Need permission to feel safe in your relationship?

Safety in many kinds of relationships is nothing to take for granted.  But what does relational safety entail?

It means you can say “no” and that your “no” will be respected, as they say, for the full sentence it is. No means no.  No is a full sentence.

It means feeling like you can disagree, and likewise that your right to view things differently will be respected.  Imagine someone saying, “It’s okay that you disagree.  I appreciate your honesty.  And you have every right to hold your view, and actually it brings value to our dialogue.”

It means not feeling pressured into doing what doesn’t seem right to you.  Sometimes we know that what we’ve being requested (or told) to do isn’t right, and at the very least we would like to be able to discuss it.  If we can’t discuss these issues and feel forced to proceed, that’s a red flag.  Anyone who forces action is being anti-relational at best, abusive at worst.

It means having the space anyone deserves and needs, in order to be one’s own person—the best of relationships are shared when two are their own persons.  Yes, two autonomous beings make functional relationships happen, because they hold their own and allow the other person their right to be them.

Now, if we need to ask permission to feel safe in our (or a) relationship, we might ask why.

Actually, it’s common in my experience of counselling that even in otherwise healthy relationships, partners don’t always feel unequivocally safe, but they can at least tell their partner what they’re feeling, and their partner will usually respond in loving ways—despite perhaps being emotionally unhinged—that re-create the safety desired.

Perhaps we can flip this on its end and discuss the offer a partner can make: “I give you permission to tell me whenever you’re feeling unsafe, and I promise to you that I will give you space while I sort myself out.  But I also won’t use that as excuse to withdraw indefinitely or to be withdrawn when I return.”

This merely puts to words what many partners feel from time to time, and it’s not always women who feel this way.  But a majority of the time it is, and it would be fair to say from my experience that women partners feel a more primal sense of fear when their safety and security needs are unacknowledged and go unmet.

How many relationships could be utterly transformed if a partner had permission to say, “What you’re doing right now is making me feel scared/uncomfortable, and I don’t like it, please give me some space,” and for that request to be honoured?

I guess till now in this article there’s been a distinct slant on family or marriage relationships.  But these nuances of safety go to every relationship, and particularly workplace relationships between bosses and workers, co-workers, etc.  They extend to every rapport we might have.

We may even feel unsafe in a relationship where there is a continual goading or ridiculing.  I’ve seen this a lot: “Hey, don’t take offence, I was only joking [unsaid: you baby!]”  Or, it’s, “Have you done what I told you to do yet?  What’s taking you so long?”

There are myriad relationships that falls short of giving us freedom to be as we are.

We all have the right to feel safe in our relationships, where we can truly be ourselves, and we don’t have to constantly feel we need to be on our guard.

Isn’t it beautiful when we can be in a community of these kinds of relationships?