Emotional safety is often lost through small, repeated behaviors.
3 Everyday Habits That Undermine Emotional Safety
It's often not the conflict itself, but the habits surrounding it, that slowly block emotional safety and connection in relationships.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | Last Updated:
When people say they want safer relationships, they often mean they want better communication, deeper intimacy or fewer conflicts. And while those goals matter, psychological research suggests emotional safety is shaped just as much by habits as it is influenced by communication.
Many of the behaviors that undermine safety are not intentionally or overtly harmful. In fact, a lot of them are protective strategies that we learned in earlier relationships, our family environments or any other dynamic where closeness felt uncertain. Over time, these learned habits can breed unpredictability, withdrawal or emotional risk, even when care and commitment are present in a relationship.
Here are three emotional habits that research shows can erode relational safety, and what psychology suggests instead.
1. The Habit Of Stopping Yourself From Expressing Your Needs
One of the biggest threats to emotional safety is, as trivial as it may sound, an unspoken need. People often withhold needs to avoid conflict, rejection or feeling like a burden. For a while, it might even work for them.
According to research from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships on attachment and communication, secure individuals can easily express their needs through self-disclosure and use various conflict-resolution strategies. This is because they view conflict as an opportunity to adjust to each other's needs and increase intimacy.
On the other hand, individuals with avoidant or anxious tendencies may downplay their needs as a way to maintain connection or control discomfort. Initially, the willingness to adapt or compromise might even look like emotional maturity. (Take my Modern Stoic Personality Test to know if your lack of expression is a conscious decision or a coping mechanism.)
However, a suppressed need does not disappear, no matter how much you try. Instead, these needs just keep accumulating over time. Studies on emotional suppression show that unexpressed emotions increase physiological stress and resentment. When needs finally surface, they often come out indirectly through irritation, withdrawal or passive communication.
From the other partner's perspective, this might make your shared relationship feel unsafe. If the emotional climate shifts without warning, due to needs that were never expressed in the first place, all moments of calmness can feel like landmines waiting to detonate.
Psychologically, relationships feel safer when partners can trust that concerns will be expressed directly and early, rather than stored and released under pressure. Interrupting the habit of self-silencing means allowing needs to exist without shame before they harden into resentment.
2. The Habit Of Using Emotional Distance To Regain Control
Another habit that undermines safety is emotional withdrawal during moments of discomfort. This can look like shutting down, becoming overly logical, changing the subject or physically disengaging. Withdrawal is a strategy used commonly to manage emotional overload, especially for individuals who learned that closeness leads to conflict or loss of autonomy.
And, although distancing may reduce anxiety in the moment, it often increases insecurity in the long-run in the relationship. According to a 2023 study published in Current Opinion in Psychology, perceived partner responsiveness is a core predictor of relationship safety. In other words, if one partner withdraws without explanation, the other will experience uncertainty, even if no harm is intended.
Importantly, withdrawal shouldn't be confused with or veiled as "taking space" to center oneself, because the former happens without warning and for an indefinite period of time. And, quite often, withdrawing can also be weaponized as punishment in a relationship.
Safety grows when partners can tolerate emotional discomfort without disappearing or needing to resolve everything immediately. And that requires staying emotionally reachable, even while regulating.
3. The Habit Of Over-Explaining Or Defending
Many people respond to vulnerability by explaining themselves in detail. They clarify their intentions, justify their feelings and build airtight arguments for why they are not wrong. And, while explanations can be useful, they often replace presence rather than support it.
In reality, feeling understood and emotionally mirrored is a much better predictor of trust and safety than problem-solving in a relationship. Over-explaining can unintentionally signal defensiveness or emotional distance. This habit often develops in people who grew up in environments where emotions were questioned, minimized or challenged. As a result, they learned that feelings need evidence to be accepted.
In adult relationships, this pattern can make vulnerability feel transactional and turn emotional moments into debates about who was right or wrong. But no matter whose favor the argument goes in, the shared bond always ends up being the collateral.
Why These Habits Feel So Automatic (And How To Change Them)
These emotional habits are rarely conscious choices. As mentioned before, they're often learned adaptations that manifest in our behavior without our conscious knowledge. However, correcting these behaviors isn't a flip of the switch. Our habits do not need to disappear completely, and they need to become flexible before they can become reflexive.
Research on attachment, communication and emotion regulation highlights three consistent predictors of emotional safety:
- Responsiveness. Feeling that emotions will be acknowledged rather than dismissed.
- Consistency. Knowing that closeness will not be withdrawn unpredictably.
- Authenticity. Trusting that needs and boundaries will be expressed honestly, not indirectly.
These qualities are strengthened not by doing more, but by stopping habits that block them. Emotional safety is built less by what you say in big moments and more by how you show up when discomfort appears. And when these habits soften, relationships often feel safer without any dramatic changes.
Take the science-inspired Inner Voice Archetype Test to know how much of your inner voice is reflected in your relationship habits.
The wrong relationship habits chip away at its level of authenticity. Take the research-informed Authenticity In Relationship Test to know more about yourself.