Happy Valentine’s Day: the Importance of Emotional Safety

You move differently with love when you know you are safe. We often speak of physical safety but emotional safety is a thing. As a woman, knowing that I have someone with whom my heart is safe makes me feel so secure. I can speak my mind and he’ll listen. I know that I can fall and he’ll pick me up. I can cry and he’ll wipe my tears. As a matter of fact, I know that he’s working hard to make sure that he wasn’t the reason the tears fell in the first place.

I’ve been seeing a lot of posts with “If he wanted to, he would” listed as the caption. This brings the idea of what it means to truly be emotionally safe into focus, for me. Emotional safety is not spoken about enough, and we need to start discussing this more. It looks like knowing that you are fully free to be yourself, express yourself, and knowing that your emotional health is safe and made a top priority. We all know about physical safety. We know that men are tasked with this role in society.

What we don’t see happening is giving men the quest to provide emotional safety for their partners. That endeavor usually falls on the woman in the relationship’s shoulders. However, if women are given this to do, and only women, that leaves the question, “Who is providing the emotional safety for women?”

What we do see, as far as emotional security goes, is regular methods of control inflicted upon women, by men. We see the absence of emotional safety for women at every turn. Instead what we regularly see programmed into us societally is power and control. Controlling women needs to stop happening. We don’t need to be controlled. I hear women say, “He knows how to handle me.” Or, a group of men will state to another man, “Can’t you control your woman, man?” Women are not entities that need to be tempered. We do not need to be humbled.

Throughout history we have been property, haven’t had access to the same rights, and been controlled to the point of abuse. We do not need to be controlled. We are not pets and we are not property.