If you have difficult relationships, then you are probably involved with people who are not safe. It is helpful to know the difference between unsafe and safe people.

Unsafe people are:

• Unable to look honestly at themselves and, as a result, are highly defensive.
• Unwilling to take responsibility for themselves and, as a result, blame others for their choices.
• Untrustworthy and unreliable, with behavior that doesn’t match their words.
• Emotionally manipulativeto get what they want, without regard for how it affects you.

Safe people are:

• Able to look honestly at themselves and, as a result, are able to hear the truth about themselves.
• Willing to take responsibility for themselves and, as a result, do not blame others for their choices.
• Trustworthy and reliable, with behavior that matches their words.
• Emotionally mature and able to accept that they don’t always get what they want. They are also concerned about how their behavior affects you and always take it into consideration.

Unfortunately, people often have a pattern of picking unsafe people to have relationships with for the following reasons:

• Familiarity with the dynamic because it reminds them of past relationship struggles.
• Low self-esteem because they don’t believe they deserve better.
• Inability to judge character and behavior, so they excuse or deny unhealthy behavior.
• Their own codependency issues that make them overly focused on the other person’s needs and willing to sacrifice their own needs.
• Fear of intimacy, so they pick people that don’t want to be intimate or vulnerable with them.
• Fear of being alone and desperate for any relationship.

Healthy people pick healthy people to have relationships with. If you are picking unhealthy people, purpose to get healthy by working on yourself and learning how to recognize and respond to unsafe people in a way that protects yourself.

By Karla Downing
 

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me to pick safe people to have relationships with. Help me to be a safe person. Give me wisdom to deal with the unsafe people in my life.
 

Relationship Devotional Challenge

• Identify the unsafe people in your life.
• Identify the behavior that you need to learn to respond to in a way that protects you.
• Identify the reason you pick unsafe people and work on becoming healthy in those areas.

Scripture Meditation

 
2Timothy 3:2-5

“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them” (NIV).