#26 - Navigating & Negotiating Women's Needs for Safety

Welcome to Beyond Bitchy, mastering the art of boundaries with Vicki Tidwell Palmer. Do you think of personal and relationship boundaries as harsh, rigid or bitchy, or do you feel clueless about how boundaries work? Whether you think boundaries are bitchy or baffling, we will give you a fresh vision of personal limits as a source of freedom and liberation. Every week, Vicki shares expert information about how you can master the art of boundaries so you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. Hi, this is Vicki Tidwell Palmer and welcome to episode number 26 of the Beyond Bitchy podcast. As you know, if you've been listening for a while, I dedicate the first episode of each month to the topic of women and boundaries and this one is inspired by a recent incident in my own life that pointed out to me that there are really stark differences between the way women and men perceive safety or danger or their relative need for safety and also how do they interact around those issues, how do they negotiate or come up with agreements around areas where one feels pretty safe or perfectly safe and the other does not feel safe at all. And this can come up in surprising ways which you'll see when I share this incident that happened that I alluded to earlier, how it can be very complex and sometimes you don't even realize until later when you have time to reflect about it that it really was a mismatch or a difference between a perception of safety and danger. And of course, what all this has to do with boundaries is that fundamentally boundaries are about protection, they're about safety, they're about creating safety for ourselves and for others. So if women and men have a different perception around safety in general, then you can imagine that that's going to at least from time to time cause differences, cause some challenges and maybe cause some pretty intense conflict between the two of them around navigating situations where safety may be or is an issue. Now to be fair, I am generalizing a bit here. There are some women who are higher risk takers like I think about base jumpers or women who are astronauts or women who are involved in extreme sports. I mean, there's a lot of examples where some women are higher risk takers than most other women and there are some men who may tend to be more safety seeking than the average man. However, in general, I believe that women do and must scan for safety more than men do. And I'm going to talk later in the episode or share with you some statistics. They're rather sobering statistics, they're so sobering that even as I was preparing to record this episode, I just noticed that my mood started to change and we know when you think about statistics involving women and violence of any kind, they can be a downer. And so it just makes sense that women are more focused on safety in general and I talked about this in episode four, which was the first episode about women and boundaries. It's not that men don't scan for safety, it's not that they don't care about it, but they do it in different ways. For example, one of the ways I think that's kind of common for men is that they often, if they're in a public place or they're in a restaurant, for example, they will often want to be seated where they can see the exit or the door. And I think this is kind of, it's almost like ingrained or it's sort of in their DNA that they want to see who comes in the door and figure out whether or not they're going to be safe. And you know, some women might do that as well, but that's a typical thing that I noticed that men do. However, they don't scan in other ways that women tend to do. So they're not going to tend to size up necessarily someone coming toward them in the middle of the day on a public street in the same way that a woman might. And the other thing about it is that this kind of scanning or awareness of safety, it doesn't pervade their lives, men's lives as much on a day-to-day basis or an hour by hour or even their minute-by-minute experience in the way it impacts women. So having said that, if you're a woman who tends to have a lower need for safety than your partner, regardless of their gender, then I invite you to listen to what I'm going to share with you today with an awareness that in any couple of relationships, there will usually be one person who has a higher need for safety than the other person. In the same way, there's usually one person in a couple of relationships who has a stronger sex driver, has a higher need for sexual contact than the other partner. So here's what happened, and this happened pretty recently. My husband and I were in Los Angeles and we were trying to get to a certain place that was in a pretty busy area of Los Angeles. And I looked at a map just to try to orient to where we were because it really is relevant to what happened and our differing perceptions about what happened. And I looked at a map and I think for those of you who live in LA, this will be very familiar to you. I think we were probably either at or very near the corner of South Fairfax and Beverly. But anyway, regardless of specifically what the intersection, what it was, it was two very large streets. And I'm guessing that they were probably six lanes across. So three lanes, and you have to use your imagination a bit to kind of set up the scene here. So there's three lanes going one way, there's three lanes going the other way, and there's no s-planade in the middle of the street. And both of the streets are the same. So the one that's going perpendicular to the one I just described, the same thing. There's three lanes going one way, there's three lanes going the other way. So we had to stop it at a stoplight. And we had noticed even before this happened that in a parking lot that we had passed a few minutes before, there was this really large group of people and some of them had signs. And I think we just kind of made a mental note of it. And it looked like now in retrospect, I realized they were all gearing up to protest. So when we got to this intersection that I described, we were stopped at the red light. And literally while we were stopped at the red light, a group of protestors, and they were completely prepared. Most of them had these bright neon green vests on. They knew exactly what they were doing. And essentially they blocked off the street that we were getting ready to turn on. So it wasn't the street we were on, but it was the street we wanted to turn on to. And my husband was driving to go down to where we wanted to get to. And it created, as you can imagine, it created a huge mess. Because even as they are lining themselves up, armed to arm, to block off this street, there are people coming toward them and not fast, but they wanted to go down that same street. So we're essentially blocked. We can't go forward because there are cars in the intersection because they can't get through because of these protesters that just block off the street so that they could do their march or whatever they were doing. So as you can imagine, when you've got three lanes of traffic, you've got people that can't go, the lights green, the traffic's not moving. People start honking, people start rolling down their windows and yelling out the windows, whatever they're yelling. And as this is all happening, I can just feel myself starting to get, I would just say fear was probably the predominant emotion. And it's not because I necessarily felt like we were in danger because there wasn't anything dangerous or violent happening, and nothing did happen during this whole incident. But it's the kind of situation that can very easily sort of spiral out of control, especially when people are getting agitated and they're starting to yell and they're starting to honk their horns and people can't get to where they want to go. So I'm feeling a little bit of activation and fear around this. But I just decide, you know, there's really not much that we can do about this. And so I started, I got on my phone, I was doing something and I was trying to just stay calm. And we were pretty much mostly calm in the car. eventually people moved out of the intersection and then they'll light turned green and we were able to go forward and in my mind because I was just thinking about probably what I would have done if I had been the driver that if I had been the driver of the car would have just driven straight because in my mind it's like okay there's a lot of drama happening here I don't want to be involved in it I don't want to be in the middle of it so I'm just going to go straight and we're probably going to have to come back later to do whatever it was that we were going to do but my husband had a different thought and part of his thought in retrospect I can somewhat understand his reason for thinking this on the other side of the street where he wanted to turn there were cars going that way so on the street that was blocked off there were still cars going in the other direction that we wanted to go in they were moving and he just decided that he was going to try to go down the street that we wanted to go down even though the protesters were standing there so he sort of inches forward as if he's going to go into that lane and of course as soon as the people who are blocking off the street see that they even extend farther down so that they're completely blocking off the lane he wants to go into and once he made that decision I think I just pretty much internally not so much externally but I just internally lost it because I was truly in shock that he chose to do that because never in a thousand years would that have been my choice to do it and this is another lesson in how when you are highly activated or you're triggered in some way or you're just not at your best your brain goes offline and then you stop thinking in a rational way which is exactly what happened to me because in my own mind what I made up was that he was being aggressive I made up that he had was pretty much insane or some version of that for doing what he did and so I reacted accordingly and I am not proud to say that this resulted in a very very long argument and also some hours of disconnection including physical disconnection for both of us which was probably a good idea because we really weren't getting anywhere so what happened here and by the way you know eventually probably within about two minutes he realized you know this is this is not going anywhere so he turned the car and just went down the street that you know was clear and that was the end of that we left and we went to do something else so I want to sum up some things about this story that are very relevant because there was a period of time before I came back to my senses where I completely believed the story that I made up and the story that I made up was that he was out of control that he had basically lost his mind why was he putting me in danger I mean there were all of these thoughts that I had about it on the other hand what he thought and how he saw it was you know the other side of the street is moving and so why can't we also move in the other direction on this side of the street sounds very logical and actually it is somewhat logical although you're dealing with kind of a illogical situation the other thing and I think this is even the more important factor in this whole story he really didn't perceive that there was danger and the truth was there was no danger there was nothing dangerous going on people were irritated but you know people get irritated and angry every day and so later on when we both I really actually need to say myself because I don't think he was all that stressed out about it when I calm down a little bit and I asked him because I I had to ask myself later you know on a scale of one to ten how much did this really trigger me or or how kind of distressed was I and I rated it is about a six or seven on a scale of one to ten and it was mostly about me making up stuff that hadn't even happened probably because you know I remember when Rodney King got beaten up in LA or all the other race riots and everything else I've seen in my you know almost 60 years and so I have a lot of negative history to draw on which is really not helpful in the moment because none of that was happening it really was just a simple peaceful protest so my husband did not perceive danger in the same way that I did and that was really the more important piece of it and also why he chose to do what he did and it really got me to thinking and asking myself why is it that he and I had these very very different perceptions about what was going on and I realized that I think there are just you know personal differences and I think even greater than that there are gender differences in the way that men and women size up situations probably people lots of things environments and determine whether or not they're safe and there are some very concrete reasons for that as I mentioned before in terms of statistics and I'll get to those in a moment so if you remember probably in the very first foundation episodes of the podcast I talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and if you're not familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs you can just imagine a pyramid and at the very bottom and the base of this pyramid are very basic human needs for safety for food shelter and those kinds of things and Maslow's idea was that all humans have needs and the needs can be put on a hierarchy or on levels of importance and the ones at the bottom of the pyramid and those are for the basic human needs food shelter clothing safety those are the kinds of needs we must have met before we can move on to higher level needs like the need for connection or the need for even higher levels like for spiritual transformation those would be in self-actualization which would be the highest needs and so there is this hierarchy of needs and safety is at the bottom so safety in terms of a human need it's just basic it's something that we must have and I bring it up today because when you think about this mismatch in terms of perceiving safety between men and women and there's a difference in perception there's probably also going to end up being conflict in the same way that I described what what happened between my husband and I because his need for safety or how he perceives safety is much different than mine but if I or whoever is in that relationship who feels less safe if those needs are not somehow attended to or dealt with there's going to be a pretty large problem because safety is such a fundamental need that we all have so thinking about safety and boundaries I want to talk about three specific boundaries and how this shows up for women in episode number two I talked about the five kinds of boundaries and the two functions of boundaries but I want to review three specific boundaries that have to do with women and safety and those are the physical boundary the sexual boundary and then also the listening boundary the other two that I won't cover today are the talking boundary and the personal energy boundary just because they're not as relevant but if you're curious about that you can go back to episode number two and listen to that episode so in terms of the physical boundary the example that I gave above is a great example of that that was all about my perception of my physical safety and other everyday activities that women experience that bring up issues of safety could be walking alone on a street especially after dark getting in an elevator alone with one or several men or even being by yourself in an elevator and then being concerned about who's going to get on the elevator later after you're already on it also just being in public places like being in a parking garage or parking lots these are all situations and environments where women most women are keenly aware of their surroundings of who's around them of their preparedness to be safe so you know most women I know they leave a place and they've already got their keys in their hand so when they get to their car they are they're ready to go you know these days when you have like remote access that you can get without putting your key in the car makes it a little bit easier but I think for most men unless you've I've really are close to women or a woman who's shared this with you you probably wouldn't have any idea that women are that keen and alert to their environment and again there are very specific reasons for that that I'll talk about later so that's the physical boundary And there's so many examples of that. I just wanted to give you a few. It could have been have to do with how close someone gets to her in a conversation or in a public situation. You know, that reminds me. I want to give you all an update. Some of you have been listening to the podcast from the beginning. You may remember when I was probably when I was talking about the physical boundary. I mentioned that I was at a restaurant that I had never been to. It was actually a hotel restaurant. And the waiter touched me on the shoulder. And he didn't know me at all. And I was giving that as an example of someone being in a very mild way. But he was being bound to list around the physical boundary. And I don't want to get into all the variables about this because there are cultural differences-- not in this particular case, but there are cultural differences. There are very different perceptions about physical boundaries. But I talked about this. I gave an example. So I want to give you an update about that. Because actually this was in Los Angeles when I was there last time. We'd say it at the same hotel. And the very same waiter waited on us. And this time, he didn't touch me, but he touched my husband's shoulder. But I have to tell you that I think because of really processing it and talking about it. And kind of knowing that this person-- he didn't even know it, but he had starred on the podcast. I just had-- I don't know why. I just had the warmest feeling toward him. And he's doing whatever he did. I just thought, you know, this is just who this man is. He just likes to touch people's shoulders. And I don't perceive him as being threatening or whatever, but it was just kind of an interesting follow-up. OK. So let's come back. We talked about the physical boundary. So let's talk about the sexual boundary. So women are focused on sexual safety in ways that men just aren't. And there are some very specific reasons for that when it comes to sexual contact. First of all, women are much more likely to experience sexual assault and rape than men are. And I truly believe that women in men we carry a kind of a cultural, a global awareness of our vulnerability. Carl Jung called it the collective unconscious. And so it may sound kind of woo-woo or airy-fairy. But let me just bear with me for a minute. It's this awareness, I'll just speak as a woman, that you know that there have been centuries and centuries of women being oppressed in different ways, whether it's intellectually, financially, physically, sexually. And I do believe that women carry that really in their DNA. So there's kind of this very, this deep knowing that you're part of that whole and of your vulnerability. And so there's that. And there's also the very real fact that sexually, it takes women much longer to become aroused and to be ready for intercourse, for example. And that's a whole other issue of safety. And I believe, you know, I don't know exactly what the reasons are for that. My friend Sherry Winston, who we did a podcast together a while back, and you can find it if you look in the archives. She may have some theories about why this is true. But I think that in general, there's something that's sort of evolutionarily, is that a word? Evolutionarily relevant here. Because as we all know, women have very few opportunities to actually get pregnant and to bear a child. We pretty much get one, I guess, maybe two eggs per month during the fertile times of our adult life. But if you think about sperm and just the vast quantities of sperm that occur in one incident of ejaculation, you can kind of see where this comes from. That women are going to be much more selective, even just biologically around sex and sexuality and sexual contact with men. And I do think that this also goes to safety. Because women need to feel safe in order to be sexual. That's not necessarily true for men. And of course, again, I'm generalizing, but in general, it's true. And then lastly, let's talk about the listening boundary. So women are often subjected to very unconscious or sometimes deliberate sexual comments, jokes, questionable comments that you're kind of like, really? I'm not sure. It's like it didn't necessarily sound sexual, but it felt sexual. And usually, if you think of the word, if the word Iki comes to mind for you, and that would be for probably native English speakers, would only think of that word. But if Iki comes to mind, you're probably dealing with someone who's being sexually boundaryless with you, or any comments that just feel uncomfortable, or it used to be, I don't know if this happens so much anymore, it used to happen more. I think when we only add landlines, you would get obscene phone calls. I would guess if you surveyed 10 women, I'd be shocked if less than nine out of 10 of them have not received just some random stranger obscene phone call in their life, or getting inappropriate text or sexualized comments that are inappropriate from either strangers, or maybe somebody that you know, women get this in business quite a bit, or making comments on your appearance. What comes to mind is that there was a very recent video that where they had several female political candidates that talked about the kind of frankly abuse that they had experienced mostly on social media, or sometimes by email, where people would, one of them specifically, somebody sent them an email and started giving them tips on how they could look better, how they needed to get a new hairstyle, and they needed to do their makeup differently, or people would comment on the candidate's sexual desirability saying things that I can't even repeat here because they were so highly charged and inappropriate. And these are the kinds of things that are sadly very common that women have to deal with, and another example of why safety is more present in a woman's experience and in her awareness than I think that it is for men. So I mentioned before I wanna give you some statistics, and from the National Domestic Violence Hotline website, so these are more geared toward women in relationships, so nearly three in 10 women are about 29% and then about 10% of men in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by a partner. So this would be an intimate partner. From 1994 to 2010, about four in five victims of intimate partner violence were female. So that's a pretty high number, that's about 80%. Nearly one in five women, which is a little over 18%, and about 1.4% of men have been raped in their lifetime, and that's by anybody, so that's not just a partner. Nearly one in 10 women in the US, about 9.4% have been raped by an intimate partner in her lifetime. So that's almost 10% of women who were raped by an intimate partner, and I do wanna say here that I'm pretty sure marital rape is illegal in every state in the United States. And it's worth adding here because sadly, so many people are misinformed and confused about this. I do not believe in terms of boundaries. No person has a right to another person's body. So there are some, especially in certain communities, and sadly some religious communities, where there is a belief that a husband, for example, has a right to his wife's body as if his wife's body belongs to him. And in a system like that, marital rape will happen more often, because when someone believes that they have a right to another person's body, and that other person does not wanna participate in what the other person wants their body to do, then there's going to be coercion or worse. And again, I just don't believe at all ever that a person has a right and adult person does not have a right to another adult person's body ever, or any person's body for that matter. Nearly 33% of women killed in the US workplace between 2003 and 2008 were killed by a current or a former intimate partner. So that's a very high number in that period of about six years, that a third of those women were killed by a partner. So just hearing those statistics, you can see just very quickly the disparity between women and men experiencing a violent incident. So for all of these reasons, and of course more women have a much different perception around safety and boundaries than men. So, you know, as I said before, these are sobering statistics and so on. So we've talked a lot about the problem. So let's talk about the solution. And what do you do about these differences and how women can take care of themselves and then also how to navigate these really difficult and challenging conversations that may arise? So the first thing that I think is helpful is for you to have an awareness of the differences. And this is for both men and women or in a couple where if it's the same sex couple, one of you probably has a higher need for safety than the other. So just being aware of who has the higher or the lower need for safety, but I'm going to use men and women as the example. Be aware of the differences. And frankly, I think it's more important for women to be aware of this because in my own case, I think part of how that situation for me, but also for us as a couple spiraled out of control as much as it did, had more to do with a lot of assumptions that I made about what my husband was perceiving. Because again, like I said, he was not perceiving danger and I was. So if I made up, which I did, that he was perceiving the same danger that I was, but he was not acting accordingly, that would be a big problem for me. But the truth is that that's not what was happening. He didn't have that perception. And so the reason I say I think it's more important for women to be aware of the differences is that it's going to be important for you not to make assumptions that your partner or really anyone else would understand when you might feel unsafe. And again, I think that all of us are responsible in as much as we are able to maintain and create our own safety. And so if you're in a situation where you perceive something is unsafe, but it looks like your partner is not aware of that or it could be even someone else doesn't have to be your partner, it's really helpful to speak up and say, you know, I'm not feeling comfortable here or I'd rather do this. It reminds me of a, I think I told this story a while back on the podcast that we went to a public, it was a music event, and my husband wanted to sit somewhere where it ended up where I was kind of crammed into, I mean, the whole place was crammed, but I ended up sitting somewhere that I really didn't want to sit. I didn't feel unsafe. I just didn't feel comfortable. And so in that case, it's helpful for me to speak up and say, you know, I don't really feel comfortable sitting here, I'd rather sit somewhere else. So I want the women or the person who has the higher need for safety to really be aware that they're, first of all, what your own needs are around safety. And then also to be able to not make assumptions about the other person that they're perceiving the world in the same way that you are. And for the partner who has more need for safety, I would highly encourage you to make a list of specific situations in which you feel unsafe. So it could be things like taking the dog out for a walk at night, going to a store after dark. That doesn't really matter what they are, but whatever your list is, things that you feel unsafe around. And if you are having a hard time with this or you want some kind of prompts to do this, think about specifically the boundaries, the physical boundary, the sexual boundary and the listening boundary, those are mostly the ones that have to do with safety so you can use those as a guideline. And then I would ask you to think about, are there any ways in which you would like help with these? So let's say that there's one of these, I mean, I'll just use the walking the dog at night as an example, maybe you've been doing that, but you really just don't feel safe. And every time you go and do it, you just sort of override or you just sort of push through when you could ask your partner to do that for you. And so the next part of it would be to have a conversation about this list, any that you would want to share or make a request around. So if you're the partner that has the higher need for safety and you want your spouse to do something like, let's say the two of you are out together somewhere, but you're both in separate vehicles and you want your spouse to follow you home after, if it's after dark or something like that, I mean, there's so many examples of this. I'm just giving you a few that you could ask for that. So make a list of any areas where you feel unsafe and see if there are requests that you want to make. And for the partner, whether, you know, the partner is male or female who has less need around safety, I really invite you to try to stay in curiosity and not only curiosity, but also acceptance about the fact that your partner who has a higher need for safety that they have their own reality and that if you can accommodate one of these requests that she may make to do that, you know, unless you can't do it without having a resentment. But again, this is so important, not just in issues or situations of safety, but in couples communication in general, that you try to stay in curiosity around what the other person is experiencing, what they're saying, what the meaning of that is and what their intentions are. And if you're not clear to ask them, and, you know, if you're a partner, if you make a request around one of these safety issues and your partner is enabled to help you with one of these needs or they just don't want to, then consider how else you might meet it. For example, you know, I've known of people who, when they're not feeling safe for whatever reason, writing in the car with someone, it could even be their partner, whether it's due to criminal driving, like running stop signs or worse, somebody who's using alcohol or chemicals, then, you know, they take a cab or a noob or that's a very simple example. And this is a way of getting your needs for safety met that you can do on your own. And there's a lot of examples of that, but really think about and maybe even brainstorm with other people if there's a way for you to get that need met. So like if it has to do with walking your dog, maybe there's somebody who could do that for you. You could pay some, you know, high school kid who lives nearby or something like that. So the idea here is that you as the person who needs more safety, you are identifying your own need for physical or sexual safety, as well as learning how to be more relational with each other as you're navigating these various needs. Because that's really what I, I think if I had to say, what was the learning that happened for me? How did that whole incident? It was to, first of all, to stay more curious about how someone else's perception, in this case, my husband was very different than mine and also to be aware that when I, and this goes for everybody, but when you become very highly activated or triggered, most of the time your ability to stay in curiosity is pretty damaged. And so it's helpful in situations like that to take a time out and to reflect on what happened. Because as I reflected on kind of how I got to where I ended up, and frankly, I lost containment. I eventually, when I say lost containment, that's just a fancy way of saying that I just was boundaryless and I had to apologize to my husband later about it. But when I reflected on what happened right before that, I realized that I was in fear. And so when you're in fear and I'd say especially if you rate your fear higher than about a six on a scale of one to ten, you're probably not going to make good decisions. So it's also helpful to remember that if you're in one of these situations and you're feeling highly triggered, probably best to find a way to just disengage, to take a time out, to reflect if you can, to call someone to process what happened so that you can get more clarity. And then figure out, is there anything that I want to do or what would I want to do differently the next time? But I think that the story, this whole incident illustrates this dynamic that I think is very common in interactions and relationships, specifically between men and women, but also between any two people where one has a higher need for safety and one has a lower need for safety. And of course, there's no right or wrong. There are just differences and it's what makes relationships challenging, but frankly very rich and gives us an opportunity to know each other better and to grow and also to experience, you know, accountability because you can count on it that you and everybody in your life are going to make mistakes, you know, they're going to lose containment, they're going to be boundaryless, sometimes they're even going to get abusive, and that's part of the human experience. But what really matters is when you're able to circle back and to own what you did and to be accountable. So today we talked about, you know, how women experience their environment, how they experience safety in ways that are very different than men in general. that we talked about. various boundaries and how those are impacted for women. And some of the, you know, of course, very sobering statistics around women and violence and really highlighting women's need for safety and why. For most women, it is top of mind. And hopefully encouraging curiosity and more understanding and acceptance around these differences because like I said, there's no right or wrong. It just is what it is. And I do want to close by saying that I hope that in the future that these kind of issues and the statistics that I shared with you today that they are improved because it's very difficult for women to experience, you know, their God-given potential when they're living under really a lot of fear around their own physical and sexual safety. And so I think that, you know, I would be remiss if I didn't bring that up and that it's not just sort of, well, this is how it is. We have to deal with it. But I want to bring it to consciousness, not just the fact that it happens, but also that women have very real needs around safety that need to be attended to. And I firmly believe that when that happens and when women do feel safer when women are more welcomed in all ways into the public sphere, I think that it can only help all of us and take all of us higher. So till next week, I invite every one of you to embrace the power you have to create the boundaries you want to create so that you can get the space you need and the connection you crave. See you next time. Till next time, remember, boundaries aren't bitchy.