Creating Safety is one of the most important things you can do in your relationship…
Whether you’re just beginning or have been together for years.
Whether you’re in a good place or struggling…
A space of safety is where the challenges can be seen for what they are and the good things can flourish.
Relationships can look very different from the inside to what we hoped for at the beginning, can’t they? The person who started out as our soulmate has somehow become the one put on earth simply to frustrate our deepest desires! Yet we keep going there. Why? Because relationships are an innate part of being human. Even if we believe we suck at them…
If this is you, then you’re not alone.
Intimate relationship is the place we experience our most intense feelings. It’s big. After all we’re dealing with two of the most powerful forces in nature in one package- love and sex
So they’re about a lot more than being good at communication! Especially in today’s world where our expectations of relationship are higher than ever before. We want our partners to be partners, lovers, friends, providers, nurturers, buddies, therapists, mind readers and much more. At the same time we no longer want to disappear into ‘coupledom’, we want to retain our individual sense of selves, to still be US, not just a husband, wife or partner. Relationships are meant to be equally challenging AND supportive, this is the very nature of them, as we dance between self and connection with another.
Our intimate relationships are potentially the most important and fulfilling part of our lives yet we receive very little, if any, training for them.
Let’s face it, if we were offered an extremely challenging job that required multiple skillsets we didn’t have, with an income based on the quality of our daily performance very few of us would be willing to sign on without negotiating a minimum of training and ongoing support. No matter how amazing the potential salary was. It wouldn’t make sense.
So why do we do exactly the opposite with our relationships, stepping into them blind?
It’s largely because everyone around us does exactly the same, including those we learn the most about relationships from, our parents. It’s also easy to copy most relationships and take them, along with our partners, for granted, 
creating the dreaded ‘marriage malaise’. And in this disposable world we can fall into the trap of living with one foot half out the door, draining energy from our relationship and reducing its chances of survival.
This is why it’s vital to get the training we need to address the challenges our relationships offer rather than bury our heads in the sand, wanting things to be different without taking action. Or doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. This is just suffering.
Where you’re at is not your responsibility. Staying there is your choice.
What does creating safety look like?
It starts with understanding.
Understanding that as a result of your lack of training when things go wrong you blame either your partner or yourself for being inadequate, uncaring or not good enough, rather than seeing a person simply lacking in skills. A person just like you, who dearly wants connection, who is probably trying just as hard, hurting as much as you, and is just as much in the dark as you. The next time you want to cast blame or judgement for your hurt take a moment to remember it’s not so much a lack of lovableness creating the friction in your relationship as a lack of knowledge and skill, and give yourselves a hug rather than a blast.
It’s understanding we’ve been sold many lies about relationships.
Lies like:
- We have one twin flame out there and all we have to do is find them to live effortlessly happily ever after. Simply not true.
- When we’re in disagreement something is ‘wrong’ with the relationship. Relationships take work, this is their nature.
- If someone loves us they will automatically know what we need and want without our having to ask. Our partners are not our parents and we are no longer infants.
- Good relationship is all about denial of the self to make the other person happy. This one sided approach simply doesn’t cut it.
- That good relationship is all about 50/50 compromises, when actually this creates resentment. Try each giving 100/100 and see how you go.
- Having a break will bring us closer together. This is true only if you make time to look at the challenges in your relationship whilst you’re doing it. Otherwise taking a break is statistically the beginning of the end.
- An affair means the relationship is over. If you are willing to sort it out your chances of survival, of even having a better relationship than before, are excellent.
Ultimately the truth of relationship is that it is about being in relationship with ourselves first. Just like the airlines say….fit your own oxygen masks before fitting others…for if we’re dead on the floor we won’t have much to give to anyone.
In modern times now that we’re not purely struggling for survival our intimate relationships are much more about our Ego selves than just raising a family, doing our duty or having companionship.
– They’re now a pathway for us to become more whole in ourselves.
– For we unconsciously choose people to be in relationship with that challenge what is unresolved or unseen in us.
– This means that when things are supposedly going wrong it is simply a flag for us to look inside ourselves to see what is being invited to grow instead. 
– This doesn’t mean we need to endlessly try to ‘fix’ ourselves, rather see more and more layers of who we are.
– This means our differences are not a cause for concern but a source of new opportunity.
– We begin rough diamonds and become polished through relationship- it’s the best course you can ever do!
This is the way to relationship freedom, love and even greater understanding…
