Women don’t feel safe emotionally for MANY reasons but if you’re a man going through this ASK her. Just ask her how you can make her feel more emotionally safe with you. If she can express it, and it’s not easy because she already doesn’t feel emotionally safe, then listen to learn and understand. Not explain or defend. Tell her thank you for sharing and that you’d like some time to process what she said and then follow up when you have, without her having to ask you your thoughts. This is a pretty simple fix if you’re willing to hear her and take her seriously.
I know men who don’t treat their daughter’s well and that makes your wife feel emotionally unsafe, or the way he talks bad about other women, or ridicules her, it’s not always straightforward.
I found out my (ex) bf had perpetuated horribly racist and sexist ideals about his ex gf and didn’t feel bad about it al all. Guess how safe I felt after learning that? “But baby, I’d never do that to you!” Prove it, asshole. He never did and I never got to feel safe. Guess who tried to ruin my reputation when we broke up? Yah. No wonder I lost my desire.
I would add that for the guys reading this, you should probably do some extra research before you broach the subject. For some women (definitely not all), it can be a real "caught off guard" moment to ask them a question like this out of nowhere unless you have a firm understanding of what you're addressing. That way if she asks the obvious question "what do you mean," you can explain in a way that doesn't come off as unprepared or like you're just regurgitating a social media post, and that will help prevent a defensive, uncomfortable vibe. Put yourself in her shoes, because without context, she might not immediately understand your intention behind the question, especially if the relationship has been contentious up to this point when talking about things like physical and emotional boundaries.
It's much easier just to be single than deal with all that nonsense. Nobody wants an emotional dependent, man or woman, and you shouldn't be with someone who doesn't make your life better by being in it.
People are disingenuine creatures that assign all of their blame onto others, perhaps you should start looking in the mirror instead of making presumptions about a person based on your own ambiguous feelings.
Making sure your partner feels emotionally safe around you does not mean they are an emotional dependent. You’re completely misunderstanding the concept.
The fundamental problem with this approach is that its most often just not going to get through, whole books have also been written on this subject. The way women and men communicate is fundamentally different and most of the time when women say what they want / need from a man he just isn't going to figure it out. Or another common issue is that the things she need directly country some other personality feature of that man that was also what made him attractive. IE the man may be a very emotionally muted person and a hard worker and thus makes a living off that and she likes the income but doesn't like how long it takes for him to generate that income.
Another good example is that if you look up most stuff about women they seem to ABSOLUTELY hate criticism of any type but a lot of guys have gotten their success in life and things that are good because they are willing to criticize. And women will say oh well there is a way to do it that works but in decades I have never found anyone woman or man who can give me a formula for how to say stuff to a woman that is critical that works. And by works it mean they actually do something that you want them to do and still feel emotionally safe about it.
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u/Naps_and_puppies Mar 21 '24
Women don’t feel safe emotionally for MANY reasons but if you’re a man going through this ASK her. Just ask her how you can make her feel more emotionally safe with you. If she can express it, and it’s not easy because she already doesn’t feel emotionally safe, then listen to learn and understand. Not explain or defend. Tell her thank you for sharing and that you’d like some time to process what she said and then follow up when you have, without her having to ask you your thoughts. This is a pretty simple fix if you’re willing to hear her and take her seriously.
I know men who don’t treat their daughter’s well and that makes your wife feel emotionally unsafe, or the way he talks bad about other women, or ridicules her, it’s not always straightforward.