Are You In Love or In “Safe”?

If you are in a relationship, are you in love or are you with someone who is safe because you can’t bear the thought of being hurt again?

Are You In Love or Just In A Safe Relationship?

by Gina Hardy

 

 

Have you ever had one of those partnerships that bounce your heart about like a beach ball? One that takes you high up on a thrill ride, then plummets you low down, turns your guts inside out and your general well being, haywire? You feel hooked no matter what you try to do to self-rescue. During the bad patches, you are all over the place, constantly dragging yourself in and out of la la land. You can’t concentrate and everyone thinks you are losing the plot? Yeah you know the ones I mean..c’mon we’ve all been there. But suffering is growth apparently and we love a dose of suffering eh!

When asked “are you in love?” you say “OMG yes!” But as the months and years go by, the roller coaster wears your nerve endings and sanity thin. Eventually, like a war-torn boxer, you are dumped on the floor to pick up the fragile pieces only to slink away to lick your wounds. Getting the familiar picture?

Now an experience like this, depending on the length of willingness to partake of such internal battles, can and does have you saying over a pint or glass of wine with your mates “that won’t ever happen again! I will never trust anyone like that..Men/women are bas*ards/biatches!”…blah. But you do move on at some point, gingerly putting your self-worth back intact. Some of us will get our hair cut, join a gym or go and get an electric beach tan. Anything to feel better, right! I have done it several times. Comical when you look at it because in a way we are prepping our “shop front” for another bash at love at some point. People stop and say “don’t you look well.” Hysterical!

Internally, however, it can be a different scene. Walls can start to build, often unconsciously. Before you know it, you have an invisible sticker on your forehead that says “Don’t come near or I’ll shoot!”

Singledom is great for a while because we often say “phew” thank god for that…but the day WILL come when a need for sex (gentlemen you have needs, I get that!) or connection will drive you out of dinners for one. It’s our Divine calling to create intimacy…get over it!

At a point that is divinely planned, the next Mr. or Mrs. Will You Help Me Heal And Grow”, rocks up. Your radar, however, has said: “no more hell please”. So you find yourself dating Mr/Mrs. Safe-Bet. (Don’t you love double barrelled?!)

You met them at a dinner party, or friends have fixed you up with “a great friend who we just can’t understand why they are single” and off you go. They appear great at first. All the great things that make a lovely take home to mum/dad partner. So what’s the problem I hear you say? Job done!

Well, it is job done IF your heart is in it. But if it isn’t, things can get tricky as time flows by. So how do you recognize a “safe only” relationship?

Let’s look at some of the character traits. If you identify with any of these it may be time to connect with the inner truth that’s trying to happen and save yourself and your partner from future delusion.

 

10 Traits of Just Being In A Safe Relationship

Safe Relationship Trait 1. You may start to kid yourself that this is what you have been looking for when really you chose safe because opening yourself in such a deep and excavating way, “just ain’t gonna happen again!” Love without safety is agony for sure. Been there and got a wardrobe of T-shirts!

Safe Relationship Trait 2. You have picked someone whom everyone else thinks would make a good marriage or long termer material, so you went with it. Others know what’s best for you…Right?!

Safe Relationship Trait 3. Your romantic / honeymoon stage is a tad mediocre. Your fire is not lit, but you keep trying to light it!

Safe Relationship Trait 4. You don’t feel triggered by anything they say and do because deep inside you don’t really care that much. Sounds cruel to say and often it’s not conscious, but you don’t feel inspired or driven to act otherwise.

Safe Relationship Trait 5. You feel apathetic around your partner and don’t feel drawn to helping them through their crumple zones and bad patches, although they may well be in need of your support.

Safe Relationship Trait 6. They become needy around you because they sense you are not into them. Driven by their lack of safety they try to find your love by seeking constant attention and approval from you.

Safe Relationship Trait 7. You like what they do for you in terms of providing all the material comforts, like houses, cars, and gifts and their lifestyle might impress you into thinking “yeah I’ve made it!” but eventually this wears thin. Donald Trump I am sure, for example, plays the father figure and is totally loaded, but I doubt if any of his embryonic bunny girls have been genuinely in love with him!

Safe Relationship Trait 8. They love you more than life itself. You feel so loved, worshipped and adored but just can’t return the feelings. This is tough because I have seen friends over the months and years trying to return that which just isn’t divinely meant, because they know they would devastate their honey if the truth were spoken. Often to confirm those in this kind of relationship is the mantra “well compared with others we have got so much.” Can’t argue with that really!

Safe Relationship Trait 9. You have children and you are staying together for their sake, to create safety and nurturing and the roof over their head. This is a really tough one. I can totally get why people do this and not having children, I can’t comment from experience. But a question I would have is…what example of love do you set to your wee ones when they see mum and dad existing for their sake but never see any real love going between their key role models? You know, the hugs, kisses, PDAs (public displays of affection), etc.

Safe Relationship Trait 10. And lastly…you just know – intuition is your guiding force so listen!

Now there are caveats to every trait above, but if you or your partner are suffering from “in safe” then something will fire the knowing that may well feel very uncomfortable.

Safety IS a critical factor in a conscious relationship, without a doubt. In order to reveal each other’s growth edge and associated crumple zones, you need to create a safe relational space to help the other reveal and heal from the past. Love without safety is angst-ridden and highly destructive on every level eventually.

I woke up to my lack of safety 3 years ago and had a huge AHA! Moment. I became aware for probably the first time in my life, that all my actions with previous boyfriends were born out of a desperate need to feel safe. I hadn’t felt safe with Dad or any man in an intimate relationship. I often swore I was in love but had zero safety. A painful ride for anyone and not advised long term.

So ok love without safety is full of pitfalls but can you be in love and feel safe? Of course and good for you if you have both! But what I am singling out here are those relationships where one or both people are “in safe” only.

What can you do?

Well, as with everything in life, it’s a choice. You can stay with a nagging doubt or communicate how you feel. Discussing how you feel will either conclude the relationship to allow both of you to find a new way with someone else which is way more true for each of you or opening the way to allow true feelings can be a catalyst to realizing that love is absolutely there, but perhaps not how you assumed it would be within your preconceived mental template.

To demonstrate the latter, a girlfriend I used to work with had a boyfriend at the time, now her husband, who she dated for what seemed like ever. He clearly worshipped her, but it made her very complacent and selfish in many ways. She said jump and he would always try to jump higher than she expected. She was a classic “in safe” victim. She had a deep sense of lack of care because she could do what she liked but her passion flame for him failed to ignite and so she found herself eyeing up other nubile young men thinking the answer lay there.

Her previous relationship portfolio consisted of one very brutal and violent man, who she would have literally died for. And she nearly did, when he hospitalized her finally after a row about the choosing new curtains. Eventually, she extracted her heart from psycho man before it was damaged irretrievably only to jump straight into, her now, husbands arms.

She was never safe. She grew up without parents, only caretakers. When Martyn (name changed for obvious reasons) pitched up, he was safety personified. Cutting a long story short, after heaps of safe years, my friend felt compelled to tell safe man how she felt instead of taking the guy at the gym up on his ever-increasing sexual advances.

Martyn was so mature, understanding and loving. She spent the whole night revealing all her deepest darkest secrets and fears to him. The next day at work, a new woman walked into the office who was radiant and a flush with joy. I thought she had copped off with gym boy but no, Martyn was da man! She had opened a door to him the previous night and realized that love didn’t fit the template she had created. Real love was so much more. They married two months later.

So my dear conscious relationship flag wavers, I guess what I am trying to say is, if you find yourself “in safe” you should really, at some point, address your truth. Conscious relationships are at the very least, deeply truthful.

I help people who come to me with the “in safe” dilemma. I guide them into clarity and enable decisive action. They either both wake up to it fully and take the opportunity to part wholesomely and consciously, enabling a move onto their true hearts desires. Or, the act of bringing it out into the open ignites a spark that begins a whole new chapter in the very same relationship. This time, out of safe only mode into an evolving, intimacy enhancing, “in love” relationship.

There are many reasons why we stay in relationships. “Do what feels right” is always going to be my mantra to you. When something feels off, you know it. Be guided by your divine puppeteer, it always knows where you need to be and when.

 

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