We examined what a safe marriage might look or sound like; and what skills we can learn and practice to help that most important relationship in our lives. What if we are going to thrive? Our marriages or other close relationships must remain a safe environment. We aren’t talking about physical, but emotional and relational safety.
Evaluate Your Marriage
If you haven’t done this yet, evaluate how your marriage stacks up to what we said emotional and relational safety sounds like. Such as:
- My feelings, ideas, and concerns matter to my spouse
- We honor one another.
- Anger is not out of control.
- I don’t feel judged but understood.
Discover together what you do, or don’t do that makes your partner, and even yourself feel unsafe!
The National Institute of Marriage has shown there are some very real steps you can take to creating a safer relationship starting today!
Steps to Safety…
- Honor your partner as the valuable, treasured, person that he or she is. Remember, honor is a choice. Even when you don’t feel like it, or feel like the other person deserves it, you can always choose to honor someone. Honor means to regard someone with respect. You can choose to regard someone with respect, even if they haven’t earned that respect.
- Suspend judgment. Negativity and criticism are the quickest way to tank vulnerability and authentic sharing. Meet your spouse with compassion and understanding instead. There’s an extremely wise word that says when we judge others we really are condemning ourselves. Because we do the very same thing. The things we judge we are usually seeing in ourselves.
- Value differences. Are there things about your partner that are going to bother you? Yes, most definitely. But differences can work FOR your relationship when you learn to value them. Differences are generally not about right and wrong! They are about our preferences, perceptions, likes and dislikes, and even personalities. We are all unique and not created the same. Learn to accept differences; to live with our personal uniqueness.
- Be trustworthy. When we are being trustworthy we demonstrate by our words and actions that we recognize and respect the worth and vulnerability of our partner. To the extent that you treat the person as precious and irreplaceable, you are trustworthy. And to the extent that you don’t, you are not. Trust is NOT earned once and for all in a marriage. It must be continually established and maintained.
- Respect Boundaries. You cannot bulldoze boundaries in the name of vulnerability and connection. While these are steps that you can start enacting today, creating safety is still a process. Ignoring your partner’s or even your own boundaries will counteract the good work you are doing.
Better Partners
Safety is the key ingredient in the development of a closely connected marriage. The safer our marriage, the better partners we are. We were created to be open and intimate with one another. Safety allows us to live out that kind of life. Openness and intimacy are the by-products of trust and safety. If you and I can focus on creating a safe environment for both our spouse and ourselves, openness and intimacy will naturally occur. And when our hearts are open, our whole lives open up and we will find ourselves truly thriving.
What do you think? Do you have a safe relationship? Send us a quick email and let us know one thing that needs to be better in your marriage. Mike@MikeandSusanDawson.com