What do you think of when you think of being powerful? Being Strong? Stubborn? Aggressive? Arrogant?

If these words come to mind, you are in line with cultural assumptions. What may not have jumped to mind is “vulnerability.”

But I’m here to argue vulnerability is a greater source of power than any of those other qualities in human interactions. Here’s why.

In my teens and early twenties, I thought a lot about what it took to be cool. It seemed like there was a subset of people who definitely had it. People who were cool seemed confident. People wanted to be associated with them. People wanted to be like them.

One thing I thought I knew for sure, though: I wasn’t cool.

I resented the cool kids. I judged them, while secretly wanting to be one of them. I envied their seeming ability to do what they wanted, and get away with it. And to still have people want to be friends with them. I wanted the kind of community they seemed to have.

Being simultaneously insecure and judgmental was not getting me what I wanted. I struggled through high school, college, and my twenties, never seeming to find my tribe. I decided it was just that no one valued what I valued, and the problem was that very few people were ever going to be like me and care about the things I cared about.

It wasn’t until years later that I came to a realization. Being cool wasn’t about acting or looking a certain way. There were jocks who seemed cool. Hipsters who seemed cool. Even nerds were showing up as cool. There didn’t seem to be any consistent formula for having it.

At some point, I started to involve myself in workshops where we were asked to reveal things about ourselves that we had, up to then, kept hidden. We were asked to reveal what was really going on inside ourselves. At first, I met these situations with unabashed terror. After all, I’d made a lifestyle out of trying to present a face to the world that I thought would be acceptable. It started in my family of origin, where I tried to figure out what everyone else wanted and to be like that. But inside, I was resentful about having to pretend, even when I didn’t realize I was being resentful. And, I was terrified of being found out. So I buried my own authenticity deep down, and got so good at pretending to be something I thought I should be that I didn’t even remember who I was. I had lost access. But the resentment, judgment and insecurity continued to operate, hidden (I thought), but boiling way beneath the surface.

Let me tell you about those hidden aspects of ourselves. We may believe we have them hidden away perfectly. But I firmly believe that people feel them. They may not even know consciously that they feel them. But they are impacted by them.

Eventually, I was driven by desperation–desperation for a way out of my sense of loneliness, for real connection to others–to start doing what the workshops I was participating in asked of me: to reveal my real thoughts, feelings and actions to others in the group. You see, I was experiencing what happened when others seemed to be being real in this way: there was an immediate acceptance, respect, even reverence, that came toward them from others. Even when what they were revealing might not have seemed, out of context, to be socially acceptable.

Eventually, I started to do the math. Being cool, ultimately, was about being authentic. It was about showing people who you really are and what you really think. In other words, it is about being willing to be vulnerable.

People are drawn to and respect authenticity because they know they can trust what they are seeing and hearing from an authentic person. Authentic people occur as confident, because they are not pretending to be something they are not in order to be accepted. They simultaneously appear humble, because they are not trying to appear perfect. They allow their flaws to be seen.

This is an absolute must when it comes to intimate relationships. Intimacy is impossible without trust, and trust is impossible without honesty and vulnerability. Pretending to be something you are not will inevitably cause you to feel covert resentment and shame at having to hide yourself. And the trust that comes from being authentic far outweighs any discomfort that can arise from speaking your truth honestly.

Talk to your intimate partner about how the two of you can be more vulnerable with each other. Come up with ground rules around how you will respond to each others’ vulnerability. You will find that instilling this honesty and authenticity greatly uplevels your feelings of intimacy.

Being authentic is cool and attractive. Try it out in your closest relationships!