulnerability has a degree of honesty where you have to be open and honest with others. And, and that also opens you up to all sorts of things like rejection and, and those kinds of things, which again can, can touch back on, on wounds of the past. And, and that's just, that's obviously a part of the journey of optimization in, uh, in working through those things. So, so remember, just because a heart is kept safe doesn't mean it will remain a heart forever. Because at some point, if you keep protecting it, it might stop being a heart. And then you've got an entirely different situation on your hands. Thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Remember, growth happens when you take action. So subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into practice. And until next time, remember, daily anything changes everything.