Is Your Relationship Emotionally Safe?

Can you go to your spouse when you feel scared or vulnerable? Does your spouse feel comfortable sharing his/her problems with you? Do you and your spouse not judge each other at every incident? The emotional security of your relationship is what makes the relationship content. If you do not hesitate a moment before declaring your spouse a loser, your relationship is in trouble.

Barbi Pecenco Kolski, a Marriage and Family Therapist Intern, discusses emotional safety in her article titled ‘The Impact of Shame in Relationships‘. She brings forward examples from her own life and the ones she has observed around. Kolski writes:

It is very important that we feel emotionally safe in our relationships. We cannot possibly feel that way when our partner consistently sends us shaming messages that explicitly or implicitly imply that we are somehow not OK.

The constant need to defend yourself will make your relationship with your spouse sour. Marriage is meant to connect two people emotionally like no other. If you don’t feel secure emotionally in your marriage, you are likely to be affected – adversely – in other spheres of life as well.

On the other hand, if you are the one who is in the habit of shaming your partner, you have got to stop doing that at once. Kolski suggests a four-step approach to control the urge to shame your spouse.

Step1 -figure out what you are feeling in the situation (you may feel angry that your partner lost their job, but is that your MOST primary feeling? In this case, you likely feel scared about an uncertain future, so go with that. A scared partner is easier for most of us to deal with than an angry one)
Step 2 – figure out what your needs are in the situation (we need money to survive/I need to know you are willing to do what it takes to contribute positively to this situation)
Step 3 – figure out the strategy to get the needs met (unemployment/get a new job)
Step 4- Ask your partner if they are willing to help you get your need met (Are you willing to look for a new job immediately or file for unemployment or employ some other reasonable solution?)

Being on your spouse’s side when something goes wrong and finding out a feasible solution together is likely to make you feel better than constantly nagging him/her for doing it all wrong. If you wouldn’t like your spouse to do that to you, don’t do that to him/her.