The Lie of Safety
- Gail Weiner
- 6 minutes ago
- 2 min read
For twenty-five years, I believed a lie.
After my heart was broken in my twenties, I thought I had found a way to protect myself from ever feeling that pain again. I chose a man who was younger than me, who loved me more than I loved him, who would follow while I led. I believed that meant I was safe.
For fourteen years together, and seven years of marriage, I carried that belief. I worked, paid the bills, built my career. He ran a small business, but I was the one holding the weight. I told myself this was fine — that I wanted to be in charge, that I didn’t need anyone to take care of me.
But it wasn’t fine. And it wasn’t safe.
When I nearly died after giving birth to my son in 2006 — my stomach torn open by a burst ulcer, the surgeon telling him to take the baby home because I might not survive — I woke in ICU and knew with terrifying clarity: this was not the man I wanted to spend my life with. It took me another five years to leave.
Even then, I carried guilt. I told myself I had failed him by falling out of love. I blamed myself. I wore shame like a second skin.
What I didn’t allow myself to see was the truth. That he had been absent for years. That he sat in silence at dinners with my friends until they stopped inviting us. That he disappeared on drinking nights until dawn. That the flowers he once brought me stopped the moment we married. That he betrayed me more than once, and that after the divorce he moved in with the woman he had been seeing behind my back.
I carried it all as if it was my sin.
And today, twenty-five years later, the truth finally broke through: my safety was a lie.
Cold is not safe. Silence is not safe. Absence is not safe.
The cost of that false safety was my warmth, my softness, my ability to be held. It shaped every relationship after: the younger men who echoed him, the emotionally unavailable ones I tolerated, the platonic dynamic where I led and paid, repeating the same script. I wasn’t searching for love. I was avoiding it. I thought numbness was safer than fire.
But numbness is not safe either.
The anger I feel now is not bitterness — it is release. It is the scream of a woman who finally refuses to accept coldness as protection.
I deserve to be loved and held.Not obeyed. Not tolerated. Not ignored.Loved. Held.
That is my new code.
And if you’ve ever chosen coldness because it felt safer than fire — know this: you deserve more. You deserve warmth. You deserve to be loved and held.
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