What To Do When Your Marriage Lacks Emotional Safety

Married, yet hiding from your spouse. Such is life when you don’t feel emotional safety in your marriage. There are parts of you, your personality, dreams, feelings, or thoughts, locked inside, unavailable to your spouse. Exposing them puts you at risk for rejection, criticism, or neglect. You don’t wanna live like this anymore. You want the freedom to be your whole self – vulnerable, imperfect, flawed, and all.

So what do you do?

Emotional Safety in Marriage: Take A Look At Yourself

When it comes to emotional safety, there are two people to look at: you and your spouse. Let’s start with the easy person to look at first – you. (I know, it’s easier to look at your spouse, but you know you. You’ve been with you all your life.)

Sometimes we have our own personal barriers to being emotionally safe with others, even in marriage.

• Traumatic event(s) in our past
• Personal insecurities
• The false belief that you and your spouse should always agree
• Personal control issues
• Past relationship experiences

Without understanding how your past experiences and current mindset may affect your ability to be totally open with someone, these barriers can hold you captive. They can cause you to go into “self-protective mode” anytime you feel challenged or feel vulnerable.

1. Ask yourself what you may be fearful of.
2. Talk to a friend or possibly a professional counselor.
3. Ask your spouse for help. 
4. Be honest with yourself and forgive yourself.
5. Speak the truth about you to yourself. Your past doesn’t have to determine your future or define you.

Processing what holds you back from feeling emotional safety can strip the past and any insecurities or control issues of their power to sabotage your relationship.

Emotional Safety In Marriage: Take A Look At Your Spouse

Now let’s look at the second person in this equation – your spouse. When they make you feel a lack of emotional safety for you, what do you do? 

1. Name what makes you feel a lack of emotional safety.

Be aware of what you feel makes it unsafe. Do you feel talked down to, dismissed, inferior, etc.? It might be worth writing your feelings down before you talk.

2. Create an opportunity to talk.

Set aside a non-threatening time to discuss emotional safety with your spouse. Without attacking or accusing (because you want to be an emotionally safe person, too), ask…

• “What does emotional safety in our marriage mean to you?” Obviously, this may not be something your spouse has thought much about. Still, it’s a worthwhile conversation to have. A good follow up question is, 
• “What causes you to feel emotionally unsafe?” After your spouse shares, share your answers to those questions and go from there.

3. Agree on what emotional safety is.

Work toward agreeing about what emotional safety is and why it’s a good thing. (Read 4 Things to Know About Emotional Safety to learn more.) Discuss questions like,

• “What makes you feel safest, most free to be yourself, and willing to be totally transparent or vulnerable?”
• “What makes you shut down and go into protection mode?

Listening to each other can help you both understand how to create a safe environment. 

Affirm what you like about each other. Remind yourselves why you wanted to marry each other. Take turns sharing the strengths each brings to the marriage. Knowing that your spouse likes you for you increases emotional safety. 

Model

You’ve probably heard the golden rule: “Do to others as you’d have them do to you.” It’s also true in marriage. Sometimes others are emotionally unsafe because they need to self-protect. Listen to your spouse. Foster an environment where they can be vulnerable and their full selves. 

Revisit

This is not an issue you’ll address only once. (If so, consider yourself one of the lucky ones.) Come up with code words to communicate when your spouse is doing something to make you feel unsafe. Freely acknowledge if you’re struggling because of your own issues. (Full disclosure: I do this with my wife. Sometimes I can go into conflict-prevention, self-protection mode, where I don’t share my full thoughts and beliefs because I know my spouse will disagree. That’s a “me” issue, not a spouse issue. Acknowledging it helps me name it and work through it.)

Not every spouse will embrace talking about being emotionally safe. At times, contacting a marriage counselor is the best route. If and when you talk about it, be prepared for the rewards of working through marriage challenges; it will build trust, resiliency, and deep commitment. Who doesn’t want that for their marriage?

Other helpful resources:

• How to Be An Emotionally Safe Spouse
• 7 Ways to Increase Trust in Marriage
• How to Communicate Better With Your Spouse
• Understand Your Spouse & Deepen Your Relationship