Roses are Red. No Audition Required
Welcome to our Marriage War and Peace blog for February!
With Veronica L. Nabizadeh
Welcome to The Marriage War and Peace Blog—your monthly dose of real talk, relationship insight, and gentle reminders that peace is possible (even when love feels more like landmines than roses).
February tends to turn up the pressure around romance, connection, and feeling chosen. If Valentine’s Day leaves you wondering why you still feel lonely inside your marriage, you’re not alone.
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From The Battle-Weary Wife’s Deck of Strength and Wisdom
It usually happens slowly—and silently.
Approval becomes a substitute for intimacy when being accepted starts to feel safer than being fully known. Instead of risking honesty, vulnerability, or emotional friction, you begin managing yourself:
Watching your tone
Softening your needs
Choosing harmony over truth.
When that happens, the goal has shifted from connection to keeping peace.
Approval is a hollow altar.
It promises closeness—but it can never truly nourish it.
Approval says: “I'll be OK if you're pleased with me.”
Intimacy says: “I can be honest here—even if it's uncomfortable.”
When approval takes the place of intimacy:
Conversations grow polite but shallow.
Difficult topics get postponed.
You work harder to make it easy, agreeable, or low maintenance, hoping the closeness will return if you just try a little more.
In "10 Signs of Approval-Seeking Behavior & How to Handle It,” relationship advice author Noah Williams explains why this pattern feels so familiar. Approval seeking behaviors are often rooted in fear of conflict, rejection, or abandonment. While they may reduce tension temporarily, they weaken emotional intimacy overtime because one partner begins hiding parts of themselves to maintain harmony.
This is how approval quietly replaces intimacy.
And February—wrapped in messages about romance, connection, and being chosen—can make the absence feel sharper.
The turning point comes when you step away from the hollow altar and return to yourself.
Not by becoming harsh or withdrawn, but by practicing presence instead of performance. By grounding your nervous system. By offering yourself the validation you've been seeking elsewhere before asking your partner to provide it.
Approval asks you to adjust yourself to keep the pace.
Intimacy asks you to come home to yourself.
And intimacy begins the moment you stop sacrificing your truth for acceptance.
This Month’s Peace Practice
5-Minute Validation Detox
Sit comfortably and place one hand on your heart.
Take three slow breaths—longer on the exhale.
Ask yourself silently:
What am I hoping someone else will give me right now?Name it—approval, reassurance, affection, acknowledgment.
Then say quietly:
I choose to give this to myself first.
Notice what softens. No fixing. No forcing. Just returning home.
I read every response. Have a different take?
I’d love to hear it.
