Real vulnerability requires risk. This means I have to be open to feedback, discussion, and challenge.
Meetings are an artificial environment. When we share, we get to broadcast, but feedback, discussion, and challenge are taboo. Sharing candidly is not sharing vulnerably. It's public performance and certainly has value, but vulnerability it's not.
Real vulnerability is saying the same things after a meeting to a sponsor or confidante and inviting feedback, discussion, and challenge.
It's curious how meetings can include highly emotionally charged disclosures of difficulty, despair, drama, confusion, conflict, etc., but the interchange at fellowship at the restaurant after the meeting consists largely or solely in high octane banter with guarded avoidance of discussion of any of the matters actually disclosed. It can feel like one is with an entirely different group of people.
In the meeting, intimacy is blocked because communication is one way. At fellowship, intimacy is blocked because communication is channeled to superficial topics or contentless banter. This can be highly disconcerting and produce a doubly empty experience.
This can incidentally be why people can come away from meetings feeling empty: there is the appearance of closeness, both in and after the meeting, but with no substance.
I try and have real conversations at fellowship and genuinely connect on matters of concern.