He makes me feel safe

Am I Only With My Partner Because S/he Makes Me Feel Safe?

There are so many ways the ego tries to dismantle real love, and it’s favorite is to perseverate on a single question until it tires itself out, then jump to the next story. I’ve dissected many of these questions on this blog and in my courses, approaching each in the same way: name it as an intrusive thought, douse it with truth water, then ask: What is this thought protecting me from feeling? The current thought-story that seems to be making the rounds of the collective unconscious, meaning I’m hearing it through all of my channels – from my clients, my readers, and my course members – is the title of this blog: What if I’m only with my partner because she or he makes me feel safe?

Let’s dissect this intrusive thought and douse it with some truth water. The statement implies that feeling safe is a poor reason to commit to someone. First off, since when is feeling safe something to sneeze at? Asked another way: How many people in this world do you truly feel safe with? If you feel safe with your partner, it’s a rare blessing that is likely a result of many factors:

You like him.
You trust her.
For the most part, and especially when anxiety isn’t clouding your vision, you enjoy being in her presence. Keep in mind that when you spend enough time with anyone, especially when you’re highly sensitive, you’re going to feel irritated at times (sometimes a lot of the time).
She makes you feel loved.
You feel supported.
You feel loved.
You feel seen.
You can be yourself.

Anxious mind alert: As you read through the above list, your ego is going to want to poke holes and challenge every statement. Do I REALLY feel loved? Does my partner REALLY get me? Do I even LIKE him? It’s essential to name the ego’s tactics every time it makes an appearance, then see if you can ask the questions again and allow the answers to rise up from your deepest self. You can also dismantle this particular ego tactic by using its logic against itself as you recognize that if you’re stuck on the question of “Am I only with my partner because I feel safe?” the answer is implicit in the question. In other words, you wouldn’t be asking the question in the first place if you didn’t feel safe! In the duel between ego and truth, truth takes the lead.

Once we’ve established that there are only a handful of people in the world with whom you feel safe and that safety is a gift, we can walk a bit deeper into the world of attachment theory, which posits that without safety, you have nothing. Safety is the foundation. Trust is non-negotiable. Expert couples therapists state that it’s not love that provides the container inside which a relationship flourishes but trust. And without safety there is no trust.

Just like a child who is securely attached to his mother feels safe enough to venture out into the world, when we’re securely attached to our partners we, as adults, also feel safe enough to take risks in the world. We feel safe to explore new areas of ourselves – a career change, a business idea, having a child – because we know that our partner is there to catch us if we fall. The umbilical cord that once attached you to your mother is now attached to your partner, and the beauty of this metaphorical cord is that it stretches as wide as the world. In short, a safe relationship allows you to fly. So again, feeling safe is nothing to rashly dismiss or use as a reason to walk away. In fact, according the attachment theorists, it’s the very reason to stay. How backward our culture has it!

Ego will always argue, especially when it’s supported by the cultural wave that says: “Run! You don’t really love him! You’re just staying because you love the way he loves you.”

To which I respond: It’s a good place to start. You’re with someone who treats you well. You’ve found someone you trust and with whom you feel safe. And if you’ve been on my blog or courses for a while you’ve come across the question that pierces through most of the ego’s thought-stories – Is my partner someone with whom I can learn about love? – and answered yes.

It’s a good place to start. You start on a platform of safety, shared values, and friendship. Then you spend the next many years learning how to give and receive love, diving into the intricacies of the weave that composes the fabric of your relationship, unraveling the knots that were tied from past pain, softening into each other’s fold, and wrapping each other up in the blanket of your relationship which began with safety, grew with curiosity, and arrived, finally, at love.

Things Men Do When They Want You To Feel Secure

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I’ve been fortunate enough to find a man who is comfortable enough in himself to be vulnerable with me. I never question what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, what his intentions are, or whether or not I can count on him. I feel completely safe in this relationship. I know I can count on him for anything. It’s funny because, really only once I found a man who truly makes me feel secure did I realize just how insecure I felt in my previous relationships. If you would have asked me at the time, when I was dating my exes, whether or not I could count on them for just about anything, I would have said, “Of course!” But, I didn’t really know it in my bones the way I do with my current partner. I know this relationship is his top priority, just as it is my top priority. I never worry he’ll let me down or be dishonest, and that’s due to his actions. Here are things a man does when he wants you to feel secure.

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Consult you before traveling

If he’s thinking about going on a trip—whether that’s to visit his family at home or go on a boys’ weekend with his best friends—he consults me first about the timing of that trip. He just wants to make sure there wasn’t something important I wanted him to attend with me during that time, or that it wasn’t a time I was going to really need his support and comfort for something. I pretty much always say, “Yes! Take the trip!” He doesn’t have to ask, but it certainly feels better than him just telling me, “I’m going on this trip. It’s already booked.”

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Check in throughout the day

A man who wants you to feel secure in the relationship checks in throughout the day. It could just be little texts or emails, but he doesn’t just go ghost for eight to ten hours at a time. He wants you to know you’re always a part of his life and on his mind, even when you can’t be together. It’s the shady men who go ghost for eight hours at a time. They likely live some sort of double life.

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Making plans with you is a priority

My partner makes a point to sit down and look at his calendar every few weeks, identify pockets of time we can spend special time together, and book date nights with me. He doesn’t just let life take over his calendar and say, “Whoops. I guess we won’t have a date night for three months.”

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Talk to you about major decisions

Whether it’s a career change, cutting of a friendship, or making an investment, a man who wants you to feel secure talks to you about major decisions. He wants you to know he’s always aware that his decisions impact you, and that he respects your opinion and input.

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Reconsider disrespectful friends

If your partner notices someone in his life is disrespectful of you—from a family member to a friend—he addresses the situation. If it’s a family member, he talks to them about being kinder to you. If it’s a friend, he may even reconsider if that’s someone with whom he wants to be friends. Either way, he doesn’t just leave you to fend for yourself in these situations.

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Introduce you to all female friends

He introduces you to all of his female friends so you can see there’s nothing going on there. He knows he doesn’t have to do this, but he wants to because he likes doing all he can to make you feel at ease. It’s the men who rely on the excuse, “I don’t have to introduce you to all my female friends” who you need to worry about.

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Have transparency about the past

He’s very open about his past. He’ll answer any questions you feel compelled to ask. Naturally, people don’t need to know everything about their partner’s pasts, but if you really feel you need to know something, your partner will tell you.

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Incorporate you in their future

He will talk to you about the future. More importantly, when he discusses the future he envisions for himself, you’re always a part of that vision. If he, for example, likes the idea of living on a ranch one day, he’ll say little things like, “And you’d love it because we could get you tons of animals.”

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Care for their own safety

Men who want you to feel safe make sure to watch out for their own safety, too. They won’t do things that put their safety at risk for no good reason at all, like street race or engage in fistfights.

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Display their love publicly

Naturally, a guy who wants you to feel secure will show his affection for you in front of others. This spans everything from kissing in public to posting photos on social media of the two of you. Even if he’s a little uncomfortable with this, he’d rather endure that discomfort than make you feel unloved by refusing to participate in PDA with you.

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Put a label on it

A man who wants you to feel secure will—for goodness sake—put a label on your relationship. He won’t dodge your questions about, “What are we?” Never tolerate a man who won’t put a label on it. He doesn’t care about your sense of security.

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Tell you you’re important

A good partner should tell you regularly how important you are to him. He should make sure you know, every day, how much you contribute to his happiness and how much he appreciates your presence in his life.

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Make plans in advance

Any man worth his salt will make plans in advance with you. That means booking a cruise with you that’s a few months away or buying tickets to a concert that’s not until next season. If he knows he’s in this for the long run, there’s no reason he shouldn’t make such concrete plans with you.

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Care for your family and friends

He should show care for your family and friends. That means not getting out of obligations with them or finding ways to avoid helping them move. It means being there for them during tough times. He embraces your family and friends as his own, and cares just as much for their wellbeing as you do.

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Always consider your feelings

Ultimately, a man who wants you to feel secure always thinks about your feelings. He knows he lives his life for two people now, and not just for himself. So he always asks himself how anything he does or says will affect you. He sees you two as a team now.

Categories: Love & Relationships Advice

TRENDING ON MADAMENOIRE

What is love: 5 sure signs

“Why are you still with him (her)?” How many times have we asked this question to friends stuck in painful love relationships, how many times have we thought about what makes people cling to their burdensome connection ... Oh no, this is not love. But then what is love? A feeling that can make us happy forever? Of course not, answers psychoanalysis. Love, if it is real, does not give serenity. Even when the initial delight from the merging of souls subsides, contrary to popular belief, she does not calm down - she excites and shocks us, mysteriously weaving two destinies into a single plot that defies logic. Let's take a look at some of its facets. nine0003

1. To feel a mystery in another

Love is a mystery both for those who are seized by it and for those who become its witnesses. We see it, we feel it, but we don't understand it. Why? Yes, because the bonds that bind us to a loved one are inexplicable. To someone we truly love, we are attracted not only by his appearance (beauty, resemblance to someone) and not only by the images or values \u200b\u200bthat he symbolizes for us (father, mother, power, money), but by the mystery, that we feel in it. It is impossible to call it in words, but it seems to be addressed to everything that we ourselves secretly keep in our souls: longing for what we did not receive in childhood, some kind of unaccountable suffering ... “Two people, even merging in a single feeling, they still remain separate people - each with their own inner world, their own secret, ”says Galina Berezovskaya, an analytical psychotherapist. nine0003

“Love touches that part of our personality that is unknown to us,” explains psychoanalyst Patrick Lamboulet. - In the soul of each of us lies a particle of destructive emptiness that can destroy us. Love is nothing but the meeting of two sufferings, two imperfections. In love, we share with another person what is painfully lacking in ourselves. True love is expressed not by asking, "Give me what you have and what I lack," but rather by saying, "I love the path you found to healing, the way you deal with your trouble." nine0003

And here the legend of “two halves” has nothing to do with it, according to which love, uniting us into a perfect whole, thereby makes us happy! - When a person notices that, despite a love relationship, he still feels some dissatisfaction with life, he may decide that he simply has not found his “soul mate” and should change his partner. But this, of course, is not the case." To truly love means to admit: "I'm interested in you." nine0003

2. To be afraid of losing him

To love means to be afraid. And constantly. In his work The Dissatisfaction with Culture, Freud explains it this way: we fall into dependence on the other because we constantly need him to support us in our existence. Hence the fear of loss.

“Love involves risk,” explains the philosopher and psychoanalyst Monica Schneider. - This feeling is dizzying, sometimes we are even drawn to reject it, to push it away: a person, fearing the power of his love, can destroy it or downplay its significance, plunging into activities that will strengthen his self-sufficiency. All this is to protect ourselves from the frightening power over us of another person. nine0003

After all, as Freud emphasized, Eros and Thanatos are inseparable: I love you - I destroy you. Eros is our desire to connect with each other in a loving feeling; Thanatos is the death drive that pushes us to break this connection so that our "I" remains omnipotent. And since love takes us beyond ourselves, our "I" fights with it.

“It's hard to give up on yourself,” explains psychoanalyst Jean-Jacques Moskowitz. “Love always brings pain. It touches our very being—what we are in this world. Only a few realize this. Once alone, they enjoy it because they feel protected from the love-related impulse of death. But if we manage to overcome the torments and strife of love, we enter into a different, wonderful space, where the feeling is revealed with renewed vigor. nine0003

True love is not a business contract. Her fury is a danger to both partners. We should not forget about this if we are visited by doubts, if it seems that we have been “out of love”. If the other tries to pull away, it does not always mean that he does not love. Perhaps he is just afraid of losing himself.

3. Willingness to go into the unknown

In love, nothing is predetermined. “None of us can either guarantee the constancy of mutual feelings, or predict the future life and development of relationships with a loved one,” says Galina Berezovskaya. We habitually believe that passion first flares up and then predictably declines, but this is just a prejudice. Love in its development can also go in an ascending direction. nine0003

“When we fall in love, we enter a world in which will and reason have no power,” adds Monika Schneider. - And on this way we will have to go through completely different segments. Of course, having once soared to the heights of happiness, then by contrast we can feel that we are falling into the abyss. But if we are convinced in advance that love is always unreliable, this only means that our past prevents us from believing in ourselves and in another person. To truly love, one must almost believe in a miracle. Freud speaks of expectation filled with faith. It is necessary to maintain a fire that can flare up again without requiring an immediate outbreak. Embrace the unknown, be patient...

4. Feel desire

There is no doubt: to love a person means to desire him. Moreover, confirms Jean-Jacques Moskowitz: “Physical intimacy really helps us to love. Without an exchange of caresses in love, something important remains unfulfilled. Lovers who love each other deeply enjoy sex in a special way. In the act of love, the difference between the sexes disappears: the two merge into one. Their members themselves are no longer given independent value - lovers in moments of passion have one body for two. Pleasure is all-conquering." Without love, we can find relaxation in sex, relieve tension with pleasure, but in order to fully enjoy, you need to love for real. “When we love, we reach other heights of pleasure,” confirms Galina Berezovskaya. nine0003

And if desire weakens, does this mean the end of love? Not at all, Galina Berezovskaya is sure: “There are happy moments when it is enough for us that the beloved exists, that he simply is.”

However, there are women who separate love from sexual desire outside of such moments of blissful contemplation. “It's not that their feelings are weaker,” explains Jean-Jacques Moskowitz. - Against. They are afraid that, indulging in love too selflessly, they can disappear into it. In all likelihood, they are fettered by some unresolved problem of childhood, an ideal of love that is too closely connected with the image of the father. Experiencing a strong feeling, these adult women seem to become little girls again ... and what is happening is more like incest. For them, the image of the father comes to the fore, perhaps as a defense against the fear of dissolving in physical intimacy. nine0003

Such women seek refuge in love-adoration and are wary of sexual relations. They allow themselves to be tamed only gradually, passing through the stage of a less intimate physical connection - hugs that allow you to surround your loved one with caress, as if carrying him inside yourself. And when the desire returns, the sex drive inevitably follows. The ebb and flow of love never stops in its perpetual motion.

5. Feel the fullness of life

“To be loved means to feel that you have the right to exist,” said the philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre. True love is a unique feeling of the justification of one's being in this world, it is an illusion that our love is the only one. Love returns us to the position of a child, confident in his omnipotence, convinced that if he were not in the world, the world would lack something important. nine0003

By choosing each other, we make the other one the chosen one. In making a distinction between true love and loving-kindness for the good of one's neighbor, Freud uses the biblical theme of the Chosen One, the Messiah. In love, we endow the other with special significance. We recognize its indisputable importance: we respect it, we appreciate it, we believe that it is irreplaceable. We made a find, found a treasure. We are no longer alone in the world.

Another person brings us his world, openness to other horizons, feelings that we did not experience with such vivacity before meeting him. We seem to be awakening to a new life. We have a sense of security - because he was able to see our value. “Love helps to find the meaning of existence,” sums up Galina Berezovskaya. “When we truly love, we feel more strongly that we are alive.” nine0003

Greta Thunberg quote: I want to feel safe The latest update on November 29, 2022

Topics

Safety, safety

Greta Tunberg

6 Swedish activist against climate change 2003

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"When another person's satisfaction, security, and development become as important to you as your own satisfaction, security, and development, that is love.

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