How we f up relationships

Episode Summary of “How we f up relationships”

Welcome to Episode 2 of The Communicate & Connect Podcast! I’m your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, and I’m thrilled to have you here as we explore the fascinating and often challenging ways stress impacts our relationships. In this episode, we’re tackling the critical topic of how we f up relationships, diving into the subtle and not-so-subtle ways stress and external pressures can undermine even the strongest partnerships.

We’ll take a closer look at the societal messages we absorb daily—through media, advertisements, and cultural expectations—and how these shape our beliefs about love, communication, and partnership. These external influences often lead to unhealthy patterns of communication, unrealistic expectations, and decreased relationship satisfaction. By understanding how we f up relationships in these ways, we can start identifying the root causes and make positive changes.

I’ll also share a personal story from my grad school days, where a pivotal friendship changed my understanding of what it truly means to have a healthy relationship. Along the way, we’ll discuss how stress often manifests in relationships through withdrawal, misplaced anger, and defensiveness. These patterns, while common, are clear examples of how we f up relationships when we let stress take the wheel. Most importantly, we’ll explore the power of vulnerability, kindness, and intentional communication in building strong, connected, and fulfilling partnerships.

If you’ve ever felt stuck in the cycle of miscommunication or wondered how stress could be sabotaging your connection with your partner, this episode is for you. Plus, I’ll be introducing a free 10-week relationship e-course packed with actionable tips and tools to help you and your partner communicate better, reconnect emotionally, and rediscover the joy in your relationship.

As always, I want to remind you that this podcast is designed to educate and inspire—it’s not a substitute for professional therapy. If you need additional support, I encourage you to seek the help of a licensed therapist.

Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any upcoming episodes. Join me as we embark on this journey to uncover how we f up relationships, learn from our mistakes, and build stronger, healthier connections. Let’s dive in!

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Episode Transcript for “How we f up relationships”

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:01]:
This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual couples and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.connecticateandconnect.com.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:28]:
Welcome to the Communicate and Connect podcast for military Relations relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes. We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast. And if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too, because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships. This is episode two on how we fuck up relationships.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:01:20]:
Hey everyone. So I’m glad you are listening to this episode. This is the second episode in our Communicate and Connect podcast series. And this is going to be a really fun episode today because today, you know, we’re going to start off right from the beginning and talk about how we all just kind of fuck up relationships and how we just, we just mess relationships up.

And so to start us off, I’m going to maybe tell you a little bit about my history and a fun story that was not really fun, but an interesting story about how my best friend and I became best friends. And my best friend and I went to grad school together at the University of South Carolina. And we became friends not, you know, partially because of our coursework together and also because we had a hobby in similar. We both really like swing dancing, which is like Lindy hop, old style, 20s and 30s type type of dancing.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:02:21]:
And so we became friends really quickly. And then there was one day, I want to say it was. It was in the winter of my first year of grad school and I had followed, you know, the love of my life to South Carolina, and I had picked my grad school so that way I could be there near him. Very complicated history there, but I.

And I don’t remember if mine happened first or if hers happened first, but my partner at the time broke up with me and my friend came over to console me and that was very, very helpful. And then just a few hours later, her partner broke up with her and I was going over to her house to comfort her and we were broken up with on the same day. And that was just like shocking to both of us. That really solidified our friendship.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:20]:
After that, we sort of developed our own little mini breakup Support group where we really helped each other grieve. And ever since then, we have been kind of like the go to for each other for all the things with relationships that come up, including how to. How we were going to choose future partners, how partnerships were going. I was there for her wedding and she was maid of honor for my wedding, and it really launched our friendship much deeper. And so now I can’t imagine a life without her.

But directly after our mutual breakups, we decided we were going to learn pretty much everything we could. We made pros and cons lists of whether or not to try to stay with those partners or try to get them to come back and be with us. Pros and cons of moving on.

Evaluated relationship pros/cons; sought ideal partner.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:04:15]:
We did lots of pros and cons lists for dating certain people or breaking up with certain people for the types of qualities that we wanted in another partner. We. I remember she had me specifically after that breakup. She had me make a list of every single thing that I ever wanted in a relationship and compare that to what my partner had been providing. And I think her intent was, you know, to help me move on a little bit because I wasn’t getting a whole lot of those things met.

My partner was, you know, is really great still, and I still care a lot about him, but not a good fit, which I think we would both even say to this day. The other thing that I did after that breakup is that I got this book called the Science of Happily Ever after. And we’re going to have hopefully an entire show devoted to that book later on.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:05:11]:
So I’m not going to go too deep into that. But that was one book that I got. I got some other books as well where I just. I read everything that I could to learn how to have a good relationship, how to have a healthy relationship. It was very, very hard and difficult to find love. It was painful when love is gone and it’s hard to find it in the first place.

That was the catalyst, really, for pushing me into the realm of couples and marriage therapy and really started off my passion for learning about relationships and what makes relationships work or not work and how to have the best relationships we can. And so today I’m really going to talk about how relationships get messed up.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:05:56]:
There, like, are a few key points, and so I’m going to start off with one of them. And the first point that I really want to make today is that we all tend to compare what we feel inside of ourselves. So whether or not we feel anxious or sad or we feel even happy, we Compare what we feel to how other people look. And so we don’t always see how other people are feeling unless they’re, you know, very angry and enraged or they’re crying and sobbing.

But outside of dream emotion, if I’m just looking at somebody, I cannot tell how they feel. And so that becomes really problematic because if I am feeling a lot of pain, a lot of stress due to my relationship, and I look at the relationships around me and I can’t tell how they feel. They look composed and together and happy. I’m only seeing this front.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:55]:
So when other couples appear to be happy, I’m only seeing this external thing that they are showing to the world. And I’m not seeing the struggles that they have in their relationship or the feelings that they have about what’s working or not working. So outside of this comparison that happens, so I compare how I feel to what I see in others. I tend to also compare my relationship to the messages that I get from society.

And so this could be from tabloids. You know, if you are in the grocery line and you see a magazine or a tabloid there, and it’s like, you know, the 10 things to do to get him back. The six sex positions to make sure he loves you forever. Or, you know, I just.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:07:46]:
I feel like I could make up these little sayings on tabloids all day long. So even at the grocery store, we’re hearing there’s something wrong with your relationship. People aren’t going to want you if you don’t look a certain way, don’t have sex a certain way, don’t talk and communicate a certain way. So we’re constantly getting these messages that, one, we need to be fixing something to have a better relationship. And two, the images of couples that we do see in media are usually very passionate. I guess they remind me of almost like a first, a first love, or. I don’t know. I’m thinking of.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:08:33]:
What is it? Lara Croft and Tomb Raider. That’s the image that’s coming to my mind right now is Lara Croft from Tomb Raider just very, like, very sexualized, very passionate. You can have this deep, fulfilling love and connection right off the bat without having to work at it. And so the message is that love in relationships should come easy. And I don’t think that they should be the hardest thing in the world.

But there’s kind of the message in society that says it should be easy, it should feel right and be right right off the bat. You shouldn’t have any problems early on. And if you have problems, then you then you need to be changing something, like how you look or the types of sex positions that you try and whatever else is in the tabloid and magazines.

Unrealistic relationship expectations shaped by media.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:09:26]:
Let me summarize here. So there we get this image of what perfect relationships look like from tv, movies, Netflix, things like that. We also get these messages in advertisements and magazines and things that say, hey, you need to be doing something different and better to have a fulfilling relationship. And obviously, it must be your fault if you aren’t doing these things to make somebody happy.

And then when we feel like, hey, I am not feeling great about my relationship right now, I’m feeling a lot of stress, sadness. I feel like we’re miscommunicating. When you feel those things in stress in relationships, you have this mental image of this perfect couple, and you’re like, okay, I’m not like, what they have in the movies. And you have this message from society that says, you gotta be doing all of these things to have meaningful love relationships.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:29]:
And then you also compare yourself, how you feel in your relationship to the relationships that you see in other people. And this makes it really hard to know what is a good relationship. Do other people have a good relationship? Do I have a good relationship? It gets very confusing.

The second reason why we fuck up relationships is really just because, like, a lack of education, a lack of role models, and oftentimes even just a lack of good relationship advice. So again, I’ll go back to, like, the tabloids and the messages from society and all of that stuff. They kind of create this false expectation. And that’s where a lot of people get their advice on relationships is actually, I’m remembering this story. I remember when I was in middle school, I was on a Girl Scout outing.

Teen magazine advice sparks early relationship interest

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:11:26]:
I don’t remember exactly what we were doing, but I remember there were face masks involved. And there was a magazine that one of my friends had, and I was reading this magazine, and it was these instructions for how to do butterfly kisses. So how you, like, you flicker your eyelashes on someone’s cheek. And how the advice in this column, this, like, teen dating column at the time, was that this was gonna make a guy just, you know, be totally in love with me. And I remember, like, devouring that magazine.

So maybe my interest in relationships started even earlier than that breakup, but that was what I remember from middle school. And so even if I think back on my earlier childhood experiences and what I learned about relationships growing up, you know, there was no formal education. Schools do not teach, or at least they didn’t when I was in school.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:29]:
About what healthy relationships look like or how to communicate or how to even negotiate what I want with what someone else wants. If anything, even, you know, you learn negotiation maybe as a kid when you have to share. But even in school, they didn’t really teach me how to learn to share with someone else. They told me that if I didn’t share, I’d get in trouble.

There really is no. I didn’t have any education, and I think a lot of other people didn’t have any education on how to communicate, how to negotiate in relationships, how to have a healthy one. And so if you don’t have the education in school, then you look to role models. For a lot of people, they don’t have role models.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:13:11]:
And I know this was certainly the case for me up until I was 16. So I definitely, I guess I want to have this little disclaimer. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with divorce. I am supportive of divorce when that is the best option for people. And maybe we’ll do like a whole series on that at another time on when I think, you know, divorce can be a really great option for couples.

But growing up, my parents were divorced and most of the friends that my mom had, and I didn’t know my dad very well growing up. So I’m going kind of off of, based off of what I learned from the relationships surrounding my mom. A lot of them were divorced.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:14:03]:
And the people who I did see married a lot of my friends, parents were divorced too. I didn’t have a lot of friends whose parents were together. I had some that were remarried. But even looking at all those different examples of relationships, my parents, my friends, parents, my parents, friends and their relationships, even the ones that stayed together were often appeared to be unhappy.

And again, this is, you know, probably a child’s point of view because I’m going off of my memory and I only understand things from when I was a kid. But there were a lot of couples that seemed like they were roommates, that they were kind of just putting up with each other. There were some couples who were kind of violent. So people either got out of relationships and divorced or they stayed unhappily in relationships.

Lack of relationship role models causes confusion

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:14:57]:
And I really didn’t see role models of what healthy, happy relationships looked like until I was 16. And for a lot of people, this is the case. So there’s no school, schooling type of education on happy, healthy relationships. A lot of people don’t have great role models. And so when they don’t, you know, as my previous story maybe suggested, when kids don’t have role models, they go look for role models in media and the tabloids and the teen dating magazines I don’t think are great sources of education on happy, healthy relationships when they’re teaching you how to do butterfly kisses on somebody’s cheek to get them to like you.

My last point about this section, about how really there’s not a lot of information that you get kind of naturally growing up, is that when people get advice, so no education, which means when they’re in a situation with a partner, they have to go ask, you know, friends, parents, siblings, people that they know for advice on what to do in their relationship, how to handle different situations. And the advice is often very mixed. Some people tell you, oh, you should work on the relationship, and other people tell you you should leave it.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:16:25]:
Some people tell you you should stand up for yourself and not compromise. And other people tell you that you should compromise because all relationships require compromise. And so it’s very hard to know what to do when you’re getting a lot of conflicting advice. A lot of the advice is very superficial, or it’s maybe from people who don’t have good relationships themselves, but are very opinionated. If you could see me, I’m, like raising my hand right now because I want everyone to take a little moment and think about how many of you know people who don’t have very great relationships, but they’re very opinionated about what your relationship should look like.

So if everyone just took a moment, I’m going to just applaud you, because this is so, so common, is that people almost always want to tell you how to live your life, even if they haven’t quite figured theirs out yet. So to summarize all of this, no education, often no role models. When you get advice either from friends or family or from media, it’s mixed, superficial, and it’s oftentimes not very good advice.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:17:40]:
So people are not getting a whole lot of great information about how to have happy, healthy relationships. The next reason why we really mess up relationships has to do kind of with the science of communication. And this is because only 7% of communication happens through words. And that means 93% of communication of the message that someone gets when I’m talking to them is based off of tone of voice and body language.

So if I am talking with my partner, the message that they get is only going to be 7% of my words and 93% of my tone of voice in my body language. That’s the same message that I’m going To get from my partner, which is how miscommunication happens all the time. Because what people. And it’s really.

Tone, body language more important than words.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:18:38]:
It’s not like people are doing it intentionally. It’s the brain. When the brain is trying to understand the information coming in, the brain is going to pay more attention to tone of voice and body language because it really needs to in order to react in a very responsive way in case there is a threat in the environment. So this is kind of like just a normal, natural biological process that’s there to help us respond in a potentially threatening situation.

Okay, so my main point on that was that communication is really hard, and tone of voice and body language are more important than the actual words that come out of my mouth. The second part about communication is that people often don’t say what they really mean or what they really want in a relationship. And this is usually due to self protection. So if I really.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:37]:
Let’s see. I really want to maybe know that my partner cares about me. So maybe at a really deep core level, I’m really wanting to know that my partner cares. And I might want reassurance for that. But, oh, my God, that’s scary to ask for in a relationship, to say, hey, I’m feeling really anxious that you don’t care about me. Could you provide reassurance that is terrifying to ask for. And so a lot of us will say, like, I really want you to do this thing. And then when my partner doesn’t do it, I get angry.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:20:16]:
And so. So I’ll give an example. For me, dishes is what my partner and I fight a lot about, because dishes are just like this big, huge sore spot for me, and I just cannot stand it when there are dirty dishes. So oftentimes I’ll say, hey, honey, will you do the dishes? That would be really helpful.

But deep down I’m thinking this is going to tell me that he loves me. And then when he doesn’t do that, I think, oh, my gosh, he doesn’t love me. And so then I get angry and I say, why didn’t you do the dishes? And I’m really having a discussion on a deeper level about how I want him to show me that he cares for me. But for him, the conversation is just about the dishes.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:05]:
And it’s like, I’m gonna get to the dishes another time. That’s what’s going through his mind. And this happens with couples all the time. All the time. Like, this is one of the main things that I end up helping couples work through is being able to communicate and talk about this and really be having the same discussion instead of having two very different discussions that neither of them are on the same page for.

So only 7% of what I say verbally of my words gets across in communication. What my partner hears is tone of voice and body language. And what makes it even harder is that when people don’t share the underlying message or they don’t ask for what they really want.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:51]:
Now we’re taking that 7% of the words that they would have gotten anyway, you know, the really low amount of the message that they got and we’re just like cutting it and I don’t know, by a half, by two thirds. I don’t actually know if there’s, if there’s a statistic on that. But when we don’t say what we really mean or what we really want because we don’t want to be vulnerable, then my partner is getting even less of the message.

So that is the other common reason why relationships get messed up. The next one is really the science of connection. And this is when I say connection, I mean what’s bringing us together in an emotional way where we feel this emotional sense of closeness. I’ve got a couple of thoughts about this. It kind of goes back to my recent example just now with the dishes and the I don’t want to be vulnerable people in general, nobody wants to be vulnerable.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:22:49]:
And so instead of being vulnerable in the relationship and really vulnerability is needed in a relationship in order to have healthy, happy relationship relationships. We both need to feel safe to be vulnerable and we both need to be able to respond to the other person with kindness when they’re vulnerable. And so because people don’t want to be vulnerable, because that’s hella scary, they develop these self protective patterns to try to like kind of ask for what they want without really asking for what they want.

They develop these patterns of saying, hey, I care about you and I want you and I need you, but I’m not going to actually show you that. So instead I’m going to shut down and withdraw or I’m going to get angry at you because you didn’t do the dishes. So clearly you don’t love me. And the thing is that people keep repeating these self protective patterns but they expect different results. So over and over they’re going through the same pattern of trying to protect themselves, trying to, to not be vulnerable with their partner.

Vulnerability, stress, and mental health affect relationships.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:23:58]:
And they keep thinking it’s going to work, but it never works. And so usually when it hasn’t been working that’s when they end up and they come see me. So the key to connection, which we’ll have a whole episode on this and probably many more in the future, is that I need to be vulnerable with my partner, and I need to be kind when my partner is vulnerable. So this brings me to the last thing, the last section I’m going to cover today on how we fuck up relationships, which is to really talk about the role of stress.

So there are lots of causes of stress in life, just in general. So if me or my partner have a mental health diagnosis, if there’s depression going on, anxiety, if either of you or your partner, if you have a history of trauma, if you were abused as a child, child in some way, military, sexual trauma, military deployments, these are all very stressful experiences. Some of them due to being in the military, some of them due to mental health. You could have economic stressors, which is just like, can I pay the bills? If there’s a lot of financial stress, that’s going to have an impact.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:25:09]:
Life transitions, like becoming parents, especially with the first child, is a stress period for couples. And dealing with, you know, the in laws, there are lots of different things that can cause stress, but when you or your partner are feeling stress, it’s going to increase. The miscommunication part of this is just because there’s only so much I can deal with in a day.

So if you were in my office, you would see my coffee cup, because I have one every single day. Because, yes, I probably am a coffee addict. I’ve accepted that about myself. So you would see me with my coffee cup and I would kind of give you this image of me pouring more and more coffee into my coffee cup. And at some point, if I keep filling it up, it’s going to overflow.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:26:02]:
And this is how it is with stress, because there’s only so much I can handle when my cup is overflowing in life, I’m going to be more snippy. I might shut down and ignore my partner or my family more. I might get angry or just outright rude and critical sometimes. And this can cause a lot of miscommunication. And I also, you know, people don’t have as much patience when they’re stressed out to try to handle and navigate those miscommunications when they happen.

The other thing that happens when there’s more stress is that it can decrease sex drive and it’s more typical. It’s pretty typical that stress will decrease sex drive for women and it can commonly increase a man’s sex drive. And so, but there are, that’s not a 100% case.

Stress impacts sex drive, causing relationship issues.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:26:59]:
There are people, you know, women when they’re stressed, their sex drive increases. And men, when they’re stressed, their sex drive decreases. But let’s, if we were just going to go with kind of like the more common one, let’s say you’re both stressed, even if one person was stressed, you know, but now there’s like a mismatch from what your guys are used to sexually.

And if one person already had a lower or like one person had a higher sex drive and one had a lower sex drive and now you add stress in that, that difference between them is maybe even more intense. Then maybe people start feeling like, am I even, do you even want me? Does my partner want me anymore? Am I sexually attractive to them?

And so then that’s also a really vulnerable thing to ask. And so then they go into protective mode and they say, why aren’t we having sex? What’s wrong with, wrong with you that we’re not having sex? Don’t you even care about me? And then, you know, they’re in their protective anger and it, and it just kind of like sends the whole cascade of things. So sex can be a hot topic in relationships. A lack of interest in sex could be related to stress.

Stress affects sex drive and relationship satisfaction.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:28:16]:
Differences in sex drive could be related to stress. And that could cause a host of other relationship problems when it makes it harder to communicate and connect together. So stress also impacts relationship satisfaction when people experience more stress than is normal for them. I think, you know, everyone kind of has like a baseline of stress that’s the normal level of stress and they can function well with that normal level.

But when the stress exceeds that amount and they have more stress than is typical for them, then they feel less satisfied with their relationship often because they’re less satisfied with life in general because they’re stressed out and also because it causes more miscommunication and it makes it harder to connect to your partner.

So one of the things that’s, that’s really important is in helping with relationship satisfaction between couples is that there, you know, there aren’t maybe like trying to decrease how many extremely stressful experiences you go through can help. Like self care obviously is helpful if you can get to kind of a normal daily consistency of stress and decrease the big kind of crisis level stressors, that will help. But also maybe even more significantly in my personal opinion is the consistency of support.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:29:46]:
So if I’m stressed out or if you’re stressed out and you go to Your partner. If you can get support from your partner, that is going to help you manage your stress. It’s going to help you be able to communicate better. If they’re kind and supportive of you, then you’re going to feel safer to be more vulnerable. Which means you can say what you really mean and ask for what you really want. And that all helps with being able to communicate better and reconnect emotionally. So if I were going to kind of just summarize all of this for you. There are a lot of reasons why we fuck up relationships.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:30:23]:
One is that we compare what we’re experiencing in ourselves, in our relationships to what we see in media and what we see on the outside of other people’s relationships. Number two is we’ve all usually had a lack of education, oftentimes a lack of role models and pretty, you know, so, so advice about relationships. Number three is that communicating is hard in general.

And most of the communication never gets across to my partner because my partner’s mind is going to listen to tone of voice and body language. And if I don’t actually say what I really mean or whatever, or ask for what I really want, then they’re getting even less of the message. Four is the science of connection, which is really that in order to be close and connected to my partner, I have to be vulnerable and I have to feel safe enough to know that my partner is going to respond in a kind way.

We have to kind of set that up in our relationship that we are, we both can be vulnerable, that when we’re vulnerable, the other one’s going to be kind. But this is really hard to do, especially with when I’m feeling vulnerable.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:31:42]:
And if somebody, you know, accidentally steps on my toes, then I might go into self protection mode. And that can, that can cause a whole lot of different negative patterns. And lastly, the role of stress. Stress can cause more miscommunication, make it harder to reconnect, make it harder to connect sexually. And if I can’t go to my partner for support during times of stress, then that is going to decrease relationship satisfaction.

So every time I’m going to have like a couple tips for you or an action item for you to try. For this next few days, I really want you to try to notice all of the images of relationships that you see around you. Maybe they’re societal messages, like messages from TV or movies or tabloids.

Identify and analyze common relationship standards.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:32:31]:
And I want you to see if you can find all the different messages that say this is what a good relationship looks like. Think Laura Croft from Tomb Raider find all of those messages of this is what perfect looks like. This is what you should aspire to in your relationship. And secondly, I want you to look for all of the messages that you see in advertising or when you’re in the grocery line that tell you your relationship isn’t good enough.

Unless it’s, you know, these sex positions or these, you know, a certain weight or I don’t know if you cook this. I’m thinking about all the like cooking tabloids, which for real, I’ve seen the messages there too, because it’s like your man’s gonna love it when you cook this type of thing. So that’s my challenge for you. And your action item connected to this episode is that go find all of the messages that have been pushed on you about relationships so that way you can start thinking about how you have maybe internalized those messages and use those messages to set the standard for what you think a good relationship looks like.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:33:54]:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for our free 10 week relationship e course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it. While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy and it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one. Until next time.