Unsolvable relationship problems

Episode Summary of “Unsolvable relationship problems”

Welcome to Episode 18 of the Communicate & Connect Podcast: “Unsolvable Relationship Problems.” I’m your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a passionate military marriage counselor dedicated to aiding couples in strengthening their relationships. In this insightful episode, we tackle the fascinating and often perplexing subject of unsolvable relationship problems—issues that persist despite our best efforts to resolve them.

Drawing on extensive research from the renowned Gottman Institute, we uncover the surprising statistic that 69% of relationship problems are fundamentally unsolvable. These persistent challenges often arise from deep-seated personality differences and lifestyle preferences that neither partner can easily change. I’ll share personal anecdotes, such as my own past experience with a partner who was a night owl while I preferred an early bedtime, to highlight how these differences manifest in daily life and can influence relationship dynamics.

But don’t worry—these unsolvable problems don’t spell doom for your relationship. In fact, understanding and navigating them can lead to greater connection and intimacy. Throughout this episode, we’ll discuss strategies for dealing with these challenges, emphasizing the role of appreciation, acceptance, and humor as essential tools for relationship maintenance. We’ll also explore the remaining 31% of solvable problems and how teamwork and open communication can address them effectively.

Whether you’re struggling with differing food preferences, socialization styles, or even contrasting views on finances, this episode provides valuable insights and practical tips for managing these differences with grace and understanding. By tuning in, you’ll gain a clearer perspective on how to transform potential points of contention into opportunities for growth and connection.

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Episode Transcript for “Unsolvable relationship problems”

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:02]:
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.communicateandconnect.com.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:28]:
Welcome to the Communicate and Connect podcast for Milit Relationships with your host, Elizabeth Polinski, 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.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:01:03]:
This is episode 18 on unsolvable relationship Problems. Hey everyone. I’m so glad that you are joining me today and listening to this podcast episode. This is one that I’m really excited about because it comes up so often in couples therapy and I find myself talking about this a lot, pretty much maybe not with every single couple.

But when, when I run into this, we have to talk about what problems in relationships are actually unsolvable problems. Because there are a lot of problems actually in relationships that are unsolvable, that even me as your couples therapist, I can’t. I can’t help you solve them. And so I can only help you work around the problems.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:01:55]:
And so I’ll start off by giving an example, a time where this happened to me. I remember before my husband, I had a. And it was like a couple of partners, partners back. But I had a partner, a boyfriend who. He was a night owl. And I am kind of like a little old lady, maybe. I. I have a pretty early bedtime and I like to go to bed when I’m tired.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:02:26]:
And I’m not really a person who stays out that late and part. But my partner at the time was somebody who really loved. He was an extrovert. He loved to go to all of the parties that our friends had and be like the one that closed them down, you know?

And I remember one party that we went to, it was our friend’s birthday and it was one of the. One of the interactions that we had that really stands out to me, right? Just like a couple of weeks before we. Before we broke up and the party was great, you know, even I had a. I had a good time. And I remember telling him that I wanted to go home and he said that he didn’t want to leave.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:19]:
And we Ended up having a little bit of a fight. I’m hesitant to say a fight exactly because it’s not like we argued about it, but there was a lot of tenseness between us in that moment that I wanted to leave and he was not willing to come with me and he wanted to stay at the party. And I know he was feeling the tension too. And then that tension between.

That difference between us kind of stayed, I guess. Long story short, I have now found my current husband who actually goes to bed before I do. And so it works out great. But that in terms of my previous boyfriend, that is a just a difference between him and I about our lifestyle preferences and our personality differences.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:04:13]:
That is just not really a solvable problem between us. And it’s probably. Anyway, I’m, you know, I’m happy with my husband. So anyway, so that’s kind of my story. And that, I think is a really good indicator of what I’m going to talk about today. Because according to the Gottmans, so doctors John and Julie Gottman, they are researchers and they do just a ton of research on couples relationships. And they have the Gottman Institute, which again, does a ton of research, but they found that 69% of problems, relationships are unsolvable across the board. Whether you have, you know, good relationship or a bad relationship.

Unsolvable Relationship Challenges Explained

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:05:06]:
Across the board, 69% of problems are unsolvable. And they’re going to be these sort of ongoing, regular problems that don’t get solved because they are about personality differences or lifestyle preferences. And this is something that I do like to talk a lot about with my couples, because when they hear that, it kind of actually is helpful in some ways because it’s like a weight lifted off of your shoulders.

Because 69% of the time, you guys can’t be expected to fix whatever the problem is between the two of you. So I’ll give some examples of this. So the example of me and my previous boyfriend, that’s a really good example of, I guess I would say, like, bedtime. What time is bedtime? Are we night owls? Do we go to bed early? You know, if there is a personality difference between you there, that will be challenging at times. I suppose food preferences are another one.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:11]:
So like I somebody who really has a preference for vegetables. I actually don’t like meat a whole lot. I don’t have any issues or like, qualms about eating meat. I just don’t care for it very much. And of course, my husband just loves meat, meat all the time. And so that is a difference between us that is a lifestyle preference difference. That is really an unsolvable problem. And we do sometimes have these problems around food.

Managing Personality and Dining Conflicts

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:45]:
And what are we going to eat? You want to eat something that’s different than what I want to eat. How are we going to navigate this? How do we, like, are we cooking two separate meals? Are we. How are we cooking different portions for you versus me? How does this play out when we go grocery shopping? This type of thing, socialization. So I think, you know, the most simplest terms would be, are you an extrovert or are you an introvert? That’s a personality difference, right? That’s not going to change.

There is no solution to someone being an extrovert and someone else being an introvert. Someone needing to have people around and going out and socializing and that really giving them, you know, energy and happiness and like life fulfillment versus somebody who is a home buddy and needs alone time to kind of reset. And I have seen that one. I would say that was a problem for me and my previous boyfriend as well, but I see that quite a bit.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:07:50]:
Yeah. Another really common one is cleanliness. You know, I think everybody probably has a different standard on what they consider clean to be. Some people are more further away from each other than others, but cleanliness is another common one. Do we save money or do we spend money? Is another one. How much spending do we do? How much investing do we do? How much saving do we do? When we do spend money, what do we spend it on? These are different personality and kind of lifestyle preference differences. I think the last one that I’ll talk about is sex, because this is a really, really common one. Actually.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:08:32]:
I. It’s almost like differences attract in this area because I often see one person who wants to have sex in order to reconnect at an emotional level. Sex is kind of this avenue for us to create connection between us. And at the same time, their partner is different. Their partner wants that feeling of love and connection and relaxation and things are good between us. They want all of that before they’re ready to have sex. And so that is also a personality difference. Do I use sex to create connection or do I need connection first in order to have sex? Very, very common.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:09:21]:
Very, very common difference between people in relationships. And that one can really be a painful one because, you know, the person who wants sex often feels kind of like rejected maybe when their partner says, no, I don’t want sex. And then their partner feels really pressured and like they’re being told they’re not doing enough sexually in the relationship. And so this ends up kind of hurting, hurting at an emotional level when those fights around sex happen.

But this is another instance of where there’s not a whole lot that can be done. This is kind of an unsolvable problem when you have this personality difference or when you have a difference in sex drive. And so what does that mean for relationships? Because remember, both the good relationships and the bad relationships, they both have 69% of their problems being unsolvable. And so what is a relationship supposed to do in this scenario? Three things are needed according to the Gottmans.

Cultivating Relationship Appreciation Culture

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:35]:
It’s one is appreciation. And that has to do with building kind of a culture of appreciation. Showing appreciation when my partner does something. Well, I guess one that I appreciate, but also when they do something that is outside of their typical norm, so maybe is different than what their personality would typically do or different than what their preference is. And making sure I acknowledge what they’re doing for the relationship and showing appreciation for that.

I often tell people, like, I want to be on the lookout. So often people are on the lookout for when is their partner going to mess up again, when are they going to not do something right? When are they going to reject them again, when is something bad going to happen? Instead, I want to kind of start looking and training my brain to look for the things that I really appreciate that my partner is doing, the things that I see them doing. The second thing outside of appreciation that I can do is acceptance.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:11:44]:
So this is sometimes hard for people. You know, I think it’s such a human thing to say I want what I want when I want it, but I also have to maybe recognize that my partner and everybody else in the world also wants what they want when they want it. And I have to accept that how my partner is and what my partner wants and how they function is going to be different than how I function and what I want in a relationship.

And it’s not my partner’s job to fill all of my wants. It’s also not my job to fill all of their wants. We are in this thing together as a team, trying to find solutions that are going to fit for us both. But that also comes with acceptance of when that can’t happen, acceptance that there are unsolvable problems. Acceptance.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:42]:
Acceptance of my partner, who they are as a person, saying and kind of conveying with that acceptance that they’re valuable and worthwhile and they’re good enough and I love them even if they don’t do something that I want. So this one is really big and Then I think the last one is having a sense of humor. So we’ve got.

So with unsolvable problems, we want a feeling of appreciation in the relationship, we want a feeling of acceptance. And then we also want a sense of humor. And this is pretty significant. This is something that, you know, like, the really good relationships would do that, you know, the more negative relationships wouldn’t do around these unsolvable problems. You know, I think I could give an example of this from my marriage.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:13:37]:
So I’m not a very patient person. My husband is very patient and accepting and I can get very impatient when I don’t get what I want, when I want it, maybe. But that could be for anything. That could be like, I’m sitting in line at Chick Fil A and they took 20 minutes for me to go through the drive through that just happened like the other week. And that was really frustrating. And yeah, I get really impatient. So, you know, my partner, my partner and I start joking. We’ve started joking about this.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:14:16]:
And he’ll, he’ll say things like, you know, patience is a virtue. And he’ll like, give me this little smile, you know, and I’ll say stuff like, well, you’re the, you’re the patient one in the relationship. It’s almost a. It’s almost actually kind of like a playfulness that we have in this sense of humor.

And so that’s the kind of thing that really, when there are these personality differences between the two of you, that there really isn’t a way of solving them. We want to somehow get the relationship to the point where there’s appreciation, acceptance, and a playfulness and a humor around these differences. So that’s kind of what we’ve been talking about in terms of unsolvable problems. Let’s talk briefly about solvable problems because those for sure happen in a relationship too.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:15:08]:
What is that? That’s 31% of the time. Solvable problems are situational. They’re not perpetual, ongoing differences between the two of you. And what these require is really a lot of teamwork and negotiation. I tend to recommend that people have regular meetings for these things. So I always recommend that people have a monthly relationship check in meeting and a finance meeting. Those are kind of the two that I always talk about. Some people combine them, but we separate them.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:15:42]:
But anyway, the important thing is having a regular meeting where we’re talking about how the relationship is going and do we need to. How do we need to team up around whatever problems we’re facing as a couple. And those regular meetings One, allow us to talk about it as a team and they, and things don’t get kind of brushed under the rug or not talked about.

Two, they, they give us time to try different options and solutions and then the next meeting that we have, we can talk about how that went. Did that go well? If it didn’t go well, we brainstorm other solutions or other options to try until the next meeting. Or if it went pretty well. But it just needs tweaking. We talk about how to tweak that problem.

Debt Management and Puppy Challenges

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:16:35]:
You know, if it’s more of like a longer, a longer term problem, like how do we pay off debt? What is our financial plan for paying off debt? Where are we at on that? It gives us a way to check in with each other over time on how that’s going. Just some examples. So that was maybe like a financial planning example. Some other examples that I can give you that are just kind of recent from my life are, should we get a dog? Because I just, you know, I recently got Bella.

Bella is, she’ll probably be nine months old when this podcast episode gets released, but we got her when she was 8 weeks old. And that’s a lot of puppy to deal with as a couple. So there were lots of problems that we faced as a team together around Bella, our goldendoodle puppy, who’s a therapy dog in training and you know, potty training. How, how do we want to do potty training? I remember the first few nights she barked throughout the night, which was just so obnoxious.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:17:47]:
And I ended up sleeping on the floor next to her cage in order to get her to calm down. And so like we, we had to problem solve. What are we going to do to help her be able to sleep throughout the night and be comfortable? How are we going to get her socialized around dogs and humans so that way she can be adequately socialized to be a therapy dog? How do we want to handle the therapy dog training? It also has like money involved in with it.

So how are we going to do financial planning around that? All of these types of things are situational. These are solvable. These just involve communication and negotiating and teamwork. So how do you know if your problem is solvable or unsolvable? I think the very first thing is, do you guys keep getting stuck on it? Is it. This kind of keeps coming back around.

Perpetual Relationship Problems Explained

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:18:42]:
That is one way that I tend to find out that something is an unsolvable problem is because we keep coming back to it over and over and over and it can become like painfully annoying to Keep coming over it and over it and over it again. So an unsolvable problem is typically a perpetual problem. It’s not situational. If you’re having a hard time going from like, to getting to the appreciation, acceptance, and humor, playfulness part of an unsolvable problem, it’s typically because your brain is telling you that there is a deeper emotional meaning attached to the problem.

This is typically about my attachment bond in the relationship, which I’ll do some other episodes on. But what is the meaning? What does this mean to me that we can’t solve this? What does it mean to me when my partner does this or doesn’t do this? So, for example, we’ll go with the sex one, because that one’s kind of a really obvious one we have.

You know, if there’s a personality difference between you and your partner or differences in sex drive, one person wants sex in order to connect, and the other one wants to feel relaxed and connected and everything first in order to be interested in sex. You know, for the person who wants sex in order to connect, that is gonna often feel like a rejection, because then they’re asking like, oh, you.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:20:26]:
You want to have sex? Or, you know, they’re initiating in some type of way, and then they get turned down because it’s not the right circumstances for their partner. And over time, that just, like, it hurts and it stings. And their partner ends up getting kind of sad too, because they’re just getting this message like, I’m not providing enough for you, or I’m not somehow not good enough for you, or not doing it right. But these would be examples of what does it mean to me that we’re having this unsolvable problem?

And so the problem at this point, and this is often what I help couples with when they. When this is what we’re dealing with in couples therapy, is an unsolvable problem, is that the problem is no longer about the personality difference, because nothing can be done about the personality difference or the difference in sex drive. Unless you have a medical problem that is causing a difference in sex drive or low libido or something like that. Nothing can really be done about this type of personality difference, lifestyle preference difference. So the problem then changes.

Intimacy through Vulnerable Communication

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:41]:
What do we need to do? We need to help you both with those underlying meanings of what does it mean when you want sex and I don’t, or when I want sex and you don’t?

And this is where we have to really get to the heart of the matter, which is something that couples often don’t do they feel hurt and they go off and they retreat or they get angry at their partner and what we need to, what needs to happen in the relationship is for people to really get to the heart of the matter and be very, very vulnerable and say, oh my gosh, right now I am just having all of these really negative feelings and thinking that you’re rejecting me.

Share that with your partner. That gives your partner the opportunity to come help you with those emotions if they can. The other partner could probably say something like, you know, I’m having really hard time that you’re, you’re so mad at me about this, or I’m worried that you’re going to be mad at me about this. But I really, I’m just not into it right now. I need time, time to be interested.

That is also a way that gets closer to the heart of the matter, I think even deeper one and even vulnerable, more vulnerable one would be because I think oftentimes this side of the coin tends to somehow feel like they’re not accepted or they’re not meeting their partner’s needs, or they’re not capable of meeting their partner’s needs. And so if they can somehow share that with their partner, then it gives, you know, sharing these vulnerable emotions with each other, that’s what leads to connection.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:23:28]:
It’s not just sharing. It’s. I mean, it’s sharing plus my partner being responsive to me. Both, both have to happen, but my partner can’t be responsive to me if I don’t take the risk to be vulnerable. To get to the heart of the emotional matter at hand. What my brain is telling me this means that says ouch in my body when this unsolvable problem comes up. And so this is really kind of the, the new problem or the new solution for when there are unsolvable problems in a relationship that you, that you guys are really stuck around. So I have an action item for you guys for this episode today.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:24:13]:
And so this is what it is. So this is the one thing. If you’re taking away one thing from today’s episode, this would be it. And this is what I would want you to try to do, is that if you find that you are mad at your partner, then I want you to self reflect, look inside in your emotional emotions and everything and figure out if you actually feel hurt.

Because that’s part of getting to the heart of the matter, getting to the vulnerable stuff, figuring out what my brain is telling me it means when we have an unsolvable problem. If you find out that there is a lot of hurt actually underneath the anger, then the problem is actually about the hurt emotions and that’s what needs to be fixed, not the content of the problem. People tend to feel stressed or maybe they feel neutral when there’s an actual content problem, like a solvable problem. What do we do about potty training? How do we plan for getting out of debt? That maybe causes stress, but it’s pretty neutral.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:25:21]:
So if you’re noticing that you’re feeling mad, there’s a very good chance that actually there’s a lot of hurt going on underneath that anger and that is what needs to be addressed. And so switching the conversation to the emotional pain can be really, really helpful. Anyway, thank you for listening to this episode. The show notes can be found@connecticateandconnect.com I.

Elizabeth Polinsky [00:25:56]:
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 email 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 at 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.