From Sasha Chapin’s What I’m looking for in my marriage:
Goal of relationship is to create a space for both people to have full range of emotions and be cared for, not to manage each other into having nice feelings all the time
In unstable relationships, you are “convince[d] that your emotions are burdens to be strategically offloaded, rather than gifts to be shared.”
Anna Leptikon references Kundera and “how love is inescapably triangular: you, the beloved, and the ideal image of you in the eyes of the beloved.” A stable relationship must take this into account and let that ideal image be replaced with the actual you.
Both examples point to establishing a space that is safe for both partners to express one’s self in their entirety. Emotional offshoring, or the concept of forcing other people to handle one’s emotions, is something emotionally immature or volatile people tend to rely on. However, in a partnership, this can be a way of creating intimacy and a shared connection, given that it isn’t taken advantage too often.