FEAR

What Does FEAR Do?

That was FEAR. A real risk and danger. FEAR is a visceral experience. Panksepp says FEAR serves a useful purpose for survival. We survive by allowing FEAR to motivate us to avoid danger and to anticipate threats. Fortunately, most FEAR inside a marriage doesn’t involve sharks or rip currents—but it can feel just as real.

Emotional Predators Can Lurk in Marriage

Last month we explored how attachment distress creates protest. Sometimes those protests escalate into something more dangerous. Emotional injuries become emotional predators.

I have found two primary sources of FEAR in marriage. One is persistent, real threats. These are the escalated conflicts where:

• Contempt is fueled by deep insecurity that needs to prove our partner inferior.
• Chronic Anger and explosive unpredictability push our partner into defensive protection.
• Physical and verbal violence that can be both unpredictable and recurrent. 

The second source is a one-time event that triggers a partner’s past trauma. Intellectually, the traumatized can see that the singular event has passed and that regrets have been shared. But the past injuries keep the wound open. They just cannot feel safe. 

• A sexual affair is a reminder of past sexual betrayals and abuses. 
• Financial deceptions and addictions are reminiscent of past abandonments.

Regardless of the source of FEAR, safety erodes. The question in your mind becomes, “Am I safe with you?”

FEAR Changes the Brain

These experiences of unpredictability and threats can lead to hypervigilance—an emotional state in which a person is constantly on alert, looking for danger, assuming threats, and even catastrophizing benign situations. Hypervigilance does not allow a person enough quiet in their mind to feel safe. Your mind assumes harm is imminent. 

This can lead to a state of mind that the Gottmans, in their research, called Negative Sentiment Override. From this vantage point, you have begun to lose sight of any good in the marriage. FEAR narrows your vision, making protection take priority over connection. 

The Difference Between Danger and Threat

A real challenge in managing FEAR is overcompensating for perceived threats when there is no real danger.  This is not to minimize real danger or past traumas that contribute to perceptions of threat, but assuming risks when there are none will limit healing disconnections. Before concluding that your marriage is unsafe, pause and ask…

• Is my partner working on or consistently taking ownership of their mistakes? Do they avoid defensiveness?
• Does my partner make changes and show a willingness to be proactive in avoiding past hurts?
• Is my partner demonstrating self-control through emotional self-regulation, taking time-outs, and avoiding impulsive decisions?

Affirmative responses to these questions can offer reassurance that your marriage is safe. This can give you confidence to work on soothing your own threat responses and move towards trust in the possibilities of safety between you both.

When FEAR is Warning You

But negative responses to the questions could be warning signals that threats remain present and FEAR is warranted. One real and imminent threat in marriages is domestic violence. If your marriage is experiencing physical violence, seek help immediately. Seek safety. You can call the 988 hotline or 1-800-799-7233, the National Domestic Abuse Hotline, for help. There is no acceptable reason for violence within intimate relationships. Safety requires separation.

Safety is Built in Small Moments

But assuming there is some affirmation of safety within the relationship, how do you grow security? Safety is built in the small moments of the marriage. Speak in gentle tones. Make sure your words and behaviors are predictable. Remain emotionally available and practice active listening. When you make a mistake or inadvertently step on your partner’s toes, be quick to repair. These seemingly simple behaviors soothe FEAR. 

Conflict is still going to happen. So don’t think that safety in marriage is the absence of conflict. Safety is the confidence that conflict will not destroy the relationship. Safety will not be built in magnanimous gestures or in the heat of a crisis. Safety is built over Tuesday dinner, bedtime routines, and sitting on the back porch. 

FEAR loves Assumptions

Curiosity is also one of our greatest antidotes to FEAR because it interrupts emotional escalation and disconnection. FEAR presses you to assume and believe that you are certain about your partner’s behavior. This closes doors. But SEEKING (see our first blog in this series) opens your marriage to possibility. It allows you to stay present and consider alternatives. 

The assumptions of FEAR go both ways. I can either presume how my partner is going to react so I can avoid it, or I can make assumptions about my partner’s behavior. Either way, the solution is to be curious. Leave room for surprise, and use your imagination to consider more graceful interpretations of their actions. Both move you to greater understanding and connection. 

Safety is Not the Absence of FEAR

FEAR makes us ask, “Am I safe?” Good marriages find ways to say “Yes!”. Safety in marriage is not the absence of FEAR. It is the presence of a partner who is predictable, available, and curious. Two people who are committed to being a safe place for their partner soothe FEAR. 

Here is this month’s activity.