A wife recently reached out to me about her struggling marriage, and in the course of our back-and-forth, I made this observation:
Lack of safety may be the #1 reason marriages dissolve. It could be emotional safety. Physical safety. Financial safety. Whatever. But when you no longer feel safe with someone, intimacy is simply not possible.
Do You Feel Unsafe?
At times, we all feel a little unsafe. Most people have some nervousness about sharing private thoughts and feelings, becoming physically and sexually vulnerable, and relying on the other person in a relationship.
Plus, we have all experienced disappointment and hurt. Our past wounds can make us more skittish about trusting others. Some of that hurt might well have come from your spouse, because we are flawed humans and too often say or do something careless or rude. We may even lash out at our mate when our self-protection feels triggered.
Such typical caution is not what I’m what I’m talking about when I use the word “unsafe” regarding marriages in crisis or already severed.
Rather, it happens when a spouse demonstrates a pattern of cruelty, neglect, disrespect, and/or selfishness. They have disregarded your sense of safety, leaving you feeling alone and on edge.
Let’s Look at Real-Life Examples
What makes for that deep sense of being unsafe? Here are a few examples:
- He physically abused her, making her fear for her physical safety.
- He refused to work or couldn’t hold down a job, risking their financial safety.
- He viewed pornography or acted out with others, shattering her sexual safety.
- He belittled and insulted her, eroding her emotional safety.
I worded those as he did something to her, because women more often share their stories with me, but it could certainly go the other way. A husband might feel unsafe around his wife.
Can You Come Back?
Once one spouse feels unsafe, is the marriage over? Not necessarily. Plenty of marriages come back from the brink—moving from a lack of safety to genuine, sustained trust. But it requires honesty, humility, sustained effort, and often outside help. That help might be from a couples’ therapist or simply one of you pursuing counseling on your own to shift the relationship dynamic.
Frankly, my husband and I never had a great couples’ therapy experience, but counseling on my own did wonders for my perspective and approach. Once I stopped messing up my part of things, my husband eventually changed what he was doing, and together we worked out a lot of our problems.
Others I know have had marvelous couples’ therapy experiences. And of course, some have changed their side of the relationship dynamic only to find their spouse unwilling to put forth any effort on their part.
Whether you can come back depends on your willingness to work hard and hurt more—as you work through difficult issues—to achieve true healing.
You Matter More Than Your Marriage
Some marriages absolutely should not continue because they involve the kind of oppression God consistently stood against! Isaiah 1:17 instructs us: “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.”
If one or both spouses have been guilty of abuse, neglect, sexual betrayal, addiction, etc., they must take full responsibility for their actions and get help to overcome. And their mate should set healthy boundaries to encourage that (see Boundaries in Marriage by Henry Cloud & John Townsend).
If the offending spouse repeatedly refuses to work on their issues, then you are not safe. And as I’ve discussed before on my site, some abusers can reform (“situational abusers”), and others will not (“characterological abusers”). If you’re married to an abusive spouse who does not own their problem and want to fix it, then get help and get out. As Ephesians 5:11 says, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
Marriage should not be sustained at the cost of one’s body, heart, and soul. Some emotional pain is normal in any relationship, and marriages in crisis usually experience greater emotional pain as they tear down the old and broken foundation to build a new one, but God doesn’t call us to suffer for no good reason. God created marriage to be between two equally valued partners, not for one to be the bully and the other to be their victim.
Take Stock of Your Safety
Do you feel unsafe in your marriage? Is it because of what your spouse has done? Or are you perhaps misreading your spouse or bringing your own baggage into your perceptions?
Is your spouse aware of how you feel? Are they acting with intention or maybe reacting to their own baggage, stress, personal flaws, etc.?
Have there been times in your relationship when you felt truly safe? If so, what made you feel that sense of security? And how could you foster that bond?
What outside help might you need to discover or regain safety in your marriage? Do you need to work on some issues individually to overcome sin or heal from past wounds?
Have you been oppressed or mistreated by your mate so much that you are truly unsafe and need to get out?
As you consider these questions, the best place to start is likely with prayer—asking God to give you wisdom and clarity. I’m saying a prayer for you too.
I write mostly about sex in marriage, but this topic has been on my mind for a while. If you want to know more about how these issues impact sexual intimacy, here are a few other posts to check out:
- What If Your Husband Is a Bedroom Bully?
- What I Hate About Sex
- What about the 3 A’s? Addiction, Adultery, and Abuse
And an episode of our podcast, Sex Chat for Christian Wives:
I’m out of everything. Cancer has put paid to my abilities.
And yet, I do try, to give my wife something of normalcy, something she can understand beyond the Alamo.
A very sad circumstance. It’s good that you still do what you can. And cancer sucks.
Please tell me why sex is supposed to be so good and pleasurable. M69y, wife 67y, married 45 years. It does nothing for me and it never has. Am I still supposed to go through with it? Sex has nearly always been damaging to our marriage notwithstanding a lot of ‘counselling’ both from medical professionals and Christian friends. In fact much of the Christian counselling we have had has caused more harm than good. Why should I believe your counselling would be any different?
I don’t provide counseling. I consider myself an educator, not a therapist. But I do know people who have benefitted a lot from counseling. It sounds like there is a lot of baggage in the past for both you and your wife, and sorting through that could be helpful. If you’re looking for a good resource for that, I can recommend Aldrich Ministries. They have coaches with a lot of experience in this area.
Something I find concerning about this is that while it was written for wives, men read also and I was unsafe in my marriage. She initiated the divorce, as most women do now sadly, and it still hurts everyday.
It was definitely written from the perspective of wives’ stories I’ve heard, but I didn’t intend it only for them. I certainly know that some men feel unsafe in their marriage. And I’m so sorry yours ended.
I know, which is why I gave the benefit of the doubt to you. I also think feminism and pornography both have to do with it as well. Feminism has created an entitlement mentality to women and set them in opposition to men. Pornography has trained men to see women as just objects. The irony is both of them deny a woman’s femininity.
I don’t know if you know it, but there is a dating crisis in the West today. More and more men are choosing to remain single and women are complaining that men are not pursuing them anymore.
It depends on what you mean by “feminism.” With some definitions, I’m a feminist. With others, not so much.
I have a friend who was recently divorced, from a man with addictions and who was verbally abusive. As a Christian woman of several decades (although this was her second marriage, entered into hastily by her admission out of insecurity), she struggled very much with whether divorce in this case was biblical. But as the husband was absolutely unwilling to reconcile (and even admitted himself to be a narcissist at one point), as our pastor counseled that this was a type of emotional abandonment and as she had already endured years of abuse that had taken an emotional toll, she proceeded with divorcing him. Thankfully she’s been able to release the hurt and bitterness from those years and has retained a soft heart that is both inspiring and convicting.
My husband was an elder at our last church and has observed that often wives were the ones who initiated divorce, to the shock and surprise of their husbands who didn’t realize that anything was amiss. In these cases the issue wasn’t so much abuse as complacency. “Men coast,” as he put it. I can’t say if this is grounds for divorce but I suppose this could be considered a lack of emotional safety, if the wives feel that their husbands are no longer emotionally engaged in the relationship. I myself consider emotional safety to be paramount in marriage, and even use it to gauge which other relationships (friends, family, work) to invest in.
I’m glad your friend got it. And that’s sad about men coasting, but I have seen that happen. Thanks for your comment!