The most caring thing we can do for those closest to us is to learn to self-soothe. This is the core insight that I took away from the book Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch. Real intimacy begins when we stop expecting our partners to regulate our emotions for us — when we stop needing them to constantly reassure, validate, calm, or “parent” us.
Many of us enter relationships carrying unhealed wounds. We depend on our partners for emotional stability, self-worth, or a sense of safety. Without realizing it, we begin asking them to manage our anxiety and discomfort. When they fail to do so or when they are upset with us, we can become reactive, controlling, defensive, withdrawn, or emotionally overwhelmed.
Blaming our partners for our discomfort slowly creates distance in even the most committed relationships.
According to Schnarch, many marriages become less about growth and intimacy and more about seeking emotional security and compensation for unmet childhood needs.
When we think of people giving up on their marriage, divorce usually comes to mind. But many people who give up on their marriage (or themselves or their partner) don’t leave; they stay in the comfort cycle—until their marriage presents the inevitable dilemma: venture into the growth cycle or face divorce, loss of integrity, or living death. Validating and soothing each other has its place in marriage—but not when you’re dependent on it. You get stuck in the comfort cycle because neither of you has the strength or motivation to break out. That’s when the other side of the process comes in: holding onto yourself (self-confrontation and self-soothing).
― David Schnarch, Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships
Schnarch believed that relationships often become organized around emotional comfort rather than growth. Instead of helping us mature, we can unconsciously use marriage to avoid anxiety, avoid change, and seek the reassurance we lacked earlier in life. But real intimacy asks us to remain connected while also learning how to stand on our own emotionally. As we become more capable of calming ourselves and confronting our own insecurities, we stop trying to control our partners in order to feel safe. Defensiveness softens, conflict becomes less reactive, and the relationship becomes a place where both people can grow rather than remain stuck in old patterns.
At first, this idea can sound cold or counterintuitive. Isn’t love about comforting each other? About being there for one another?
Of course it is. But Schnarch points toward something deeper and ultimately more liberating: love cannot flourish when two people are emotionally dependent on each other for stability. We need both freedom and closeness. Finding the right balance between our needs for autonomy and attachment is the challenge.
When We Lose Ourselves
Most of us know what it feels like to regress in relationships.
In the moment, it feels uncontrollable. We become flooded with emotion and desperate for our partner to say or do the thing that will finally make us feel okay again. We may lash out, shut down, criticize, cling, withdraw, or spiral into blame. Afterwards, we often feel ashamed of how we behaved — yet unable to stop repeating the same painful cycle.
In those moments, we are no longer relating as mature adults. We are often relating from the wounded parts of ourselves that never learned how to feel safe, held, or emotionally secure.
What is happening in those moments?
We are asking another person to regulate us.
We need them to reassure us, validate us, soothe our fears, or behave in specific ways so we can feel secure. When they cannot — or simply refuse — we fall apart emotionally.
What Self-Soothing Really Means
Self-soothing is not emotional suppression or detachment. It does not mean becoming cold, hyper-independent, or refusing comfort from others.
It means developing the ability to maintain our own emotional equilibrium when things become difficult — what Schnarch calls a “Quiet Mind-Calm Heart.” This is the ability to soothe our own hurts, anxieties, and fears, regaining emotional balance without requiring our partners to do it for us.
It means learning to validate our own feelings and perceptions rather than relying entirely on our partners to tell us that we are okay.
When we can self-soothe, we can stay connected during conflict without shutting down. We stop pressuring our partners to manage our emotions and can tolerate disagreement without feeling abandoned. We can allow our partners their own emotional process without rushing to fix it. We can express vulnerable truths even when it feels frightening.
Marriage as a Crucible for Growth
Relationships are one of the deepest catalysts for personal growth. This is why relationships can feel so painful at times. They activate the parts of us that most need healing.
If we stay present through the discomfort instead of endlessly trying to escape it, intimacy becomes a process of maturation. We gradually learn to stand on our own emotional feet rather than demanding that another person hold us together.
And when that happens, something beautiful emerges: two people choose connection, rather than clinging to one another out of fear or desperate need.
Learning to Parent Yourself
For people who grew up in traumatizing or emotionally dysfunctional environments, this work can feel impossibly difficult.
How do you self-soothe when nobody ever soothed you?
The answer is slowly, imperfectly, and through practice. This is self-parenting—learning to act as a good parent to ourselves.
Progress is catching ourselves before we react. We stop ourselves from saying things we will later regret. We learn to breathe deeply, take a walk, listen to music, or simply sit with our discomfort, instead of demanding something from our partners or blaming them.
These small moments of awareness accumulate. Over time, we become capable of meeting difficulty without falling apart or attempting to regulate ourselves by controlling others.
The Freedom in Standing Alone Together
When we can calm our own storms, we give our partners the gift of freedom.
This is the invitation of mature love: not to find someone who completes us, but to become complete enough to truly meet another person.