Creating Safety for The Anxious or Avoidant Woman

Foreign.

Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. And today we're going to be talking about the most important thing when it comes to creating consistent connection and intimacy in your relationship, specifically with women. Before we dive into that, don't forget to hit subscribe. Hit the like button and man, it flows forward. Man it forward. Share it with somebody that you know could use this message. Of course, if you absolutely hate this video, you don't have to subscribe or like it. Do your thing. All right, let's dive straight in. 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. 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 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 anger, 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? Secondly, she'll be testing for emotional safety, right? If I poke at him, does he lose his temper and punch holes in the wall? Or is he able to get, you know, a bit of like anger and fire rise up, can we have a little bit of conflict, but he can cool back down. It doesn't go into emotional abus. He doesn't call me names, he doesn't yell and scream, he doesn't throw things, he doesn't hit me, he doesn't do those things. And so now I know I can trust that he is safe both physically and emotionally. And they're doing that for them, but they are also doing that for their children. So women will oftentimes unconsciously test, especially when the relationship is starting to get into a more serious place, they will unconsciously test to see if is this man safe to have children with. Because if he loses his temper with me and blows up all the time and is violent or very aggressive, then the likelihood that he's going to do that with children is very, very high. So women are testing for a number of things. Now enter the avoidant attachment style and the anxious attachment style. Okay, the avoidant and the anxious produce safety dangerous differently, or try and produce safety differently in a sort of maladaptive way than a securely attached person. So I'm going to break this down as simply as I can. An avoidant person believes that they are the only person that can provide safety for themselves, meaning it is very hard for them to trust that you can provide any type of safety for them. And so whenever conflict happens, whenever disconnection happens, whenever any type of rift happens relationship. Additionally, their protective strategy, their self care strategy, is to retreat into themselves and into their own inner fortress. You can imagine a castle with a moat around it and a drawbridge. They run back into the castle behind the moat and pull up the drawbridge. And that is their version of safety. Because in the avoidance experience, it is unsafe to really trust other people and it is unsafe to feel safe with other people. So generally speaking, the avoidant person does not feel safe with other people. Now, on the other side of the equation, the anxiously attached woman will see her safety as external. So the avoidant, their safety is only located internally. It's not relationally or externally. And for the anxious person, it is that safety is located externally. So this is why they text bomb you, this is why they're going through their phone. And again, this isn't to excuse any of this behavior. Right? This isn't to let the anxious or the avoidant off the hook with the things that they're doing. So you don't have to go in the comments section and be like, how could you justify this? And how can you let that behavior off the hook? And I just would, I just won't date an anxious person or an avoidant person. Now. It's not to justify that behavior. I'm just getting, giving you insight into why it's happening. 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. All right, so what do we do? What do we do? The first thing that you can do is begin an inquiry process with your partner to start to see when do you feel safe in relationship? And you can say with me, and when do you not feel safe? And what do you need to do in order to provide that safety? And what do you need from me in order to provide that safety? 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, night, 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, that makes 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 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 is a process of disclosure for safety's sake. So what that might look like is the anxious person having the freedom to say, okay, I don't feel safe right now, or I feel like my mind is going wild, right? I have all this anxiety and I know that it's probably not true, but I'm telling myself that you're angry at me. Is that true? And you can say, no, absolutely not, I'm totally fine. I'm just, you know, I'm thinking about the Fall of Rome.

There we go. Hopefully, hopefully some of you get that one. Or you know, I'm thinking about the, whatever it is, right? The Cyber Taxi and Elon Musk Space X launch, like whatever it is that you guys think about in your spare time. And that can help your anxious partner start to have a different baseline, that actually you are okay. Their story internally is false and incorrect and that will help them start to regulate. Now you need to set some parameters on that. You do not want to have that be your entire relationship. You are doing that for a, you know, a month long period, a 30 day period, a 45 day period so that she can start to acclimate to the truth and the reality of your relationship. And as you do this, you will notice her nervous system start to calm down because it will start to reinforce, oh, when he does that thing, it's actually just my thoughts and so I can calm myself, I can know that I'm okay. So with the anxious person, what you're doing is a process of supporting them and beginning to see the reality of the relationship, which is that they are safe. And with the avoidant person, what you are going to do is something very, very different with the avoidant person because again, they start to see safety as only internal. And so the real question to the avoidant is, are you willing to have some of your safety, some of your sense of.

Not value per se, but your sense of being okay or come from me and the relationship? And this is going to be, this is going to be very challenging for a lot of women that have Been told to live in a very masculine, orientated way, or have been hurt by men in the past and have learned, I cannot rely on a man, I can't trust a man, I can't be safe around a man. But generally speaking, it's actually the avoidant women who will put themselves into positions relationally that are, that are quite dangerous because they'll oftentimes repeat the pattern. So avoidant women are more likely, in my experience, to go out and put themselves into relational experiences that don't serve them. And they'll, you know, they'll find themselves with men that they, that they say that they don't necessarily care about. Or it's, you know, we're just dating casually and they're kind of aloof and pulled back. But, but in reality, there's a lot of dysfunction between the two of them. So 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 parade, 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. And so the more that you try and get to know that woman and try and get her to open up, the more she is going to retreat back into that castle with the drawbridge up, what do you do? You invite the princess out of the castle, and you say, I am not coming in to get you. Very different from the anxious. The anxious person. You have to be willing to say, you know what? I'll come in and get you sometimes, right? I'll reassure you the drawbridge is down. There's no alligators in the moat. Like, you're okay. I'm not running off with, you know, some other woman from a different castle. I'm here, you're good. I'm. I've got you. And that can be very reinforcing for the avoidant. It's. You have to make the decision to come out of your castle. If you're not willing to make that decision to come out of your castle, or at the very least, to let down the drawbridge and let me in, and that. That is a type of safety that you're willing to create with me, then it will not work. So she has to make the choice. And you can pose the question. You can say, you know, once in a while, are you willing? Not once in a while, you need to do this because that will shut her down more. Or once in a while, you have to do this, because that will shut her down more. But actually, once in a while, are you willing to let me into what's happening, even if you need to take some space to do so first? Are you willing to bring forward what's actually going on? Are you willing to tell me what you're actually feeling? Whether it's you're afraid of opening up or you're scared that I'm going to leave or that you're worried that I might get to know you and then take advantage of you or betray you. Are you willing to let me in on those things sometimes? And she'll say. Hopefully, she'll say yes. If she says no, then it's a pretty clear indicator of where the relationship stands. But hopefully she says yes. And then you say, okay, great. What would you like that to look like? Because I know that I can't make you do this. I know. And you can use my analogy of the castle and the drawbridge and the moat. I know that there's no way that I can get. I can pull down your drawbridge and force you out. I know that that's only going to reinforce these behaviors and reinforce that you can only be safe with you. And I want you to feel safe with me. If that's something that you want. Is that Something that you want, too. So having that dialogue with a woman can be very, very powerful because again, we as men underestimate how much of a woman's relational psychology revolves around safety. And I'm going to get into this in another video where I talk about, or maybe I'll just give you a hint here. Oftentimes sexual tension revolves around this interplay of whether or not a woman feels safe. So if you look at, like the book, for example, A Billion Wicked Thoughts, Google engineers, you know, looked at the fantasies that people had and were searching for online, basically for women. And many of you have probably heard this. For women, it's the Beauty and the Beast fantasy that she, you know, a woman finds a man, he's sort of wild and unruly, and he's kind of this monster character, this beast, and she tames that beast and there's something very desirable. And if you look at most of the novels that are out there, 50 shades of gray, et cetera, it's a man with extreme amounts of power and status, and he's dangerous, but she manages to tame that man. This is at the. The center of female fantasy. Why? Because that character is hugely dangerous, right? That character can physically overpower her, physically dominate her.

He can, he can, from a status perspective, maybe financially decimate her, et cetera. I mean, you just go down the list. But those characters are all extremely different, dangerous individuals that are not safe. So if you are a man, and this is why nice guys oftentimes attract women who are not open. They attract more masculine, forward women who are not willing to put themselves in the vulnerable position of even allowing some of their ability to feel safe to come from the relationship and from that man. And so what happens for a lot of nice guys is they date women who will not open up, who will not soften, who will not move into any type of a vulnerable position. And it messes with the sexual dynamic. So a lot of women are looking for this kind of monster character, right? The beast.

The pirate, the high powered lawyer, etc. 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. I just want 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 use in our relationship? All right, until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.