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The issues of couple life are linked to difficulties in maintaining autonomy within the context of intimate relationships. Learning to manage relational distance allows for the development of relational competence, all the while preserving autonomy. Within the couple, partners expect too much of each other; they expect each other, or that abstract entity which is the relationship itself, to soothe their anxieties. However, it is by exercising the ability to calm oneself in the presence of another that partners are best able to pursue their own differentiation. Intimacy within the couple is thus revealed as a long-term process of initiation.