Your partner says something. You feel a reaction swell in your chest. You want to defend yourself. You think they’re wrong. You feel a lot—hurt, frustrated, maybe misunderstood. But instead of reacting the way you might have done in the past, you go and sit down. Your partner doesn’t rush to sit with you. They don’t leave the room either. They stay, holding the space with their presence. This is what Winnicott might have called a holding environment—not through words or touch, but through presence that doesn’t intrude and doesn’t withdraw. Something emerges—because you knew it would. You knew it would emerge because this presence has been building between you for some time now.

It still feels strange. Unfamiliar. It doesn’t quite fit with everything you thought you’d learned. You remember—not as an image, but as a feeling—springing forward in moments like these to correct your partner, to argue, to throw everything they’d appeared to do to you right back at them. For years, this was your response. The moment there was discomfort in your body, you’d try to argue it away. You’d throw it at the feet of the person who had dared to ask the question—who had said something that unknowingly touched a wound inside you. And of course, you didn’t know otherwise. If you had, you might have known that when someone says something that makes you feel small, or hurt, or wounded, you don’t have to respond straight away. Secure attachment teaches us this—teaches the body that space is not abandonment, and that not reacting is not collapse. There are other options.

Every now and again you check on your partner, who only five minutes earlier had asked you a question, and you see that they’re still there. Sometimes they glance over at you—a check-in. You know that look. You know it says: I’m giving you space. I trust that you’ll understand, you’ll process, you’ll be able to respond. And in meeting their eyes, there’s something almost parent-and-child in it. In Transactional Analysis, they’d call this a shift in ego states—where the Child in you is met not by a Critical or Rescuing Parent, but something quieter. A space-giving, trusting Adult. That’s the sort of thing you used to rush to get away from in previous relationships—that feeling of a strange or unequal dynamic. But now you understand that dynamics within a healthy relationship can shift. Not the parent-and-child you once knew—where you were left vulnerable and unheard—but a parent-and-child dynamic marked by presence and trust.

At times, those qualities reverse too—when you become the one present with your partner’s vulnerability. Holding space for them. Being near. Not far, not too close. But near. Repair is possible—not by erasing the wound, but by responding differently when it’s touched. And here is a moment of that. No one is coming over to comfort you. But no one is slamming the door on you, either. They are there. Their presence is holding the space. And all along, your body—caught in defence or attack only minutes earlier—has started to feel like yours again. It’s started to feel normal. It may even feel a little more tolerant, a little more resilient.

The reason this feels strange is that perhaps you did have a parent who would rush to your side to make sure you were okay. Maybe they did so in a way that felt good, but also told you—sometimes in the same breath—that you didn’t need to cry. Or maybe you had a parent who didn’t do that. One who told you to grow up, then left you alone with your discomfort. And maybe you came to expect that this was how people would respond to you. So in past relationships, when you were quick to react, maybe it was because you didn’t want the next part. You didn’t want to be mollycoddled. You didn’t want the door slammed in your face. So you kept arguing. Love wasn’t about being present. Love was about being right.

But something has changed for you now. You’ve reached a point where the cycle of unhealthy relationships has driven you to your knees, and you’ve decided to do something about it—to work on your own healing. Not to fix the relationship. Not to make anyone stay. But because you couldn’t keep turning away from yourself. You’ve learned to sit with discomfort. You’ve learned to stay present with what rises in you. You’ve learned how to love yourself—not as a feeling, but as a practice. And that’s what’s changed. You’ve brought that presence into your relationship. And the person you’re with—they’ve been doing the same.

This is what makes it different. It’s not that they’re the one who holds you. It’s that you both know how to stay with yourselves long enough to meet each other. So—what is it, in this moment, that tells you you’ve learned to love yourself? You could argue: well, you’re not defending yourself. You’re not telling your partner what you feel. You’re not using that flare of emotion to shape your retort. You’re not getting that buzz of adrenaline, the sharpness of standing your ground. You’re not. That’s true. You’re getting something else. A new experience.

What is self-love in this scenario? Self-love is information. It’s receiving the data of your nervous system, the pulse of emotion, the trace of past experience. It’s feeling the emotion, letting it subside, noticing what’s surfaced—and then making a conscious choice about what to do with it. You’ll find that the question your partner asked wasn’t the world-ending threat your nervous system thought it was. It was a gentle invitation to connect. You’ve taken it in. You’ve stayed present with why their question touched a nerve—and you realise it did because something in it was connective. And connective is still new to you. It doesn’t come in the old ways.

And that’s why you are still with this person. Because when they see something has arisen in you, they don’t rush to rescue you. And they don’t rush out of the room either, slamming the door in your face. No—they cut through the dynamic. And you do too. And in doing so, something rewires—not in the mind alone, but in the body’s map of what love is.

To love is to be present.
And here you are. Still in the room.