When Depression is in your bed

The Partnership Problem: When Your Relationship Feels Like a One-Person Job

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 20

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Feeling like you're carrying the entire weight of your relationship while your partner seems to be coasting? You're not alone—and the solution might surprise you.

Most of us have been fed a harmful myth that if we just work hard enough on ourselves and the relationship, everything will improve. This message is particularly strong for women in heterosexual relationships, who are often encouraged to keep putting in the work while their male partners are implicitly let off the hook. But this approach isn't just exhausting—it's fundamentally flawed.

The truth is that relationships require both partners to be actively engaged. When one person is constantly trying while the other seems disengaged, it's typically not about motivation or love—it's about two dysregulated nervous systems unable to find safety with each other. One partner often gets stuck in anxious hypervigilance (fight/flight) while the other collapses into withdrawal (freeze). From these defensive positions, real connection is physiologically impossible.

The breakthrough comes when both partners understand that self-regulation must come first. Rather than trying to change each other, the focus shifts to helping your own nervous system feel safe. When both people can access their regulated state—what polyvagal theory calls "ventral vagal"—suddenly differences aren't threats anymore. You can approach challenges with curiosity instead of defensiveness, and creative solutions become possible.

This approach transformed my own 21-year relationship after years of feeling stuck in these exact patterns. It doesn't have to take that long for you! Start by noticing when you feel hopeless about your relationship—that feeling itself is information that your nervous system is in survival mode. From there, you can take steps toward regulation, which opens the door to true partnership.

Ready to break free from the cycle of one-sided effort and create a relationship where both people feel seen, supported and valued? Subscribe for next week's episode where I'll share specific steps you and your partner can take together toward the connection you both deserve.

- If you are looking to take the first step towards improving your connection and communication with your partner, check out this FREE monthly webinar on "Becoming a Conscious Couple,".

- If you and your partner are ready to co-create the roadmap to the relationship of your dreams, join us for the next in-person "Getting the Love You Want" Weekend Couples Retreat!

For support in how to have deeper connections and better communication in the relationships that matter most in your life, follow the host, Trish Sanders on Instagram , Bluesky or LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the when Depression is in your Bed podcast. Do you commonly feel like you are doing most of your relationship work all on your own? Are you tired of feeling like your partner just isn't putting in the effort that you do? If you're longing for a relationship with your intimate romantic partner to feel more like a partnership, check out today's episode to learn what may be getting in your way and how you can actually begin to take steps together towards the relationship that you both want to create and enjoy. I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I'm so glad that you're here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Over the last several episodes, I have been talking about my take a step approach to help somebody move out of a depressed or disconnected, stuck place. The approach works with the nervous system in order to make change possible and accessible. Instead of working against the nervous system, which is what we often do, particularly when we're acting from an unconscious place, which many of us are much of the time, we tend to try to push or force or shame or guilt or beat ourselves up in order to try to get us to become unstuck, or we may end up just avoiding things all together and all of these kinds of responses to getting unstuck actually come from a survival place and can end up creating more stuckness because you're feeling more of a threat and you kind of dig in deeper into fight or flight or freeze responses. And I have been sharing a variety of steps that an individual might consider accessing in order to begin some movement for themselves towards where they really want to be. And I've been talking about how to tune into your nervous system so that you can really let that guide you about what steps make sense for you.

Speaker 1:

And today I will be continuing to talk about the take a step approach, but I'm going to shift a little bit into talking about how it can be used in a relationship rather than just how it's used by an individual. So I just want to start out by saying that relationship is not just something that's nice or comfortable or that many people would like to have. Connection is actually biologically necessary. So that means we need connection to survive and certainly to thrive. Polyvagal theory talks about how our nervous system is connected to our entire lived experience, which means it affects how we experience ourselves and other people and the world. One of the principles of polyvagal theory is co-regulation and it is about how we need connection and how important relationships are to our well-being and our overall health.

Speaker 1:

This doesn't necessarily mean only romantic partner relationships, but today that is what I will be focusing on, and the problem that we often have in relationship is that our relationships may not feel safe and connected or enjoyable and we often don't feel like we can rely on our partner or we don't feel like we can be vulnerable with them. And this has to do with us feeling unsafe in the relationship. We don't feel like we can work in partnership with our partner, and this has to do with our relationship history. The truth is is that we were all hurt at some point in the context of relationship, meaning that at some point early on in our lives, between us and our caregivers, our needs were not met exactly as we needed them to be met. We were disappointed, we were let down. Something has happened to all of us because there's not one caregiver, there's not one parent, not one mother or father who can meet their child's needs 100% of the time in exactly the way that their child needs. So we all have experienced some type of hurt in relationship.

Speaker 1:

Imago theory, in addition to polyvagal theory, are the two guiding perspectives that I work from and through because they truly resonate with me and they really make sense and connect to my own lived experience. And so Imago theory tells us that since we are hurt in relationship, healing must occur also in relationship. But we have a tendency to continue to recreate the emotional challenges and hardships and chaos and hurts of our early relationship in our current partner relationship, so we miss these unique opportunities that actually are there to help us grow, and it doesn't feel like we lean on connection or lean on our partner in times of struggle or stress or hardship. We often have a tendency to go away from the relationship when the relationship has gotten to that place where things might be difficult. If you're in a relationship where things are going really well and you can rely on your partner and lean on your partner and they can rely and lean on you, that's absolutely wonderful.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking that people who are drawn to my podcast may not always feel that way in their relationship, even if they do sometimes feel that they can rely on their partner or that they can lean on their partner. And so that's what I'm going to be talking about today why it can feel so tough to work in partnership with someone who we really want to work with and someone that we really love and care for and who we believe love and cares for us. So when relationships are in that challenging place, people are often told that if they work on themselves, the relationship will improve, and that is true in some ways, to a point. But I'm here to tell you today that in order to have a healthy, mutually satisfying, enjoyable relationship, you must be working with your partner, taking steps together. Our society often supports a really toxic relationship dynamic and there is a gender bias here, because in heterosexual couples, the woman in the relationship is often encouraged to keep doing her work and the relationship work, and they are told that their work alone will help the relationship get better. Like if you change the way that one gear turns, the whole rest of the system will change and the man in the relationship is seemingly let off the hook and there's not always a lot of expectation placed on him.

Speaker 1:

Now I do want to just say that, although I'm referencing heterosexual couples, the relationship dynamics that I'm talking about apply in all sorts of relationships, in same-sex relationships, in relationships that practice ethical non-monogamy or polyamory. So just to be clear, I don't mean that this only applies in heterosexual, cisgender couples, but it is very prevalent in those kinds of relationships. This is a truly harmful myth that we are fed about how relationships work and it harms both partners, because a healthy relationship involves both partners offering to and receiving from the relationship and it's not an even 50-50, 100% of the time, of course. But if there is not some sort of balance in the offering and the receiving in the relationship, it is not going to feel nourishing and satisfying and meaningful for both partners. And this dynamic is so incredibly common and we see it in many different contexts, because we often see that one partner who might be considered to have an anxious attachment style may end up partnering with somebody who would be considered to have an avoidant attachment style. Or we see one partner who could be considered an over performer partnering with somebody who could be considered an under performer.

Speaker 1:

And we see this sort of seemingly opposites attract phenomenon. It's not exactly an opposites attract phenomenon. It's actually more of a complementary parts attraction. But I will talk about that more in another episode. But we see this happen and really these different ways of responding and handling things and interacting within the relationship actually offer us opportunities for growth. But we often don't know how to recognize what these opportunities are or what to do about them, and so we can get really stuck in these roles where one person keeps putting in effort and feels frustrated and they feel like they're doing all this work and they're getting resentful and angry about it, and the other partner actually is also doing work, but it's not always visible in the same way, but it seems like they're not doing anything and they're feeling like they're disappointing their partner all the time, no matter how much effort they put in.

Speaker 1:

And both people can stay in this really unhealthy, dysregulated partnership for a really long time, and that's one of the reasons why relationships often end, because people get stuck in this dynamic and they don't know how to get out of it. Taking steps together is really key, but of course it makes sense why people might say, yeah, that's great, I'd love to take steps with my partner, but I really don't know how to make that happen, because I'm either the partner who feels like I'm doing everything or I'm the partner who I'm trying a lot but none of my efforts seem to get recognized and my partner seems disappointed in me so frequently, and in both cases you may end up feeling really hopeless about your relationship. In order to change this dynamic, we have to understand what's actually happening, and what's important to know about this dynamic is that it is rooted in our nervous system and our partner's nervous system, because we can only connect when our nervous system feels safe and if we feel like we're putting in all the effort or we feel like nothing we do is good enough, we're not feeling safe in the relationship and we stay stuck in survival mode. Being anxious is being stuck in a sympathetic fight or flight survival mode, and being depressed or hopeless or withdrawn is being stuck in a dorsal, collapsed survival mode. And when both partners are in this dysregulated place, which means that they're feeling a need to protect themselves because they're feeling unsafe or attacked or threatened in the relationship, they stay out of connection with each other because it doesn't feel like moving towards each other is a safe option for them. And when we're locked in this dynamic, one partner may often be trying to take steps for their other partner by doing all that extra work or putting in all that extra effort, or they might be telling their partner the steps that they think they should take. All of this just feeds that really unhelpful cycle because it contributes to both partners really feeling unsafe, unseen, unheard, unsupported, insecure, unimportant, alone lots of different, very unpleasant feelings, and it keeps us working separately instead of working together. So the real key here is partners being able to focus on their own self-regulation, which means essentially focusing on helping your nervous system get back to a feeling of safety. And when both partners are able to do that, when they're both feeling safe, then connection is available. And then all of a sudden, all these new possibilities can begin to emerge.

Speaker 1:

When you and your partner are both in ventral, when you have a different view about something like, for example, what step you take, what needs to be done, what is helpful for the relationship, it's not seen as a threat and you can actually come to it with curiosity and say, hmm, we think two different things about what is the next step for us. How can we communicate about that? As an Imago therapist, I use what we call the Imago Intentional Dialogue, which is a structured type of communication to be able to help partners talk about these kinds of conflicts with curiosity and create in a safe environment so that they can explore what's going on for themselves and for each other, so they can figure out what the we needs. What does the relationship need, rather than what I need or what you need, or rather than just working separately, but it actually helps partners be able to come together. Now, on the flip side, if your partner has a different perspective than you and that lands as a threat in your system, a cue of danger, then you might try to attack back or fight back or fix or tell them what they should do or what they need to do, or you might try to convince them or even manipulate them to try to do what we think they should do. Or, when all other efforts fail, we might fall into that avoidance, collapsed, give up kind of place.

Speaker 1:

And again, when we are in this dance of dysregulation, when one nervous system is in either that fight or flight response of sympathetic or that dorsal freeze response, then we just stay stuck and we can't access the ability to connect or problem solve or be curious. We also can't feel hopeful, by the way. So this is kind of a good relationship temperature check just to ask yourself do I feel hopeful about my relationship right now? And if you can say yeah, I have some hope, even if it's just a little bit of hope, that means that you have some of that ventral energy available to you, which means that your nervous system is feeling safe enough. Now, if you say nope, I don't have hope. I've been at this for a long time. We've been having the same problems for years and years. We make progress and then we fall back, or something changes, and then it changes back to the old way within a short period of time. No, I really don't see a way forward.

Speaker 1:

I have to tell you that this does not necessarily mean that your relationship is absolutely hopeless. It's actually an indicator that your nervous system is perceiving something that is a cue of danger. You're feeling threatened somehow, and so your nervous system is in one of your survival states and hope is not actually available. It's not accessible to you in that particular moment. So if you determine that you have some ventral energy, then you have a whole bunch of options that are possibly available to you. It also depends if your partner is in a safe and regulated state. You can check out my previous episode when helping your partner hurts you both, which talks about how to pay attention to your own nervous system so that you can regulate and come to the relationship and your partner in a way that is more helpful for both of you, and it explores how to create some safety for your partner's nervous system. And then, when you're both connected, then you can work on figuring out what steps you wanna take together and how to move forward in partnership. What I really want you to take away from what I'm talking about is the importance of regulating yourself and your partner regulating their own self, so not you regulating each other, but knowing that both of you working on regulation is absolutely key in being able to come together in partnership and work together so that you can both figure out the steps to take that move you towards a relationship that you both want to have and be in, and in the next episode I will talk more about some specific steps that you and your partner may want to consider taking that can support you in having a healthy, meaningful and connected, satisfying relationship with each other.

Speaker 1:

I also want you to really hear how common it is to feel like you can't work with your partner. Or you're trying, or you're doing everything you can, or you're doing so much and feeling overwhelmed and stressed out and resentful about it, or feeling like you're trying and nothing is good enough and nothing you try seems to matter. Those dynamics are so incredibly common and our society tends to tell us, well, this relationship is toxic, or chalk it up to different attachment styles, or say, well, if this is how the relationship is, then you have to end it. And certainly again. I've said before and I'll say again there are absolutely relationships where it makes sense to end it. But if we understand that this is not necessarily the hallmarks of a bad relationship, it's actually the hallmark of two dysregulated nervous systems that feel unsafe, and what we are often trying to do to help the relationship is actually contributing to our partner feeling unsafe, and vice versa. What our partner might be doing to contribute to the relationship feeling safe is actually ending up making us feel more threatened. And so what we have to be able to do is start to notice how we're feeling dysregulated, and so that we can regulate ourselves and again go to that place of connection.

Speaker 1:

And I can tell you in my own experience I have been so dysregulated for so much of my life, both as an individual and certainly in partnership with my husband, and finally, after 21 years, the ratio of dysregulated time to regulated time is shifting in a significant way, and it's because we are both working on our own regulation. Now I also want to tell you it doesn't have to take you 21 years to make change and grow. We were both really stuck and learning about polyvagal theory and being able to connect to our nervous system. Experience has been a complete and total game changer for us. Our healing process and our ability to work together has changed drastically and is continuing to change drastically, and it's a huge reason why I even started this podcast in the first place, because after many, many years of feeling so stuck in our relationship dynamics, I finally figured out the key that made everything else sort of come together into a clearer picture of what we needed to do.

Speaker 1:

So I just want to wrap up today saying that working together in relationship is the way to have a healthy relationship, and that seems fairly obvious, and maybe some people really already know that. But, like I said, we live in a world where that is often not actually the message that is getting sent out. It's okay for one person to do the work of relationship and that that's enough for the relationship to change. I can tell you that is not true. Again, you have to do your own work and, yes, you doing your own work can contribute to shifts in the relationship. Of course that's true, but it will not get you the relationship that you're looking for, where your needs can be met and where you can express your own needs and where you can feel like your needs are being met or recognized, or where you feel like you can lean in, or where you feel you can breathe and like let things go, like meaning, like you don't have to do it all, like you feel like you can trust your partner to do their piece right, like you're not going to see giant shifts on those fronts. So we will continue talking about how to take steps with your partner and, of course, I will absolutely continue to talk about more ways to regulate and notice that you're dysregulated, because that's actually the first step in regulating is to notice I'm no longer feeling safe, I've moved into survival, and once you notice that, then you have some power. If you don't notice that you're feeling unsafe, you're not really going to be able to take action to move towards safety. So tune in next week to hear more about taking steps with your partner.

Speaker 1:

As our time comes to a close, I ask you to keep listening for just a few more moments because I want to thank you for showing up today and I want to leave you with an invitation as you hit, stop and move back out into the world on your own unique wellness journey In order to move from where you are today to the place where you want to be. The path may seem long or unclear or unknown, and I want you to know that if that seems scary or daunting or downright terrifying or anything else, that is totally okay. Know that you do not have to create the whole way all at once. We don't travel a whole journey in one stride, and that is why my invitation to you today is to take a step, just one, any type, any size, in any direction. It can be an external step that can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind. It can be a step towards action, or towards rest or connection or self-care, or whatever step makes sense to you. I invite you to take a step today because getting to a place that feels better, more joyful, more connected than the place where you are today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed.

Speaker 1:

If today's episode resonated with you please subscribe so you can be notified when each weekly episode gets released. I encourage you to leave a review and reach out to me on social media at trishsanderslcsw. Your feedback will help guide future episodes and I love hearing from you. Also, please share this podcast with anyone who you think may be interested or who may get something from what I have shared. Until the next time we connect, take care of yourself and take a step.