What is the secret ingredient for a loving lasting relationship?
Emotional safety.
Emotional safety is the foundation for a loving and healthy relationship. It’s about establishing trust with another person and feeling safe enough to be open and vulnerable with them.
Emotional safety is feeling secure enough to truly express yourself with someone and show up as your most authentic self.
As a result, feelings of connection and aliveness will flourish between you and your partner.
Sounds easy, no?! But it’s not!
If you grew up in a family where some of your traits were rejected or criticized, you learned that you need to hide part of yourself to be loved.
For example: If your parents hugged you only when you achieved good grades, you learned that you can be loved only when you succeed.
Or if when you cried your care givers tolled you to stop and said that no one wants to play with a sad girl, you learned that you cannot be loved if you show weakness.
A common mistake:
Many people believe that being able to show your authentic self means that you can criticize, put down, insult, and disregard your partner. They, in return, will still be required to love you , because they are supposed to accept you the way you are .
This is a huge mistake!
Maybe they will still love you, but emotional safety will not be able to develop in the space between you. Each of you will feel that the space between is dangerous and that you need to attack or disconnect to defend your self’s.
So how do you develop safety in a relationship?
Replace criticism with compliments
It's easy to think that criticism is a constructive process — one member of a relationship feels that they know the other in and out, and in making "suggestions" for how the other might change or improve, they're merely helping the other overcome their flaws and deficiencies. The truth is that criticize creates distance and hurt instead of closeness and emotional safety.
Replace a complaint with a request for behavior change
“I ask that you sit with me for a few minutes when I come home from work because I missed you” sounds very different than “You never pay attention to me when I come home”…
IMAGO Dialog
Daily practice listening and sharing your feelings. Say: “I am feeling hurt because”.. instead of giving your partner the silent treatment or yelling at them.
Appreciation
Daily share with your partner something that you appreciate about them.