Stable relationships allow emotions to surface without judgment

From "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."

In "The Unbearable Lightness of Lightness," the author 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.