Do you feel anxious, confused, or unsafe in your marriage, but you can’t quite explain why? These 7 emotional safety examples can help you find clarity when your husband’s words sound loving, but his actions leave you feeling betrayed.
Before we get to the list, to see if he’s using any one of the 19 types of emotional abuse tactics, take our free emotional abuse test.
7 Emotional Safety Examples
1. IF HIS ACTIONS DON’T MATCH HIS WORDS, TRUST WHAT YOU SEE
How it Sounds: “I love you and I’d never do anything to hurt you or our family.”
His promises may sound comforting, but his patterns are evidence. If you find yourself assessing his mood before you speak, rehearsing conversations afterward to figure out what went wrong, editing your needs to avoid a reaction, noticing something feels off about his relationship with a co-worker, or realizing the same issues never get resolved no matter how carefully you explain them, start trusting what you can see and feel.
Emotional safety begins with trusting your instincts.
2. IF HE USES MONEY OR OTHER RESOURCES TO CONTROL YOU, UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS
How it Sounds: “I’m just trying to take care of you. You don’t need to worry about the money.”
It may feel caring or protective for your husband to take care of the finances, but if he is secretive about his purchases, monitors every purchase you make, withholds money, interferes with your ability to work, or makes you feel dependent on him for basic needs, that is not protection. It is control.
Emotional safety means you have access to money, transportation, information, food, medical care, and communication without having to beg, panic, or wait for him to decide whether you deserve them.
3. If he USES STRESS, SADNESS, OR HELPLESSNESS TO EXPLOIT YOU, PROTECT YOUR ENERGY
How it Sounds: “I’m so overwhelmed lately. I just need your help, so I can recover.”
If your husband uses stress, sadness, illness, addiction, work, or confusion to make you responsible for his life, you may end up managing the children, the house, the appointments, the meals, his emotions, his recovery, and his reputation alone.
Emotional safety means you are seen as a person with needs, limits, and a life of your own, not just someone who’s there to “help him” manage his.
4. IF HE TWISTS THE TRUTH AND BLAMES YOUR “POOR” COMMUNICATION, BE STRATEGIC
How it Sounds: “You never told me you had a problem with my behavior.”
Husbands who are hiding addictions, emotional affairs, or coercive behavior often depend on confusion to keep the pattern going. He may have watched you cry, ask questions, explain your concerns repeatedly, or change yourself trying to fix the relationship, only to later claim he “didn’t know” there was a problem.
Emotional safety is not established by trying to perfectly explain why something hurts you. It’s recognizing that someone who benefits from deception has a strong incentive to pretend he never understood your concerns in the first place.
5. IF HE BLAMES YOU FOR HIS BETRAYALS, REMEMBER BLame is a deflection
How it Sounds: “I wouldn’t have done this if you were more affectionate, less critical, or easier to live with.”
If your husband blames you for his use of inappropriate material, cheating, emotional affairs, lies, or other betrayals, he is shifting responsibility for choices that were always his to make.
Emotional safety begins with releasing yourself from any responsibility for the choices he has made.
6. IF HE SUGGESTS COUPLE THERAPY, SEEK EMOTIONAL SAFETY FIRST
How it Sounds: “Let’s go to couples therapy so we can both work on our issues.”
If your husband is lying or withholding information that directly affects your reality, safety, health, finances, sexuality, or ability to make informed decisions, he is using coercive control. This is not a marriage issue. Traditional couples therapy is not designed to address ongoing deception and manipulation, especially when one person benefits from keeping the other and the therapist confused.
Determining what you need for emotional safety , comes before focusing on repairing the relationship.
7. IF HE LIES ABOUT YOU TO OTHERS, PROTECT YOUR PEACE
How it Sounds: “She’s unstable. She’s angry. She needs help. I’m really worried about her.”
If your husband feels he is losing control, he may try to control the story. He might tell friends, family, clergy, therapists, or even your children that you are irrational, bitter, unforgiving, mentally unwell, or abusive. You may feel the need to defend yourself, but you do not owe unsafe people access to you.
Emotional safety means choosing grounded support, protecting your peace, and letting your consistent actions speak over time.
Talk to women who can support you and validate you. We’d love to see you in a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.
It seems so unnatural to run to safety and then deal with the relationship – but it makes total sense. I feel like young girls need to learn more about how self care isn’t selfish but necessary! Especially in an abusive relationship. Loved this article!
For a long time I didn’t have any boundaries, and then I created artificial boundaries which I couldn’t enforce. Only now am I becoming a person of boundaries and it’s because of my desire for and belief in my right to safety. Thank you for this information!
My husband has been lying frequently to me about his tobacco addiction (He started smoking regularly 5 years ago, before that it was dipping). I’ve told him that the issue isn’t that he smokes, it is that he smokes and lies to me about it. He will say (un-coerced by me), “I’m quitting cold turkey.” And then I’ll find a pack of cigarettes hiding in his closet or in the garage, etc. When I ask him about it, he’ll deny it until I show him the cigarettes that I found. Then and only then will he confess. This has been going on for close to a year. But it has been a pattern in his life for as long as I’ve known him, the lying. Unless I catch him “red-handed”, he won’t confess and repent. In the past it’s been online infidelity as well. I had proof of website history, but he would blame it on the kids or offer up some other excuse. For most of our marriage, he password protected his computer. phone, and email accounts, and when I asked him for his passwords, he’d tell me “It’s none of my business”, or “It’s my work phone and it’s against company policy.” Because I need emotional safety, I’ve recently have I put my foot down and made him write down all his passwords (after like, 20 years of marriage). I’m pretty sure he has kicked his bad online habits, but his continued lies about other things make me unsure what I can and what I can’t believe. After writing all this out, I’m thinking I sound pretty naive, don’t I? But I have NO ONE to talk to. I don’t have family, and his family is my only family. We are all professing Christians, and he is a leader in the church and in the workplace, so I’m pretty sure everyone will downplay my concerns. I’ve started to talk to a Christian therapist, hoping that I can resolve some of my anxiety and give me the tools to work this out. (I’m writing this hoping someone will just hear me–he lied again to me today (multiple times) until I confronted him with the evidence, so I guess that is why I’m on your website trying to process the pain here.)
Have you considered joining Betrayal Trauma Group an online support group for women who are being lied to by men?
I’m so sorry for your pain. I experienced similar things in my marriage. The scary thing is I saw counselors on and off for 16 years and most of them minimized or justified his actions. So few counselors that I have seen really recognize this type of behavior as abuse and to me recognizing it as abuse was a game changer. I recommend getting the book “Why Does He Do That?”. I needed the book in my first year of marriage because it identified and put language to what was going on in my marriage. I couldn’t even do that, but the writer has worked with over 2k abusive men (if I’m remembering correctly), so he has systematically identified the types of behaviors that are consistent in abusive men.
Yes, we love that book! You can find that book and others we recommend for victims of emotional and psychological abuse on btr.org/books