Can you love someone and still feel chronically unsafe in the relationship?

Full question: “I know my partner loves me. I love them too. But I keep feeling insecure and unsure. I don’t know if it’s my trauma or if I’m in a relationship that’s not actually right for me.”

Answer:

It’s absolutely possible to love someone and feel chronically unsafe with them, especially if your nervous system has learned to associate love with unpredictability, withdrawal, or emotional inconsistency. In that case, your body might brace for rupture even when you’re reaching for closeness. It’s confusing and very, very real.

But here’s the nuance: just because love and safety can exist separately doesn’t mean they should.

We tend to ask ourselves, Is this my trauma, or is this relationship just not right for me? — as if those are mutually exclusive options. But the truth is often more layered. Sometimes, your partner’s behavior pokes at a raw place inside of you. Other times, your body is trying to alert you to something that isn’t working. And often, it’s both.

So instead of asking, “Is it me or them?” try this:

What version of myself does this relationship bring forward?

Am I more regulated, more expressed, more at ease?

Or am I more anxious, more confused, more shut down?

The nervous system doesn’t lie. You may not have words for what feels off, but your body remembers. And when love asks you to stay somewhere your body keeps flinching from, it’s worth listening.

Of course, no relationship is perfectly safe all the time. But safety isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s the presence of repair. It’s knowing you can bring your full self forward and not be punished for it.

So the question is not whether you love this person. It’s whether this relationship is loving you back in a way that your nervous system can receive.

Love is not a test of endurance.