Why is Safety Essential for a Healthy Relationship?
When people think about what makes a relationship exciting or fulfilling, safety might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But in reality, safety is one of the most important foundations for intimacy, trust, and connection. When you feel safe with your partner, you're free to be yourself, express your needs, and build a deeper bond. Safety in a relationship doesn't mean avoiding conflict or discomfort. It means creating an environment where both partners feel secure, valued, and committed to working through challenges together.
What Does Safety Look Like in a Relationship?
Reassurance and Commitment: Safety looks like partners who say, “We’ve got this,” instead of threatening to leave when things get tough. It’s the confidence that you're in it together, no matter what. That doesn’t mean ignoring problems but rather addressing them with a commitment to working through them. When there are outside influences that are impacting your relationship, being able to be there for each other and provide a safe space for them to share with you - discovering together what a ‘safe space’ would look like. Dropping the criticisms, nagging, nitpicking and silent treatment and instead, look at what is underneath those reactions so you can have a more nuanced conversation to resolve the issues.
Willingness to Change and Adapt: Safe partners don’t walk away when things get difficult. They might need a break to cool down, but they commit to coming back and resolving the issue. Safety also means being willing to try different approaches rather than holding rigidly to what hasn’t been working.
Embracing Differences: Safety is not about trying to change your partner to fit your mould. When you try to make your partner more like you, you strip away the uniqueness that drew you to them in the first place (and that is a recipe for no desire - if you are the same, there is no chemistry!). Instead, safety is about appreciating each other’s differences, learning to find ways to make your partner feel special for who they are rather than making them wrong for it, and making the relationship more important than the need to be right.
Emotional Support: Creating safety means showing curiosity about your partner's perspective, asking questions to understand how they feel, and truly listening. It's making your partner feel important, especially when emotions run high. Expressing love regularly in ways your partner feels it—whether through acts of service, physical touch, or quality time—nurtures this emotional safety. Finding out what emotional support means to your partner - what makes it easier for them to feel safe with you? It is likely to be different from you.
Creating Time Together: Setting aside regular time for each other, even if it’s just for 10 minutes a day to begin with, fosters safety. Whether it’s staying in contact when one of you is away, setting up time for intimacy, or just checking in daily, these actions show that the relationship matters.
Turning towards each other instead of turning away: This strengthens your bond. For example, instead of retreating into work or distractions, you make the effort to reconnect when things feel off. Or when your partner complains about something, you take the time to listen and find out what is really underneath their complaint rather than your usual ‘do we have to go through this again?’ or ‘you are always complaining’ or ‘you never listen’. If your partner suggests something, welcome the suggestion and use it to build on a discussion of ideas to get to a solution that works. Make your partner matter and help them feel important to you.
The Opposite of Safety: Uncertainty
When safety is lacking in a relationship, the survival part of your nervous system gets triggered, creating doubt, fear, and anxiety. You might find yourself questioning whether your partner is fully committed, whether your emotions are valid, or if the relationship is even worth continuing. This uncertainty can lead to loneliness, even when you're physically together.
The need for safety is a basic human need. But how we meet this need varies. Some people find safety in controlling situations or being right, while others might shut down and withdraw. These coping mechanisms might provide temporary relief, but they come at the expense of long-term connection and intimacy. If you shut down or try to control your partner, you lose the opportunity for true intimacy, which, let’s face it, is likely to be one of the main reasons you wanted an intimate relationship in the first place!
Balancing Safety and Connection
It’s important to balance the need for certainty and safety with the need for variety, love, feeling valued and connection. If you try to meet your need for safety by making your partner more like you, you risk losing the person you fell in love with. They won’t be their authentic self, and the relationship will feel strained. Accepting your partner’s differences and finding ways to work through them, rather than forcing them to change, creates lasting safety and connection. And any change you want can only start with yourself.
How to Cultivate Safety in Your Relationship
Create Sacred Time: Have regular conversations about your dreams, goals, and plans. Support each other’s personal growth, and back each other up. If you have children, make sure you carve out time for just the two of you, leaving aside the litany of logistics that need to be handled. If you work together, make sure to set aside non-work time to focus on your relationship. When work and life blur together, it’s easy for the relationship to feel lost.
Manage Emotions with Care: If you’re someone who experiences emotions intensely, learning to express them without overwhelming your partner is crucial. It’s not about suppressing your emotions but finding healthier ways to deal with them. On the other hand, if you’re a more subtle experiencer of emotions, it’s important to find ways to handle your partner’s emotional expression without shutting down, and learning to open up more about your own experiences. Both partners should feel safe expressing themselves without fear of judgement or rejection.
Respect Emotional Differences: Not pushing your partner to express emotions the same way you do is another way to create safety. Understand their process and work together to build a safe space where both thoughts and feelings can be shared freely.
Safety is Sexy
When both partners feel safe, they can relax into the relationship, which opens the door to deeper emotional and physical intimacy. Safety doesn’t mean avoiding all conflict; it means knowing you’ll handle challenges as a team. This kind of security allows you to be more vulnerable, which is essential for intimacy and desire.
It’s important to remember that personal safety must never be compromised. If you are in an abusive relationship, your physical and emotional safety should come first, and it’s crucial to get support from professionals - don’t wait another day!
But in a healthy relationship, safety is sexy. It’s about both partners feeling secure, valued, and willing to grow together. Building safety in your relationship is the key to long-term happiness, trust, connection, desire and 'sexy'.
John and Jane's Story: A Path to Safety in Relationships
When I think about the importance of safety in a relationship, I’m reminded of John and Jane (names changed), a couple who represent many of the couples I support in my work. They love each other, but they are stuck in a painful cycle of lack or miscommunication and unmet needs.
Jane feels trapped. She has dreams for their relationship, but John doesn’t seem to value them. He is content with how things are and can’t understand why she keeps bringing up her dissatisfaction. He has a kind of "why fix what isn’t broken?” attitude. But to Jane, things are far from okay. She constantly feels like she has to change to avoid triggering John's anger. She avoids speaking up for fear of upsetting him, and as a result, she feels like she is losing herself, and wonders how she can possibly continue like this into the future. She knows she doesn’t want to stay in a relationship where she felt her needs are being ignored or minimised.
John, on the other hand, doesn’t ‘see’ what all the fuss is about. He doesn’t understand why Jane is so emotional, why she needs to talk so much about her feelings and why she is making a big deal out of everything. He wants her to be more like him—to be less emotional, to learn to "calm down." When Jane starts giving ultimatums and threatening to leave, John becomes worried. But instead of addressing his fears, he shuts down and retreats further into distractions like technology, trying to keep things calm in his world, and upping his demands that she just learn to accept what they have.
Their relationship is at a breaking point.
Jane doesn’t want to leave, but she feels like she might have no other choice. In reality, her threats aren’t about abandoning the relationship—they are a desperate plea for change. John, meanwhile, sees her ultimatums as confirmation that he can’t make her happy and that what she wants is too much for him. Each time she mentions leaving, his anxiety grows, but he still can’t bring himself to engage in the emotional conversations she needs. Instead, he insists that nothing is wrong, and that if Jane would just change, everything would be fine.
What they need is a return to safety.
Jane needs to stop threatening to leave and start asking John for collaboration and partnership. And John needs to recognise that trying to mould Jane into someone who needs less from him is killing their connection. True safety would come from learning to listen to each other, appreciating their differences, and working together instead of pulling apart.
Through our work together, John begins to see that by giving Jane the emotional security she needs, he can gain more of what he wants too—his own and her happiness, closeness, intimacy and his own feeling of peace and autonomy. Jane learns to speak her truth without feeling like she has to twist herself into knots to keep the peace. She starts expressing her needs in a way that invites John in, rather than triggering his fears.
They find new ways to spend time together, simply enjoying each other’s company, and openly appreciating each other for what they bring to the relationship and each other. More importantly, they learn how to communicate, not by shutting down or avoiding tough conversations, but by staying engaged, even when things are hard. As they learn to appreciate each other’s differences instead of judging them, their relationship begins to shift.
John and Jane's story is a reminder that relationships require collaboration. It's not about one person getting their way while the other sacrifices who they are, nor is it about both having to do things the same. It’s about two people working together, both wanting the other to feel valued and happy in their own unique way.
When both partners feel safe—emotionally, physically, and mentally—they can experience new levels of connection, love, and intimacy. It’s a journey, but it’s one worth taking. Because in the end, safety isn’t just the foundation of a healthy relationship—it’s part of what makes it truly fulfilling.
So, ask yourself, are you creating safety in your relationship? If not, what small steps can you take to build it, for both of you?
I'm Sharlene Halbert, 'I Do' and Beyond Relationship and Intimacy Coach, supporting couples like you who want their relationship to reflect the love they feel for each other.
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