Does anyone else struggle to receive comfort from their partner?
I've been reading about co-regulation – the idea that one person's calm nervous system can help regulate another's. It's how healthy attachment develops in childhood: a caregiver's steady presence teaches you that distress is manageable.
For those of us who didn't get that, relationships can feel inherently dysregulating. I notice that when my partner tries to comfort me, I sometimes get more activated, not less. I mistrust soothing. I pull away from the very thing that could help.
The encouraging thing is that co-regulation capacity can apparently be developed at any age. But it requires consistent, safe relational experiences – which means healing relational trauma happens in relationships, not in isolation.
Anyone else notice this pattern in themselves?
Comments (11)
Yes, absolutely. When my partner tries to comfort me, there's this part of me that tenses up instead of relaxing into it. It's like my body is bracing for the comfort to be taken away, so it refuses to accept it in the first place. My therapist says it's a protective strategy – if I don't let it in, it can't hurt when it's gone.
yeah. when my partner hugs me after i'm upset i kind of go stiff. i want the comfort but my body won't let me take it in. it's frustrating.
The going stiff thing – I get that too. It's like your body has a lock on the door and comfort can't get through even when you consciously want it to. I've found that it helps to name it out loud. Like, telling my partner 'I want to let this in but my body is resisting.' It takes the pressure off having to perform being comforted.
What you are describing is a disruption in the capacity for co-regulation. When early caregiving was inconsistent or unsafe, the nervous system learns that soothing from another person is unreliable – or worse, a precursor to harm. As a result, comfort itself becomes a threat signal. This is not a conscious choice; it is an implicit relational pattern. The work of restoring the capacity to receive comfort is gradual and requires repeated experiences of safe, consistent soothing that your nervous system can learn to trust over time.
Thank you, Dr. Thornton. The phrase 'comfort itself becomes a threat signal' captures it with remarkable precision. I had not considered that the inconsistency of early caregiving would teach the nervous system to distrust soothing as a category, rather than just distrusting a specific person. That distinction is illuminating.
Something I've noticed is that it's easier for me to receive comfort through parallel activities – like sitting next to my partner watching something together – than through direct face-to-face soothing. The indirect contact feels less intense and my defences don't go up as much. Has anyone else found a way around the resistance?
Fatima, thank you for posting this. It's one of those things people rarely talk about because it sounds strange – 'my partner is being kind and I can't handle it' – but it's so common in trauma survivors. You're definitely not alone in this.
started telling my partner when i'm struggling to take the comfort in. she said she'd rather know than wonder why i pulled away. that helped a bit.
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