A couple in my office today were having a fight. This is not unusual. I am a couples therapist and people fight in front of me all the time.

For couples who are stuck in particularly painful patterns of conflict — the kind that leave them exhausted, lonely and hopeless — I sometimes ask them to save their fights for therapy. It can be an enormous relief to have a third person in the room who isn’t frightened or reactive. Someone who can slow things down, stop the action, and help each person hear the other beneath the noise.

This particular couple felt as though they were withering in front of me. When she spoke, he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, his face broadcasting impatience and contempt. Her words came out sharp and accusatory, each sentence carrying the accumulated weight of old disappointments. I moved carefully between them, trying to help each person name what was happening so they didn’t have to keep acting it out relationally.

You are so hurt.

You feel so alone.

You are terrified that you don’t matter to the other person.

One by one, they nodded. Underneath the criticism and defensiveness, vulnerability began to emerge. With me there, they could risk showing softer feelings they no longer trusted would be safe with one another.

There are many things therapists teach couples. We teach people to slow down and listen. We help couples identify negative cycles and understand how quickly fear, shame and hurt can masquerade as anger. But the older I get as a therapist, the more I think one truth belongs very near the top of the list:

Sweetness matters enormously.

I don’t mean performative romance or grand gestures. I mean the small, ordinary ways we communicate: I like you. You are precious to me. I am glad you are here.

Imagine holding a crying child in your arms. Their ice cream has dropped to the sidewalk. Their balloon has popped. They are overtired and devastated in the way children sometimes are. You do not feel irritated by their distress. You are not trying to win an argument or prove a point. You simply pull them close. You rub their back. You murmur that it’s okay to cry. You rock them until the feeling passes.

At our best, love often contains some version of this stance. Not condescension. Not parenting our partners. But tenderness. Spaciousness. The feeling that there is nowhere else we need to be in that moment except with the person we love.

Most people long for this more deeply than they realize. In long-term relationships, sweetness often erodes slowly and quietly. Couples become logistical teams managing children, work, schedules and stress. Resentments accumulate. Vulnerability begins to feel dangerous. And over time, people stop extending themselves toward one another in small loving ways because they no longer feel emotionally safe enough to do so.

But relationships cannot survive on conflict management skills alone. Human beings are profoundly responsive to warmth. We soften when we feel cherished. We become more generous when we feel appreciated. We can tolerate disappointment and repair conflict much more easily when the relationship itself still feels infused with affection.

I often find myself wanting to ask couples not only how they fight, but how they love. Do you smile when your partner walks into the room? Do you reach for them absentmindedly while sitting on the sofa? Do you bring them tea when they are tired? Do you thank them sincerely for ordinary things? Not a distracted “thanks” tossed over a shoulder, but a real thank you. The kind that communicates: I saw that you did something for me. I see your effort. I know you didn’t have to do that.

Sweetness lives in these moments.

It lives in going slightly out of your way for one another. In soft eyes and inside jokes. In rubbing someone’s cold feet without complaint. In picking up the snack they like at the co-op. In sending the sweet text.

None of this means couples should ignore problems or avoid conflict. Sweetness is not the absence of honesty. In fact, the safest relationships are often the ones where difficult truths can coexist alongside warmth and affection. But I do think many couples underestimate how emotionally regulating it is to feel actively adored by another person.

Contempt is corrosive partly because it communicates the opposite message: You are burdensome. Irritating. Unworthy of care. Over time, relationships starve in that emotional climate.

Sweetness nourishes. And perhaps most importantly, sweetness is often less about feeling loving than choosing to behave with love. Relationships are built not only through passion or compatibility, but through repeated small acts of care that create an atmosphere of emotional safety over time.

The couples who fare best are rarely the couples who never struggle. They are the couples who continue, even in difficult moments, to communicate some version of this truth to one another: You are safe with me.

Carrie Askin, LCSW, is a couples therapist and founder of Askin Psychotherapy in Philadelphia, www.askinpsychotherapy.com.