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 and openly bisexual) 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? (2003), Colombian-Argentine 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, had two serious, documented problems: he used cocaine and was openly bisexual, something he 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 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 mind, 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.
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 elsewhere than it seemed at first, something close to what Erich Fromm describes, from another theoretical tradition, in his distinction between caring for someone and giving them joy for living: not every form of comfort received within a relationship actually amounts to being well accompanied.
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Frequently asked questions
Is the 'attachment' Walter Riso talks about the same as Bowlby's attachment theory?
No, even though they share the name. Bowlby and Ainsworth study the biological bond between infants and caregivers. Riso uses 'affective attachment' to refer to psychological dependency toward an adult partner, a distinction the author himself makes explicit in the book.
Is needing physical contact to sleep always a sign of problematic attachment?
According to Riso's framework, not by itself. What he describes as problematic is when that single specific benefit is the only thing sustaining a relationship with a much higher cost, not the need for contact itself.
Where does Riso get this case from?
From his more than twenty years of clinical practice as a cognitive-behavioral psychologist. As is standard in this kind of literature, cases are presented anonymized.
What does this have to do with Shakespeare's line about a horse?
Riso uses it as a comparison: the line 'my kingdom for a horse,' from Richard III, only makes sense once you understand the context (a king about to die in battle). Outside that desperation, trading so much for so little would look like a bad deal, just as it can with certain affective attachments.
