Reducing relational hazards, understanding ourselves, and creating the conditions where curiosity can survive.
One of the things I find fascinating about relationships is that people are communicating all the time.
They communicate through words, certainly, but also through timing, silence, distance, generosity, certainty, humour, boundaries, withdrawal, repair attempts, and sometimes through the absence of repair. Communication is rarely missing. The more interesting question is whether we understand what is being communicated, and if we don’t, whether we can remain curious long enough to discover there may be more to the story.
That is often harder than it sounds.
Human beings are remarkably skilled at detecting danger. We instinctively scan for rejection, criticism, exclusion, dishonesty, abandonment, and threat. In many situations, that instinct serves us well.
Relationships, however, ask something different of us. They ask us to tolerate uncertainty long enough to wonder:
What if this behaviour isn’t only about me?
What if this makes sense from their perspective?
What if there is something understandable beneath what I initially experience as hurtful, frustrating, disappointing, or confusing?
I’ve come to think that one of the purposes of relational safety is not to eliminate conflict. Perhaps its purpose is to create enough safety that curiosity can survive conflict. Because understanding becomes much harder when the nervous system believes it needs protection more than connection.
Why Relational Safety Matters
Many years ago, I was introduced to the workplace concept known as the Hierarchy of Controls.
The logic is straightforward. If people are exposed to harmful chemicals, dangerous substances, excessive noise, or other hazards, we don’t simply tell them to cope better. We identify the hazard, ask questions, assess risk, and reduce exposure wherever possible.
Why?
Because we understand that long-term exposure affects health.
Chemicals do not need our awareness to influence the body. Their effects accumulate whether we notice them or not.
I’ve often wondered whether relationships deserve the same level of consideration.
After all, relationships affect more than our emotions. They influence our physiology. When people remain exposed to chronic criticism, uncertainty, contempt, emotional unpredictability, rejection, isolation, or unresolved conflict, the body’s stress systems become more active. Cortisol and adrenaline are associated with stress responses, while supportive relationships are associated with systems involved in trust, bonding, and emotional regulation.
Just as a workplace safety professional becomes curious about chemical exposure, perhaps we need to become curious about relational exposure.
What am I repeatedly being exposed to?
How is it affecting my nervous system?
What impact is it having on my ability to trust, regulate, connect, and remain curious?
The goal is not to remove every challenge from relationships. The goal is to reduce unnecessary hazards so that understanding remains possible.
We Are Always Communicating
One of the things I have learned as a therapist is that people are almost always communicating something, even when they are not speaking.
Sometimes communication appears as anger. Sometimes certainty. Sometimes avoidance. Sometimes distance. Sometimes it is a smile resting gently on top of tremendous sadness.
Part of my work involves paying attention to these forms of communication.
The rebel who refuses to cooperate.
The protector who changes the subject whenever something important gets close.
The person who insists they are fine while their eyes seem to be saying something entirely different.
Over time, I have developed tremendous respect for these parts of people. Not because they always create healthy outcomes, but because they almost always make sense once we understand what they are trying to accomplish. Beneath many of our behaviours sits an attempt to protect something important.
That changes the question many people assume from:
“What’s wrong with this person?”
to:
“What is this person trying to protect?”
I’ve found that question creates far more understanding than criticism ever has.
The Difference Between Therapy and Relationship
In therapy, people give me permission to lean into those questions.
They arrive with a willingness to explore, reflect, and understand themselves more deeply.
Relationships outside the therapy room can be different.
Sometimes we notice the sadness. We notice the withdrawal. We notice someone moving away from the very thing they say they want. We sense there is more beneath the surface and find ourselves wondering about what remains unsaid.
The challenge is that understanding cannot be forced.
I’ve often found this difficult, not because I need disclosure or answers, but because I have witnessed how deeply understanding can transform connection. At the same time, I’ve learned that curiosity requires consent.
We can create safety.
We can ask questions.
We can extend invitations.
But we cannot make another person explore parts of themselves they are not yet ready to meet.
This is a theme I explored in When “I Need Time to Process” Might Be Protecting. Curiosity can be invited, but understanding cannot be imposed.
When Protection Replaces Curiosity
One of the patterns I’ve observed repeatedly is that people often long for the very thing they struggle to receive.
Someone may deeply desire connection while simultaneously creating distance. Someone else may long for a healthy relationship and then become uncomfortable when a relationship begins to feel genuinely available.
I’ve often observed that the nervous system can hold two seemingly contradictory desires at the same time. One part of us reaches toward connection while another reaches toward protection. Beneath many relationship struggles is a quiet tension:
“Come closer.”
“Please don’t hurt me.”
From the outside, this can look confusing. A person may want intimacy while protecting themselves from it. They may long to be understood while avoiding vulnerability. They may seek connection while distrusting it.
I don’t believe this happens because people are difficult.
I think it often happens because protection once served an important purpose.
The more I understand relationships, the more interested I become in asking:
What is this behaviour trying to accomplish?
What is this person trying to protect?
Because beneath many behaviours that appear avoidant, reactive, controlling, resistant, or distant lies an attempt to create safety. The behaviour may no longer be serving the person. It may even be harming the relationship. But that does not mean it never made sense.
This connects closely to what I explored in What Feels Familiar Isn’t Always Home. Sometimes what feels comfortable is not what is healthiest. Sometimes what we’re protecting belongs to an experience that became familiar long before the current relationship began.
The Relationship With Self
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate is that relational safety does not exist only between people.
It also exists within us.
The same curiosity I bring to understanding another person often becomes valuable when directed inward.
When I feel hurt, I’ve learned that my first task is not always figuring out what the other person did. Often it’s becoming curious about my own experience.
I find myself asking questions such as:
Why does this hurt so much?
Why do I care so deeply about this person?
Why do I want to pull away?
How do I balance wanting someone in my life while knowing I cannot force connection?
Why did I trust so quickly?
Why is not being ignored important to me?
Why am I nervous about seeing this person again?
I’ve found that these questions rarely provide immediate answers. What they often offer instead is a deeper understanding of myself.
Many people approach themselves in ways they would never approach a friend. With judgement instead of curiosity. With criticism instead of understanding. With certainty instead of questions.
Yet if we saw a friend withdrawing, becoming defensive, or struggling with trust, we would probably wonder what they were protecting.
Why shouldn’t we offer ourselves the same curiosity?
Perhaps one of the most important relationships we will ever have is the relationship with our own protectors, rebels, fears, hopes, and longings.
The Hierarchy of Relational Safety™
If relationships influence our nervous systems the way workplaces influence physical safety, perhaps they deserve a similar framework.
Level One: Eliminate
Identify behaviours that consistently damage the space between people.
Contempt.
Mockery.
Name-calling.
Threats.
Punishment.
Chronic criticism.
These behaviours activate protection and make curiosity difficult.
The first question is simple:
What needs to stop?
Level Two: Substitute
Replace assumptions with questions, certainty with curiosity, blame with exploration, and winning with understanding.
Relationships become safer when people are more interested in discovering than deciding.
Level Three: Engineer
Build structures that support connection.
Check-ins.
Boundaries.
Shared expectations.
Repair conversations.
Intentional time together.
Just as safe workplaces rely on systems rather than hope, healthy relationships benefit from habits that support connection before problems arise.
Level Four: Understand
Become curious about each other’s worlds.
What happened for you?
What meaning did you make from that?
What feels threatening?
What feels safe?
What am I missing?
The same questions apply internally.
What am I protecting?
What hurts here?
What matters so much?
What is this reaction trying to tell me?
Level Five: Repair
Every meaningful relationship experiences rupture.
A misunderstanding.
A disappointment.
A missed expectation.
A moment when two people stop seeing one another clearly.
The question is never whether rupture occurs.
The question is what happens next.
Do we move toward curiosity or certainty?
Toward understanding or protection?
Toward one another or further apart?
This is a theme I will explore more deeply in The ART of Repair™, because relationships are not strengthened by avoiding rupture. They are strengthened by what happens afterward.
Finding the Good
Perhaps this is the question I return to most often:
Can we find the good in what another person’s behaviour is trying to accomplish?
Not excuse harmful behaviour.
Not ignore impact.
Not abandon accountability or responsibility.
Simply remain curious long enough to wonder whether there is something understandable beneath it.
It’s easy to find the dark.
In many ways, we’re wired for it.
What’s harder is asking:
What purpose is this serving?
What fear is being managed?
What is this person trying to preserve?
What is this behaviour helping them avoid?
And perhaps the most difficult question of all:
What if the good I discover isn’t necessarily good for me, but makes perfect sense for them?
That question has changed many of my relationships.
Not because it guarantees agreement.
Not because it prevents hurt.
But because it creates understanding.
The Space Between Us™
The longer I do this work, the more I find myself respecting the parts of people that are trying to keep them safe.
The rebel.
The protector.
The certainty.
The withdrawal.
The sadness hiding behind the smile.
Not because these parts always help, but because they almost always make sense.
I’ve come to think that relational safety is not the absence of conflict, disappointment, or discomfort. It is the presence of enough curiosity that we remain interested in understanding what is happening, even when it hurts.
That curiosity matters between people.
It also matters within ourselves.
Because every relationship asks us to balance two responsibilities at the same time: caring for the relationship we have with others and caring for the relationship we have with ourselves.
Perhaps that balance is the real work.
To remain open without abandoning ourselves.
To remain curious without forcing understanding.
To care deeply while accepting that connection cannot be controlled.
And to keep asking questions, not because every question has an answer, but because curiosity itself creates the conditions where understanding, connection, and healing become possible.
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