PART ONE)
If your partner doesn't feel deeply emotionally SAFE with you (it’s way more common than you‘d think!), you will have a nearly impossible time making progress with how lovingly he treats you, and getting him to show up as the real partner in life you want.
His emotional safety is a TOP ingredient to a great loving relationship between you.
Skip being a safe space for him, and you will get nowhere nearer to the supportive intimacy you want.
This was one of the hardest things for me to learn, and it’s STILL sometimes easy to forget. Especially when I am upset about something my man has done.
But your partner's emotional safety is the doorway to the love, intimacy, and full partnership you want with him.
(And by safety I do no not mean comfort. I mean lack of shame, lack of feeling he’s falling short or not up to snuff, and lack of fear of being judged for being himself with you).
What contributes to a sense of emotional safety for him in your relationship?
Depends on the guy. But almost always: your unrestricted acceptance of his humanness, and when you acknowledge him for the things you like about him, and when you communicate from self-ownership and vulnerability, instead of complaint or criticism and blame. (Lots more too.)
And number 1 thing that naturally best offers all that to him? YOUR OWN EMOTIONAL SAFETY
The wild thing is that so long as YOU aren’t feeling emotionally safe yourself, you won't be able to provide a safe space for him. And if you are feeling he’s not loving you well, not showing up for you as he should, or that you aren’t as important to him as you should be in a marriage, you likely won’t feel emotionally safe!
So it seems like a catch 22? Who's going to seek out that safety first? Because to improve your marriage at least one of you has to.
Well, either of you can be the initiator of opening that door to a safe, and therefore deeply loving intimate relationship.
But since you are the only one who can control what YOU do, and because developing emotional safety is something that will brighten and fortify every part of your life, you may as well reap the benefits of being the one to invite that deep nourishing, love-enlivening SAFETY into your relationship, starting right inside of you.
As you feel safer and safer with yourself, you will be safer and safer for HIM.
And he will then BEST be able to love you in the ways you MOST love to FEEL LOVED.
So if you want the sweetness and wild joy of a deeply loving marriage, grow YOUR OWN sense of internal safety, instead of waiting for your partner to provide it.
PART TWO) Start with feeling emotionally safe yourself
YOU feeling safe is a prerequisite for real love and being a collaborative connected team in life with your spouse. If you want your relationship to be better, and you tend to not feel a steady internal sense of emotional safety, start there.
When I don't feel safe, I claw and hiss like a cat, or pull back into my shell like a turtle.
This is by design. For humans, as with all animals, our default-setting is self-protection—vigilantly making sure our survival is not threatened.
But when we are always watching out for threats, we are on the defensive and walled-off.
Love only lives in openness. Softness.
Safety.
For sensitive people, this can present an especially tricky challenge. Because we are that part of our species wired to be hyper-vigilant of danger— so as to help us survive.
Our nervous systems are more alert. We tend to be hyper-aware of what may be lurking in the bushes. Feeling SAFE doesn't come so naturally.
On top of that, we humans tend to think feeling safe is dependent on the environment that we’re in:
How the people around us are treating us.
What words our partner is saying to us.
Whether he grimaces or smiles when we tell him something vulnerable.
We believe our safety comes from outside of us.
This is often true for physical safety, but emotional safety is another story.A sense of emotional safety actually comes from what’s going on INSIDE us. From:
developing trust in yourself to not overreact to your own feelings and handle whatever comes up.
growing your capacity to feel safe to feel and viscerally knowing that no feeling that you have is too difficult for you to experience. (Here’s a short video to give you a taste this piece)
learning to perceive situations in a way that doesn’t create or add to internal turmoil.
learning to not expect your spouse to be the steady source of your happiness, and instead experiencing the fact that you are the source of your happiness, and living from there more and more.
It comes learning how to be your own reliable source of unconditional acceptance, support, nourishment, and kindness, and growing your knowing that you are worthy and lovable no matter what he says or does.
It comes from being confident you will always lovingly have your own back 100%.
This is all LEARNED.
Once we learn how to trust ourselves to feel safe—once we can rely on our own sense of resilience— then it’s like a doorway inside us opens to being able to love—and to feeling LOVED— so much more fully.
And like I shared above, it is from here that your partner will be so much more available for the deep intimacy you want, and so much more on board with making the loving changes you want to see in your marriage.
I coach my clients to be able to do all this deeply when they work with me in Treasured. And it changes EVERYTHING for them and their relationship. Why wait any longer to do the same?
P.S. What does it feel like when you’ve developed emotional safety?
It’s the aahh of a soft settling into your own bones. It’s the sigh of deeply resting into yourself.
It's the sweetness of knowing you have someone (you) to alway turn to no matter what, that you are ALWAYS supported.
It's feeling a siege of strong hot emotion, but the total trust it’s just passing discomfort, and you can handle it no problem.
It's the courage (bc you have strong loving arms to fall back into if you stumble) to risk being misunderstood, to say the hard but true thing, to be more vulnerable even if it’s scary, to put your foot down bc you know it’s the right thing for you and the relationship.
It's the capacity to effortlessly feel your own heart swell with deep love for the person you most want to love: your partner.
It’s security in the deepest sense of the word.