Safe At Home

Safe at Home

The LORD is my shepherd; I have all that I need.

Psalm 23:1

Wouldn’t you like to provide comfort—truly abiding comfort—to each other? Truth is, you can. The key is found in focusing on what makes each of you feel emotionally safe. This is the secret to emotional connection and comfort, and here’s how it works.

Wives, say your spouse feels most safe when he is gaining control of his time. This means that he’s going to feel most threatened when his time is being wasted. And if the two of you are trying to solve a problem together, look out: he’s going to be an aggressive problem solver, because he wants to be efficient in his conversations. He wants to get to the bottom line. And when you understand that this is how he’s hardwired, that this is how God designed him, you’ll have more understanding, grace, and empathy for his bold and sometimes blunt approach.

We know this from personal experience. Gaining control of his time makes Les feel most safe. I, on the other hand, would place time at the bottom of my emotional-safety needs list. So guess what? This makes me a passive problem solver. I’m far more inclined to just “give it time.” I’m more accommodating than assertive. For his part, Les is more decisive than docile.

So do my passive approach and Les’s aggressive approach to problem solving impact our conversations? Only on a daily basis! It was the greatest source of miscommunication we ever had—until we recognized how we were hardwired differently because of our differing needs for emotional safety. Once I saw how much Les feared losing control of his time, I almost instantly had more grace and understanding of his aggressive style. And once he knew I understood how much he valued his time, he began to relax and loosen up when it came to solving problems together.

Of course, it goes both ways. Once Les understood how I am hardwired for approval, he now gives me more grace when I become impulsive or unrealistic in a conversation. You get the idea. An emotional safe room is built in your relationship whenever you both understand and accept each other’s unique safety needs. That’s when you enjoy the inexpressible comfort of speaking each other’s language fluently.

Oh, the comfort—the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.

—Dinah Craik