While there are many items that contribute to relationship happiness, trust and safety are the foundation of a relationship. When trust and safety aren’t present, it’s impossible to having a healthy and satisfying relationship.
And a relationship can only be healthy and safe if both partners are emotionally healthy and safe.
If you’re unsatisfied in your relationship, or worse, if your relationship is creating unhappiness or pain, it’s important to assess your partner. You may be in a relationship with a good person who you’re incompatible with. But you could be in a relationship with someone who is unsafe.
Our choice of a partner is one of the most important choices we will ever make, as it greatly influences our lives and well-being. Being in a relationship with an unsafe person is detrimental to both our emotional and physical health.
Ask these five questions to determine if your partner is emotionally safe.
Can They Regulate Their Emotions?
When someone can’t regulate their emotions, their emotions, as opposed to their values, drive their behaviors. Emotional dysregulation is the driving force behind destructive behaviors, including abusive, addictive, and numbing behaviors. People who can’t regulate their emotions have fragile moods that frequently change based on external circumstances.
These types of people will bring chaos and pain into your life.
When someone enters a state of emotional dysregulation, they become very self-focused and lose the ability to see their partner as a human with their own needs. They aren’t able to see your perspective, nor are they interested in trying to see it.
They may become reactive and overtly attack you. They may make subtle digs and covertly put you down. They may act cold, withdrawal, and stonewall. They may fall into their addictions by overworking, drinking excessively, or numbing out with electronics or distractors.
An emotionally regulated person will still have flaws and may occasionally lose their temper or withdrawal. But an emotionally regulated person will take responsibility for their behavior. They will not create reoccurring cycles of volatility in a relationship. They will listen to and attempt to understand their partner’s perspective, even if they don’t agree with it.
Someone who can’t emotionally regulate is not capable of being a safe partner. They can’t be present with themselves or with you. They can’t truly see or hear you.
You may feel lonelier in this relationship than you would feel if you were actually alone.
They often have moments where they are a good, or possibly a great, partner. But this never lasts. Because they lack the ability to self-regulate, they will continually fall back into harmful behaviors driven by emotional dysregulation.
This is very painful for the other partner, as they will often stay in the relationship with hopes that one day their partner will forever be the great partner and not return to their destructive behaviors.
This is an unsafe dynamic that erodes the foundation of the relationship and damages the hopeful partner.
Anyone can be a good partner sometimes. But a truly good partner doesn’t create an emotional relationship rollercoaster.
How Do They Resolve Conflict?
If you’ve ever been to couples counseling, you know that one of the first topics the counselor discusses is healthy communication. The way couples communicate, particularly during conflict, is critical to the health and safety of the relationship.
In a healthy relationship, partners attack the conflict. In an unhealthy relationship, partners attack each other.
If your partner addresses conflict by attacking you, they are emotionally unsafe.
People can fall into unhealthy communication habits over time, not realizing their habits are unhealthy and destructive. And it takes time and effort to change bad habits. But a safe person will make the effort to change their communication patterns, once they realize their behaviors are unhealthy. They may stumble, but over time they will gradually get better and will sustain the new healthy communication patterns.
An unsafe person may make an initial attempt to change communication patterns, but they will not be able to sustain the changed behavior. Just like they do with their emotional dysregulation, they may have periods of good communication followed by periods of destructive communication.
Are They Whole Outside of a Relationship?
There’s a scene in the movie, Jerry Maguire, where Renée Zellweger tells Tom Cruise, “You complete me.” Meant to be oh so beautifully romantic, this is a recipe for relationship disaster.
While there are needs that can only be met within a relationship, there are needs people often try to meet through a relationship that they should be meeting themselves.
If someone doesn’t feel happy and whole outside of a relationship, theywill never be able to sustain feeling happy inside of a relationship. While a partner can add to another’s happiness, a partner is not responsible for creating happiness in the other person.
When a person lacks internal wholeness, they abdicate their personal responsibility to others, making their partner responsible for needs the partner isn’t responsible for.
Healthy relationships are interdependent, not dependent. If you imagine a pie, there are slices for work, family, friendships, hobbies, health, etc. A relationship is one slice of the pie.
A whole person is emotionally regulated and resilient. They are capable of meeting another’s needs because they take responsibility for meeting their own needs.
Someone who abdicates responsibility for their own needs isn’t capable of meeting the needs of another. Ultimately, the relationship is transactional to them, because they will objectify their partner and see them as a function, instead of a separate person with their own needs.
They will constantly seek attention, approval and validation to fill the empty hole inside of them, since they’re incapable of filling it themselves. They will make their partner responsible for filling this hole.
Another person isn’t capable of creating wholeness within someone — this is an inside job. When the responsibility for wholeness is abdicated, the abdicating partner will never feel satisfied in a relationship.
At their core, they’re insecure. They may become jealous, clingy, and controlling. Alternatively, they become neglectful, as they use addictive and numbing behaviors in an attempt to fill the emptiness inside of them.
Do They Have Integrity?
Can you ever feel safe with someone who you can’t fully trust? Are little white lies a little blip you can easily ignore because everyone tells white lies sometimes? Or are they indicative of someone’s willingness to twist and bend the truth to get what they want?
Integrity can’t be compartmentalized. Someone who has integrity has it within all areas of their life.
If someone can rationalize cheating on their taxes, they can rationalize cheating on you.
The trunk of a 20-year-old oak tree won’t bend, no matter which way you try to push it. However, the trunk of a sapling won’t just bend to the left, it will bend any way you push it.
Good character is good character. It’s solid through and through. Someone with good character doesn’t lie, cheat, or manipulate in any area of its life because that’s not who they are.
Someone who compromises their integrity in any way is not a safe person.
Do They Have Strong Boundaries?
A byproduct of integrity is having strong boundaries. Our boundaries protect our time, energy, possessions, resources, and relationships. They set the bar for the behaviors we will and won’t accept.
Boundaries are embodied, not reactive. This means that boundaries are an empowered force that emanates out of someone calmly and clearly. Good boundaries are strong, but they do not lash out unless the person is in danger. Boundaries do not attack or control.
Boundaries are also not selfish or neglectful. They’re not an excuse to ignore a partner’s needs. Boundaries exist to create safety.
Someone with strong boundaries won’t cross lines. You know you can trust them, as embodied within their boundaries are their values. There’s no game playing, manipulation, or truth twisting.
Boundaries respect each person as a sovereign individual. Therefore, someone with strong boundaries will respect another person’s boundaries.
Someone without strong boundaries will feel threatened by another person’s boundaries and will often disrespect the other’s boundaries.
Someone with strong boundaries will disengage from disrespectful behavior, possibility ending relationships and/or pulling away from disrespectful people, from a desire to protect themselves, their well-being, and their relationships.
Someone without strong boundaries with become reactive and contribute to drama and dysfunctional relationship dynamics.
People who don’t have strong boundaries don’t like it when people do, as they benefit from others having a lack of boundaries. Someone who lacks boundaries opens themselves to being used, financially, emotionally, or physically. Someone who lacks boundaries is also okay with using other people and crossing lines.
How Do You Really Know If Someone Is Safe?
Under all the above questions is a core question:
Does this person protect my heart?
You need to trust, if a temptation arises, will this person protect my heart? You need to trust, if we get into a fight, will this person protect my heart?
It takes time to determine if someone is safe, as you need to observe them in a variety of situations. When things are going well and feel easy, the person may seem safe. They may appear to be a good partner.
But life doesn’t always feel good and easy. What happens then?
Ask yourself: When things get hard or uncomfortable, does this person protect my heart?
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
