Creating Safety for The Anxious or Avoidant Woman in Brief

One of the things that we as men vastly underestimate when it comes to dating women is the importance of safety to women. They might not use the word safety directly, but in a lot of their communication and in a lot of their behavior, safety is at the forefront of what they are looking for. So, for an example, there's a great saying. I don't remember who said it. You can probably drop it into the comment section below if you're watching this on YouTube, because you might know. But somebody smarter than me and wiser than me, whose name I can't remember, said, women test men, or women punish men that they like. Women punish men that they like. I think it was Dr. Orion Taraban. Now, why do they do that? Women are testing men that they like because they are testing for safety. They are testing for safety. You know, you might have heard of the shit test. You might notice that women sometimes will test you to see, can they provoke your anger? Can they get a rise out of you? Can they get you to become reactive? Why do they do that? They do that because they are testing for emotional safety, physical safety, relational safety, right? They might, you know, be looking over your shoulder at what you're texting, trying to get a glimpse of, you know, what are you looking at on Instagram? What are you looking at on YouTube? Who are you actually texting? And sometimes they'll do those things. And this isn't to excuse all behavior that women deploy to test safety, right? Cause sometimes they will do things that do cross a line, do cross some boundaries, and it's important to reaffirm and set those boundaries back in place. But they're doing those things because they are trying to test, to see, are you safe? Are you relationally safe? Are you psychologically safe? Are you emotionally safe? Are you sexually safe? And they're doing that for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they're doing that to see, am I safe in this relationship?

And.

Is my idea that we are in a monogamous relationship? True. So sometimes women will be testing to see, is the monogamous agreement that we have real am I safe in that monogamous agreement, or is this man wanting to go outside of the relational dynamic? So for the anxious person, their safety is outside of themselves. They do not feel completely safe internally. And so what they're doing is looking for signals of safety externally. And they are trying to regulate themselves or feel safe within themselves by connecting to a sense of safety in you and in the relationship. This is why an anxious person will be on the lookout for Any signs of betrayal, for any signs that they, that the relationship isn't okay. This is why anxious partners cannot stand when the relationship is going through conflict or some type of tumultuousness. They cannot bear it. Why? Because their sense of safety is in you and in the relationship. And then lastly, what do you need from the relationship in order to feel safe? So here we're opening up a dialogue with our partner to see are they able to articulate when they feel safe in the relationship and when they do not feel safe. And they might say things like, you know, I don't feel safe when you don't text me back within 24 hours. Or it doesn't feel great to me when, you know, you go out and get absolutely annihilated on Friday night and, and I can't, you know, I don't hear back from you or.

Or just sometimes like with anxious people because their, their scanning mechanism for safety is always on high alert. You'll probably hear them say things like, I don't feel safe when, you know, you do this certain thing, you look at me this certain way you are breathing, this certain way you, you know, you roll over at night before bed without giving me a kiss or, or, you know, huggin me, feel like there's something wrong. And through that process, you can start to reassure that person that no, indeed, there's nothing wrong in those moments and ask them, what can you do? So with the anxious person, you want to ask them and reinforce that with them, what can you do in those moments to reinforce that actually you are safe? And for a period of time with the anxious person, just to be very tactical here, for a period of time with the anxious person, what can be helpful? Helpful is a process of disclosure. For safety's sake, what do you do? You have to start to inquire, are you willing, and this is a direct question that you would want to ask your avoidant partner, are you willing to allow some of your internal sense of safety to come from me and the relationship? Are you willing to allow me to contribute to you feeling okay? Which means that she might have to open up once in a while and tell you about what she's feeling and going through and that you set some parameters and boundaries around her pulling away, stonewalling, checking out. Right. So if she needs to take some space and shut down and you know, the conflict has happened and she starts to shut down, great, do that. Let's have some agreements around. It shouldn't go longer than 12 hours, right? Or it shouldn't go Longer than whatever it is, six hours. And then the two of you come back together. Because if there's no parental. What will happen with the avoidant person is that the more conflict, the more challenge, the more that they feel threatened or that they feel like the relationship's being threatened, the more that they will rely on a retreat oriented strategy in order to develop some type of internal safety. Meaning the more that there is conflict or disconnection in the relationship, the more that they will rely on disconnection to feel safe. And the more that you are saying, hey, I want to be connected, the more that they will often retreat because the threat of being known feels unsafe. Okay, I'm going to emphasize that again to the avoidant person. Feeling known feels like a threat. Being known feels like a threat. It actually feels unsafe. So a lot of women are looking for this kind of monster character, right? The beast.

The, the pirate, the, the, the high powered lawyer, et cetera. That is a bit threatening. There's something enticing there. And then being able to find a sense of safety with, with that sort of wild man, with that sort of character of the monster is something that is wonderfully alluring, very sexually enticing for a lot of women. So you can start to play with that. I'm going to have more on that on another video, so I wanted to drop that in here. So share your thoughts in the comments below. Hopefully this supported you. Whether you are dating an avoidant person or an anxious person, whether you are one of those people, maybe this is a good video to share with your partner and to tune in with your partner and ask, what about this would really land for you? What about this can we take and, and use in our relationship? All right, until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.