Stop Trying to Save Your Marriage—Start by Stopping the Damage First

Episode Summary of “Stop Trying to Save Your Marriage—Start by Stopping the Damage First”

When couples come into my counseling office in crisis, they almost always want immediate connection, intimacy, and solutions to their problems. It makes so much sense why they want that. But just like in an emergency room, doctors don’t ask a patient to run a marathon while they’re bleeding—they focus on stopping the bleeding and controlling the damage first.

Research shows that couples wait an average of six years after problems begin before seeking help. By that point, years of built-up pain, erosion, and negative spirals have left both partners constantly hurting each other. In this episode of the Communicate & Connect Podcast, Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky explains why you have to stop trying to save your marriage right away and focus instead on stopping the four most damaging behaviors: contempt, threats of breaking up, scorekeeping, and constantly bringing up past arguments.

Key Takeaways

• The Emergency Room Principle: Before you can build optimal health, intimacy, or deep connection, you must first stabilize the relationship by stopping active emotional damage.
• Contempt as an Erosion Process: Contempt—feeling disgusted by or holding ongoing resentment toward your partner—erodes connection over time like water wearing away a shoreline.
• The Danger of Threats: Throwing out threats of divorce, breaking up, or taking the kids during heated moments completely destroys emotional safety, forcing partners to walk on eggshells.
• Drop the Scorecard: Using communication scripts or tools as a weapon to point fingers (“I used the skill and you didn’t”) turns growth into a game of scorekeeping.
• Stay in the Present Moment: Constantly bridging current disagreements back into past arguments creates a maze of facts where the original emotional point gets lost.

Free Relationship Pattern Assessment

Many couples assume they have a communication problem when they’re actually stuck in a relationship pattern that keeps creating the same conflict. Take the Free Relationship Pattern Assessment to discover what pattern may be keeping you stuck and learn what to focus on next.

Episode Transcript for “Stop Trying to Save Your Marriage—Start by Stopping the Damage First”

One of the things that I’ve noticed when couples come into couples counseling, especially when they’re coming in a crisis, is that they want connection and solutions immediately. And this makes a lot of sense that they want it immediately, but before you can have connection and before you can have solutions, you actually have to stop the damage that’s happening in the relationship.

Just like in an emergency room, the first focus is just to stop the bleeding and control the damage, and then we can focus on what optimal health looks like.

Hi, I’m Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky, and you’re about to start communicating more clearly and feeling more connected in your relationships with this podcast. As a marriage and family therapist, I help people change relationship patterns that feel automatic, those reactions that just kick in before you even realize that they’re happening.

And for over 10 years, I’ve worked with people who do hard things for a living, and yet they still feel stuck when it comes to connection in their relationships. This podcast isn’t about scripts or formulas or doing relationships the right way. Instead, it’s about slowing down reactive moments, understanding what’s underneath them, and helping relationships feel more like a team again.

So if you want things to feel better, to feel calmer, steadier, and more at ease in your closest relationships, then this podcast is for you. Because here you’ll start to learn how to pause conflict, understand what’s happening emotionally, and then respond instead of react. And when you do that, connection starts to feel more possible.

Quick note though, this podcast is educational only and isn’t a substitute for professional therapy or counseling. If you need individualized support, please consider working with a mental health counselor. Okay, let’s dive in. I’m really glad you’re here.

Welcome back to the Communicate and Connect podcast. This is episode 88, Stop Trying to Save Your Marriage: Start by Stopping the Damage First.

So you may or may not know me already. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky. I go by Liz, and I work with a bunch of couples, and I help couples stop the negative patterns and cycles and spirals that they get trapped in, in order to share more vulnerably and be able to respond instead of react.

Why Couples Want Fixes

But so often couples come into counseling and they want better communication. They want more connection. They want more intimacy and oftentimes an improved sex life as well. And it makes a lot of sense that they want that, and I want all of that for them as well. But one of the things that is sometimes a shift for people that they have to make in those early stages is I can’t have optimal health when actually I’m in an emergency room.

Nobody gets up and leaves the emergency room and then goes and runs a marathon. And so one of the things that couples really need to do, especially if they’re in a crisis, we know from research that couples tend to wait six years after problems have already started in order to start going to couples counseling.

That they wait six years, and at that point, there’s been a lot of damage, and couples are usually just in this feedback loop where they keep hurting each other over and over and over. And I can’t go just from point A to point B. We can’t do that automatically. There’s a process which we use in our, Spiral to Team process, which you could check out on our website if you want, communicateandconnect.com.

But there is a process of going from point A to point and the very first step is that actually we need to stop damaging each other and stop hurting each other and stop damaging the relationship.

Four Damage Patterns

Some of the things that can be especially damaging to a relationship that are some of the very first things to start working on, working on stopping the damage and then work growth and connection and all of the positive things.

Contempt is one making threats, kinda like keeping score and reliving the past. These are the four things that I really wanna talk about today because these do some damage.

Contempt Warning Signs

There’s some research by Doctors John and Julie Gottman, who have like a research lab where they research couples. And they actually found that contempt is one of the most dangerous and damaging relationship behaviors that couples can have.

And this is where it’s no longer just like we had a fight, we have conflict, and we somehow move on after that. Contempt is where like I am holding all of this resentment towards my partner, and my entire view of them is negative. And I start to just hate them and dislike them and feel disgusted by them on an ongoing basis.

Times that I see this contempt really coming up frequently in my practice is after there has been infidelity. Especially if it was a few years ago, like they have been holding resentment and injuries from the infidelity or some other big betrayal that happened, and now they have years of built-up pain that, has now turned into ongoing resentment and contempt.

The other time that I see this is just when couples have been in a spiral or a cycle or a negative relationship pattern that has been going on for many years. It’s sort of like the connection has just eroded over time. If you think about a river eroding the dirt on the shoreline.

We’re actually dealing with this right now. Where we live in the Hampton Roads area, we live on a river offshoot. We are seeing like erosion from the river and some of the plants dying, and we are working with the Elizabeth River Project right now to fix the shoreline.

But that being said ongoing tension, times where you might be kinda feeling like you’re having the same conversation over and over again. Maybe it changes topics, but it has the same pattern to the conflict or the argument or the tense moment. And that just goes on for years.

Many of the couples that I work with, they’re dealing with this for years and years and years before they come to counseling. It sort of is, is like that erosion over time, and then they feel further and further and further apart, less connected. And then the resentment starts to develop as that continues on.

But contempt is one of the most dangerous relationship places to be in, and I often see a lot of name-calling, a lot of disgust with their partner. And this is like it’s not impossible to come back from here, but if you are noticing that this is starting to happen, like that should be a big red flag. It’s probably time to maybe get some assistance with helping improve things.

Threats and Ultimatums

One of the things that I often see with that as well is threats. Can happen before contempt has totally taken over, but also it happens a lot when contempt has been a consistent thing in the relationship. But threats of breaking up, this can be part of a negative pattern or a negative cycle or spiral that couples get into as well. That whenever there is a tense moment, somebody threatens divorce or threatens to break up or kicks them out of the house.

There have been many times in my office that couples actually come in and they say, “Well, we’re not really even technically together here, like together in terms of in a relationship. But they still love each other. They still wanna be together. They’re still trying to work on it, and it becomes part of their spiral and their cycle of fight, break up, get back together, fight, break up, get back together, and that takes on a life of its own.

So threats of breaking up or divorce. I’ve also seen really heated moments. People threatening to take the kids. They usually never mean this. When they are working from a calmer place and their most wise selves, they almost never mean this. Because they love their kids and they want their kids to have a good relationship with both parents.

But it’s something that gets thrown out in arguments. And sometimes I have seen this also happen, when there are more traditional mental health challenges going on as well. So I’ve seen some couples where there is substance use, where someone will throw out, like, “Well, it’s your fault that I drank. If you end up leaving, I’ll end up drinking.”

I’ve also seen things like, ” I might hurt myself,” whether that’s cutting themselves, burning themselves, threatening to have like more suicidal thoughts. This sort of thing can be very very hard, but it’s often part of the negative relationship spiral or cycle that the couple has gotten stuck in.

That also creates damage. It totally erodes the safety of the relationship because now we aren’t free to be ourselves. And people then end up walking on eggshells trying to prevent their partner from having a mental health crisis. And you could probably also talk about intimate partner violence here.

I might save that for a different episode because that’s a whole huge topic on intimate partner violence or domestic violence. But that can, for some people, be part of their spiral, too.

Scorekeeping Traps

Another thing that can really be damaging is score keeping like, “I did this, so you should do that. Well, you did this, and I don’t do that.” I see this all the time, and you know what? It comes up with communication skills.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t like couples learning a lot of scripts or like traditional communication skills because then it just gets used as a weapon in the couple cycle or their spiral because then one person says, ” Well, I used this skill and you didn’t,” and it comes out as critical.

And then the other one gets defensive, and they says, “Well, I did this skill yesterday, and you didn’t do it. You just went off and totally shut down or totally started screaming.” And then it becomes the next way to point fingers at each other. And so score keeping ultimately is just a big let’s-point-fingers-at-each-other game.

That is another thing that you want to let go of. I would say don’t even pay attention to whether or not your partner is using the skills that they’re supposed to be using to help improve things.

What really helps is if you just focus on you. At the end of the day, we only have responsibility for what we do. We can only control what we do. And if you focus on you, stopping the spiral, sharing in a different way, you stopping your part of the damage is going to go a long way.

Dragging Up the Past

Another one that comes up is, always bringing up past arguments. This happens so so frequently that you don’t even know.

Like so much of the time when couples are coming in around this, it spirals so much that they don’t even know what they’re talking about. It’s like they start with one topic, and then it bridges to some other past argument, which then bridges to some other past argument, which then bridges to some other past argument.

And they go around and around and around debating facts about past arguments until they’re at the point of like, “I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. What was the whole point of this conversation to begin with?”

So stop changing the subject. You want to stay just on one subject, and don’t bring up the past. This is one of the things that will help stop the damage in the relationship is if you can stay with this exact present moment and what we are trying to discuss or resolve or address in this moment together.

So when you change from contempt to maybe empathy, going from like threats to maybe sharing about emotional triggers that you have. When you go from, scorekeeping to maybe appreciation, and then talking about past arguments to staying in the present moment. Like these changes really can help stop the damage from continuing.

Build Safety and Stability

And why is that important? Why would we want to stop the damage before we focus on other communication skills or solutions to money, parenting, sex, whatever the situation is. It’s because we first need to create some stability in the relationship. And as there is stability, safety happens.

I feel safe. The relationship isn’t always chaotic and always tumultuous. When we stop the damage, there’s stability, and safety starts to develop. As safety develops, then that creates an opportunity for more openness between the two of you, more connection between the two of you, and that’s ultimately where we wanna go.

That’s how we get to point B of having this optimal close connected relationship where we feel like a team, and we feel accepted and respected for who we are. Having fewer arguments, able to repair after the arguments. Like all of that is possible, and we can help get you there with our process.

But the very first step that couples need to focus on is stopping the damage. Stop the bleeding. Just like your body would start healing in the emergency room while you’re there after getting stitched up. We need to stop the damage, give the relationship a little bit of room to stabilize and build safety again. That way then we can help you get to where you ultimately wanna go with your marriage or couple relationship.

Military Marriage Stressors

I also want to just talk very briefly about military context. You may or may not know I’m a military spouse from a dual military family. I have a special passion and heart for military and veteran couples and families. I like to also make sure that there’s some way that this is relatable to military couples who are not only trying to have amazing marriages but are also trying to do this within the context of military life.

There are some places where this is especially important. So deployment. Going into deployment and coming home from deployment, these are especially stressful time periods for military couples where there is extra strain. There’s often an extra sense of vulnerability of like, ” Are we still us? How is this gonna impact our relationship? How will it impact our family? Are we gonna be okay?”

There’s kind of a lot of anxiety and stress around it. And those are times where you might have more misunderstanding, and that can create more cycles and more spirals. The very first thing you want to do together is just pause it and stop it, so that way the two of you can team up against it, and pausing to also stop the damage.

The key takeaway is that if you could practice anything this week, I would have you practice identifying what is one harmful interaction pattern that we can stop this week. And if your partner is not listening to this, and you don’t know how to talk about it with your partner then I want you to focus on what are you contributing?

What are you contributing? How might you be damaging the relationship yourself? This is also very common. So often couples come in, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard one person say, “Oh, my partner is doing all of this stuff.”

I’ve also heard a lot of people say, “My partner is abusive. They’re a narcissist.” They’re whatever, you know, just insert whatever name-calling situation, and completely, completely oblivious until how they are also emotionally abusive in the relationship. This is a whole ‘nother conversation.

But I want you to start thinking about what do you do in your relationship that damages the relationship? What’s one thing that you can start working on stopping?

Now, if you and your partner are kind of thinking like, “How do we figure out what our pattern is, what our couple relationship pattern is, and how to stop the spiral?”

I created a free relationship pattern assessment. You can check that out in the show notes, and that will help you just with that first step of the spiral to team process, help you identify your couple spiral, your pattern, so that way you will get better together, hopefully, at noticing when it happens and pausing it.

All right. See you next time