Coping with vulnerability and the threat of vulnerability is a fulcrum around which our lives revolve. It is also at the heart of difficulty in many marital relationships because one person’s strategy towards safety are often anything but safe for the other. Two strategies, in particular, stand out. Some among us will tend to feel safer in a relationship when they have a sense of an escape hatch or exit which reassures them that they will not be trapped in a relationship situation that hurts them. In essence, they are not reassured by the other, they are reassured by their ability to leave.
This is in contrast to others who are reassured by assurances that no one is going anywhere, that we are in this together, for better or worse. For persons of this ilk, their partner’s holding onto the exit is predictably intensely threatening. Commonly they will respond to this sense of threat with escalating or confrontive behavior, which is actually a young attempt to get their more distancing partner to come forward and reassure them. The opposite typically happens, with the distanced partner becoming more distant and self-protective. This kind of conflict is often at the heart of a couples negative cycle. Both begin to see the other as emotionally dangerous. And both seldom see that it is actually the same at the heart of it for both in the relationship… the overriding need to feel safe, only two different ways of creating the feeling both want.
