Kenyon and Taccara Martin
Love's Anatomy Part 1 (Safety)

Definition of Anatomy:
-The study of the structure or internal workings of something
-The separating or dividing into parts for detailed examination

You can’t maintain or excel in the relationships (romantic or otherwise) until you’re matured in Love. (1 Cor 13:3-8 NIV)

The 4-Pillars of Love: Safety, Security, Trust, and Empathy

Safety: Your ability to actively receive all of someone. It is receiving their complexities, frailties, strengths, and idiosyncrasies without question. It gives them the ability to bring to you their dreams, successes, flaws and mistakes without fear or shame. In safety you receive them for who they are and who they are becoming.

There are four areas of safety that are often overlooked in relationships, but have the ability to build up or break down the people we love:
a. Being Safe to Be Themselves
b. Being Safe to Make Mistakes
c. Being Safe to Have a Voice
d. Being Safe from Outside Influences

a. Being Safe to be Themselves: Love Is not self-seeking.
- Married Couples: Create an environment where your spouse can be safe with you is rejecting the expectation that they are going to be just like you.
- Blended Families: Being safe to to be themselves meansallowing the space for everyone to grow into the new family
- Singles: Being safe to be yourselfis a state of being. Being healed. Being comfortable in your own skin. A place of receiving your self value.
- Single w/Children: Being safe to be yourself is everything that we’ve already mentioned, with the added responsibility of providing an environment of safety for your child. It’s never allowing them to feel like they can’t become everything they were destined to be just because they don’t have a family that looks like their friends (absent parent).

b. Being Safe to Make Mistakes: Love keeps no record of wrongs
- Married Couples: Making mistakes is where your spouse must be the safest. They are their most naked and vulnerable when they make mistakes and they must be able to bring their failures to you without feeling degraded by you.
- Blended Families: The beauty of mistakes in a blended family is the opportunity to have sensitive conversations. The inability to make mistakes in a new environment sets a precedent that no one in the house can come to you OR that you can’t be talked to.
- Singles: Being safe to make mistakesmeans you are not living in a perpetual state of self-punishment for all the mistakes and bad choices you ever made. Guilt and shame mislead and misinform your choices in life and relationships.
- Single w/Children: You are not punishing yourself for your mistakes, and making it safe for your children to make mistakes.

c. Being Safe to Have a Voice: Love does not dishonor others
- Married Couples: Allowing your spouse to have a voice in your marriage and in your household cancels out arrogance and pride, and it protects their position with you.
- Blended Families: Creating safety for everyone to have a voice begins with building a relationship with everyone in the home. When you shut down everyone’s voice, you’ve crippled the home.
- Singles: Practice Exercising the Muscle that is Your Voice. It’s learning to speak up for yourself. Learning to say no. Learning to express your likes and dislikes without apology.
- Singles w/Children: Is also maintaining openness to your child’s expressions and emotions--with boundaries. Maintain a place where they can come to you with their concerns

d. Being Safe from Outside Influences: It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
- Married Couples: Nobody should have more or the same level of access to you than your spouse. You two are the nucleus of your relationship. The nucleus’ job is to maintain the integrity of your relationship.
- Blended Families: Due to the disconnected nature of a blended family, it’s important for everyone to pull tighter together as a unit. Both parents must stand together.
- Singles: Your relationship with God is the most important relationship that you will ever cultivate. Anything that comes between you and your relationship with God is an outside influence and it is not SAFE.
-Singles w/Children: Being safe from outside influences ncludes protecting your relationship with God, as well as protecting your children from people that have not been deemed safe for them.
i. If you cannot trust them with your social security number, debit card pin number or your bank account information, you cannot trust them with your child.

Connect Group Questions (Married Couples):

Icebreaker: Introduce yourself and tell the group 1-thing that makes your spouse amazing.

1. Why is it sometimes so hard for people to fully be themselves when they get married?
2. Are there any expectations that you had of your spouse that you had to let go of after you got married?
3. What’s the difference between having a voice in your marriage and being the dominant voice in your marriage?
4. Should social media be considered an “outside influence” in your marriage?

*Bonus Question (To talk about when you go home): Set aside some time and talk about being safe to make mistakes in your marriage. Do you feel like your spouse allows you the grace to make mistakes?

Connect Group Questions (Blended Families):

Icebreaker: introduce your spouse and tell the group what makes your spouse amazing.

1. What are some of the issues that make it challenging to create a “safe” environment for a blended family? How have you dealt with them?
2. How should a spouse approach their husband or wife when they are frustrated with the blending process?
3. How do you make it safe for everyone to be themselves in a blended family, while also enforcing boundaries?
4. What are some things that have helped you build relationships within your blended family?

*Bonus Question (To talk about when you go home): Set aside some time and talk about being safe from outside influences. How can you make your relationship safer from outside influences?

Connect Group Questions (Singles):

Icebreaker: Introduce yourself and tell the group who your celebrity crush is (or was as a child).

1. Why is it so hard for individuals to fall in love with themselves in today’s society?
2. We heard tonight that guilt and shame misleads and misinforms your choices in life and relationships. Have you ever found yourself in situations because shame made you feel like you didn’t deserve any better?
3. When dating, how do you balance “being yourself” when getting to know someone, while guarding your heart at the same time?
4. When dating, how long do you wait before you talk about God and ask about their relationship with God?

Connect Group Questions (Singles with Children):

Icebreaker: Introduce yourself and tell the group who your celebrity crush is (or was as a child).

1. What made you feel “safe” as a child that you try to give to your child(dren)?
2. When dating, how soon do you talk about your kids with the person that you’re interested in?
3. Do you think it’s important to date people who already have kids or do you prefer people who don’t? Why or why not?
4. We heard tonight that guilt and shame misleads and misinforms your choices in life and relationships. How do you overcome guilt and shame from your mistakes?