What if you grew up without a mother, or anyone else to comfort and mother you? You would have to learn self comforting. It may seem counterintuitive, but I think people really can learn to say the things to themselves, and do the things for themselves that mothers normally do.
I think of the Buddhist monks wandering India–or the Sannyasin, or any other itinerant monk: they get cold. They get hungry, tired. They must sometimes despair. What comforts them? Their creed and practice. Their creed and practice serve the role of companion and mother, or wife.
Many mystics have spoken of God as a lover. Lovers comfort, do they not? They ease pain.
I would submit that the ESSENCE of spirituality is the facilitation of emotional growth which enables people to live happily alone and in difficulty because they have learned how to comfort themselves, or to take it in non-ordinary ways.