The Woman Who Couldn't Sleep Without Being Held: What We Really Cling to in a Bad Relationship

Walter Riso tells the case of a woman who couldn’t leave her husband (a cocaine user, which he openly admitted) despite having no love left, no children, and no financial reasons to stay. The real reason took weeks to surface, and it was much smaller than anyone would have guessed.

In ¿Amar o depender? (1999), psychologist Walter Riso raises an uncomfortable question about relationships that cause harm and, even so, don’t end: what exactly is the person not willing to lose? It’s almost never the whole relationship. It’s usually one very specific detail.

A patient with no apparent reason to stay

Riso describes a thirty-two-year-old woman who’d spent a while trying to decide whether to give her marriage one last chance (the ninth or tenth, by her own count) or finally leave.

There were no children involved. She had her own solid financial standing. There were no religious or moral obstacles.

Her husband, on top of that, used cocaine, something he openly acknowledged himself.

Over several weeks of sessions, Riso tried to pinpoint what pleasure or security this woman could possibly be getting from a relationship with such a high cost. Nothing added up.

The detail that surfaced almost by accident

The answer came casually, in the middle of a session, when the patient mentioned she’d been sleeping badly for days.

She explained it wasn’t fear of burglars or anything like that: she needed someone to hold her from behind while she slept. She’d surround herself with pillows to simulate that feeling when she was alone, like someone building an improvised shelter.

That detail, seemingly minor, turned out to be the key to the entire relationship. Nighttime physical contact, even from someone she now shared almost nothing else with, gave her enough calm to fall asleep. A small dose of comfort was enough, in her private reckoning, to offset a whole life of distress.

Why a single gesture can sustain an entire relationship

Riso explains this mechanism with a comparison drawn from literature, not psychology: the famous line from Shakespeare’s Richard III, “my kingdom for a horse.”

Out of context, trading an entire kingdom for a simple horse sounds absurd. But on the battlefield, on foot, surrounded, with no way out, that horse is the only thing standing between a king and death. The trade, then, stops being absurd.

Something similar happens with affective attachment, according to Riso:

• The person doesn’t evaluate the relationship as a whole, but the specific void its absence would leave.
• That void can be as specific as not having someone to hold you while you sleep, not having someone so you don’t feel alone at home, or not having someone to validate a very particular need.
• The more desperate the underlying situation (loneliness, fear, low self-efficacy), the smaller the benefit needed to justify staying.

The “deficit” behind this type of attachment

Riso frames this case within what he calls attachment to security and protection, and sums it up with a very direct formula:

• Deficit: low self-efficacy, meaning the belief “I’m not capable of taking care of myself.”
• Fear: of helplessness and being unprotected, more than of a lack of love itself.
• Attachment: not to the specific person, but to any available source of that sense of security.

According to his framework, this type of attachment isn’t looking for excitement or passion, it’s looking for calm. It isn’t a matter of arousal, it’s relief.

That’s why it can persist even in cold, distant, or harmful relationships: it’s enough for the other person to be physically present and available for the need to be, at least partly, covered.

What research on commitment adds to the case

Riso’s intuition has a well-known empirical counterpart: social psychologist Caryl Rusbult’s investment model. According to this model, commitment to a relationship depends not only on satisfaction but also on the perceived quality of alternatives and on how much has been invested in it (time, a shared life, marriage).

Rusbult and Martz (1995) tested it in a very harsh setting: intake interviews at a shelter for battered women. Commitment was higher among women with poorer economic alternatives, greater investment in the relationship, and lower dissatisfaction, and that commitment clearly distinguished those who went back to their partner right after leaving the shelter from those who didn’t.

Riso’s case fits a variant of that logic. The patient had no financial dependency, but the “alternative” she couldn’t see was very specific: a way of sleeping peacefully without that presence. When the perceived alternative shrinks to a single gesture, the balance tips toward staying even when everything else weighs against it.

A clue, not a diagnosis

Riso doesn’t offer this case as a general rule, nor as a way to judge anyone who decides to stay in a complicated relationship. He presents it as a useful clue for asking a different question than the usual one.

Instead of asking “why don’t I leave?”, he suggests asking something more specific: “what, exactly, am I not willing to lose?”

Sometimes the answer really is love.

But, according to what Riso describes from his clinical experience, many other times the answer turns out to be much smaller, more specific, and easier to find another way than it seemed at first. From another tradition, Erich Fromm points to something similar with his distinction between caring for someone and passing on a joy in being alive: not every form of comfort received within a relationship amounts to being well accompanied.

Sources

• Riso, W. (1999). ¿Amar o depender?. Norma.
• Rusbult, C. E. and Martz, J. M. (1995). Remaining in an abusive relationship: An investment model analysis of nonvoluntary dependence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(6), 558-571. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167295216002