Safety Strategies (that Always Fail) in Relationships

I have a particular stance, when I argue with my husband. I talk faster and louder, my eyes open wide, and I stand taller and a little straighter, to force my point home. Some invisible switch flips in me and I lean in harder and more forcefully than I need to.

My mind might not understand what is happening, but my body knows. Something comes over me. “It’s not safe!” I feel my nervous system screaming. I experience a telltale "whoosh" of energy down into my belly. My vision becomes laser focused. My arms and legs go cold.

I start to argue with him, discussing details that don't matter in a determined effort to be right. I transform from a well-meaning if rather stubborn partner into a relentless defense lawyer arguing the case of the century before a split jury. Every word counts and I pounce on his statements with ferocity, determined to dissect them and prove him wrong.

I don't need to tell you, at this moment, that my relational skills go out the window.  I become a version of myself that slightly horrifies me as I watch from a safe distance, aghast as this part of me goes on the attack over something I rationally know is inconsequential.

"I'm feeling activated," I say to myself knowingly, but it doesn’t stop me as I back him into a corner with my well-timed words. My husband was a national debate champion and he's a worthy opponent. Yet I must win and to hell with the consequences.

Those are not my finest moments.

How We Create Childhood Safety (for Ourselves)

My behavior makes sense from a nervous system perspective. In my case, “being right” is how I learned to create safety and take care of myself in childhood.

That was then. Now, I’m an adult standing before my beloved. And instead of staying in my prefrontal cortex and meeting the challenge with connection and calm, I activate my old survival strategies and launch into a full-blown stress response. I defend myself just like I needed to in childhood. It’s like my nervous system hasn’t yet processed the update that things are different now.

Here’s what happening.

All of us need physical and emotional safety as children and few of us get it. Instead, we fill in the gaps of neglectful or abusive caregiving by learning to take care of ourselves, one way or another. We do what we can to figure out how to create safety for ourselves.

We copy what we see from the adults around us because we reason that must work. We do the best we can with the immature skills that we cobble together. And then most of us keep using these same strategies for the rest of our lives.

As children in bad situations, we responded by adapting to what we experienced. When no one else was there to offer guidance, we did what we needed to make ourselves feel okay.

These adaptive strategies were brilliant, at the time, because they helped us get by.

They served us in the face of often unbearable pain and hardship. But we keep using them, long after they're useful. They might be all we know, or we might not be aware there's another way.  

But what served us then is not helpful or healthy for our adult relationships. Left unchecked, these undeveloped strategies destroy intimacy and connection, particularly with our romantic partners.

If we want the satisfaction and joy of intimacy, we need to find another way.

Let's explore the five most common safety strategies from childhood that we often take with us into adult relationships (adapted from Terry Real's work). This isn’t to shame the younger parts of us who needed these tactics to survive. We do this to learn how to practice relational skills and create the deep and connected relationships we long for.

We can't change what we don't see, so let's explore these five strategies now.

Five Safety Strategies that Fail in Relationships

These strategies come from childhood and need to change for us to experience connection and intimacy.

Until we shift them, it's easy to get stuck in the same arguments over and over and think it's because we chose the wrong partner. We may despair that anything will be different, because the more we try to reason our way out of the conflict, the more we get stuck. We may even feel stressed and on edge at home, unable to relax because we're bracing in anticipation of the next fight.

1. Being Right

There is false comfort in winning arguments with our partners. What good does it do to make them wrong because we need to be right? We live together. Their upset is ours to tend and care for. So why do we insist on winning and argue the details like they matter? Being right doesn't resolve the relationship issue. It doesn't serve us or the relationship. It just makes our partners into adversaries for no good reason. What matters is the "us" and the quality of our connection that gets too easily sacrificed on the altar of being right.

2. Control

Control means getting someone to do something we want them to. It can be direct or indirect. Indirect control looks like manipulation or trying to manage our partners. Control never feels good to be on the receiving end of. It creates a power dynamic that sabotages closeness. It builds resentment because no one likes to be controlled or manipulated. It’s infantilizing and dismissive of our partners. It's much better and more satisfying to learn how to be upfront and learn to negotiate our wants and needs.

3. Unrestrained Self-Expression

In relationships, we often make the mistake of thinking we need to share exactly how we’re feeling. We turn the full force of our emotions and uncensored thoughts onto our partner and expect them absorb the blow and stay standing. This kind of unrestrained self-expression is seen as a positive thing in western culture, but it can be extremely damaging to intimate relationships. Our partners don't need to know everything we're thinking, especially when we're angry. Maturity means learning to smooth our most savage edges into something that feels good to be around. Arguments that lead to unrestrained self-expression easily create hurt and wounding that take a concerted effort to repair. Over time, this can create a pattern of emotional or verbal abuse that is unhealthy and has a lasting impact on relational health.

4. Retaliation

It can be tempting to revert to the playground rule of "You hurt me, so I'm going to hurt you back." It's not pretty, but we go there. We might give our partners the silent treatment or turn away from touch or even sex because we want to punish them. Feeling this kind of righteous anger often borders on contempt, and it's essential to tame these feelings before they impact our most important relationships. Punishment is not an adult strategy and will never get us more of what we want from our partners. Retaliating will never heal our wounds or bring us the closeness and intimacy we long for.

5. Withdrawal

I saved the best for last because, in my experience, withdrawal is the most popular safety strategy. My guess is if you have two favorite strategies, withdrawal will be the one you go to after any of the others. When all else fails, we can always leave — whether that's slamming the door, refusing to answer text messages for a few hours, or going quiet and stonewalling with our partners right in front of us. Withdrawal is painful for our partners, and it doesn't create the conditions for resolution. What's even worse, we often deny we're doing it and try to pretend it's not hurtful, which only makes things harder to repair.

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Knowing and mapping our safety strategies gives us choice points for how we want to respond and relate to our partners.

When we understand that these strategies are trying unsuccessfully to create safety, we prioritize connection and care for ourselves and each other. We gain enough clarity to meet each other with skill, which builds our confidence as a couple. We identify what's happening and can calm ourselves down when we’re in survival mode.

When outdated strategies don’t create the relational intimacy we want, instead of blaming ourselves for the fallout, we can learn how to do things differently.

Relationships are dynamic and always changing. They improve when we are determined and willing to create something different. If you’re curious about what this kind of couple’s work could look like for your relationship, I encourage you to get in touch.

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