When Depression is in your bed

Beyond Blame: Creating Partnership When You Feel Constantly Disappointed

• Trish Sanders, LCSW • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Feeling constantly disappointed by your partner—or feeling like you're always the one disappointing them? This painful dynamic shows up in nearly every relationship, creating a loop of frustration that can feel impossible to escape.

As a therapist and someone who's lived this pattern in my own marriage, I can tell you there's a way out. The breakthrough comes from understanding what's actually happening in your nervous system during these interactions. When you feel disappointed, your body moves into a "fight" response—you take over responsibilities, complain, or try to "fix" your partner. Meanwhile, your partner's system responds with "freeze"—withdrawing, avoiding, or shutting down. Neither response is wrong; both are protective mechanisms trying to keep you safe.

What keeps this cycle spinning are the stories we attach to these experiences. "If I don't do it, nobody will." "I'm always letting them down." "Things will never change." These narratives feel absolutely true, but they're actually interpretations your brain automatically attaches to nervous system responses—and they can be questioned.

The path forward involves regulating your nervous system before approaching conflicts, examining your stories, and getting curious about how you might unconsciously contribute to maintaining the very dynamic you want to change. Most surprising for me was discovering part of my identity was wrapped up in "doing it all"—I was unconsciously resistant to true partnership!

The Imago Intentional Dialogue offers a structured way to break this pattern, creating safety for both partners to explore what's happening beneath the surface. This isn't about putting up with frustration—it's about creating conditions where both partners can grow together toward the relationship you truly want.

Ready to shift this dynamic in your relationship? Subscribe to follow this series, and reach out if you're interested in relationship therapy, coaching, or attending a Getting the Love You Want workshop where you can learn these transformative tools firsthand.

- 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 often find yourself feeling frustrated or let down by your partner? Are you interested in learning some things that may help you shift this unpleasant dynamic? If so, join me today as I talk about feeling disappointed and feeling like the disappointment in relationship. I'm your host, trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started. Your host, trish Sanders, and I am delighted that you are here. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

In the last episode, I started to talk about this hidden relationship dynamic that exists in so many relationships, which, in Imago Relationship Therapy, we refer to as the dynamic of the disappointed and the disappointment, meaning that so oftentimes in relationship, one partner consistently feels disappointed by what's happening in the relationship, by how their partner is showing up or not showing up, and this could be about the division of household responsibilities or about parenting or about the emotional work you know going to therapy or self-improvement, self-help, that kind of thing and the other partner can often end up feeling like the disappointment because they see themselves as being the root cause of many of the reasons that their partner feels disappointed. This dynamic is so incredibly common. It has absolutely been present in my relationship with my husband, and it still shows up from time to time, maybe even more often than I'd like. I'm just more aware of it now and I try to notice it and respond to it differently now when it does show up, and it is also present in nearly all of the couples that I work with, and that's why I started talking about it in the last episode, and today I'm going to talk about how, after you notice that this dynamic is present in your relationship, different things that you can do to respond in a new way that may actually help you get the change and the growth that you're wanting and desiring. The things that I'm talking about today are really at the core of how to respond to just about every relationship conflict, but I am going to be talking about them specifically in regards to this disappointed disappointment dynamic. So if you are a regular listener, you've heard me say this before and you will definitely hear me say it again.

Speaker 1:

But the very first thing to do whenever you're in conflict with your partner as soon as you're able to do this is to notice that you're feeling dysregulated and then figure out what you need to do to get back to feeling regulated. And this is so incredibly important because when your nervous system is feeling like it needs to protect itself, so either it goes into a sympathetic, fight or flight response, which is like something bad is happening to me and I have to do something about it, or if it goes into a dorsal, collapsed, freeze response, the something is happening to me and I have to hide, avoid it or get away from it. You don't have access to things like being able to connect or being able to have empathy or being able to be curious. You only can do those things when your nervous system feels safe, and so, in this particular dynamic, if you are the partner who frequently feels disappointed, then your nervous system is very likely finding itself frequently in that sympathetic, fight or flight response and it's the I have to do something about it. And, quite honestly, a lot of the time, what the disappointed partner does is picks up the slack, or what they see as picking up the slack, like doing it all, figuring it out on their own, that kind of thing and or complaining about their disappointments and frustrations, very often to their partner, probably also to their friends or family or people that they're close to that they may vent to about their relationship and those are do something responses. There's cues of danger going on here. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling like my partner is not doing their share. I don't feel like we're working as a team. My partner doesn't even know what needs to be done, or they don't know how to do what needs to be done. But there are things that can be experienced as cues of danger that land in a nervous system, that makes the nervous system want to protect itself.

Speaker 1:

So in that sympathetic fight or flight response it does something and I myself am absolutely the disappointed partner quote unquote and my husband would then by default be the disappointment, even though he is actually not a disappointment, but certainly in our dynamic I have absolutely made him feel like he's the disappointment, that he's let me down in some way and in his nervous system experience he moves into that dorsal state that I talked about earlier, that shut down, freeze, withdraw, and that is a state of when I feel a danger. I protect myself by hiding, withdrawing, collapsing, being invisible. There's no energy in a dorsal state. So this dynamic of the disappointed and the disappointment is really fueled by our nervous systems and how they protect themselves, because my nervous system in this dynamic protects itself by doing more, by overdoing and again by complaining. Complaining can feel productive, but it really usually is not very productive at all. Sometimes we think of it as venting, and venting certainly can be productive in a certain capacity, but very often in this particular dynamic, venting is often not productive. But me, feeling like I have to do and do more and keep doing is the way that my nervous system feels safe. I'm doing something, I'm active, and that feels better to me than not doing anything. Conversely, in this particular dynamic, my husband feels safe by hiding and withdrawing and avoiding and that helps him feel safe. And that is again an immobilized state. So there's not energy to do things.

Speaker 1:

And it's so easy to look at a pair who's stuck in this dynamic and say, well, look, the one partner is doing it all and the other partner is doing absolutely nothing. And the truth is is that both partners are dysregulated and their nervous systems are both acting in ways to protect them. It's not actually good or positive that the disappointed partner is quote unquote doing it all, and it's also not good or helpful or healthy or positive that the quote unquote disappointment is not doing anything, because really what's happening is not an indicator of their ability or their willingness or their desire or their longings or anything. It's really just an indicator that both partners are feeling unsafe. And so this is so key and noticing when your nervous system is feeling unsafe in this way and then being able to take a step back and slow down.

Speaker 1:

For myself, I really learned that I had to disconnect with love for my partner, because if I reference my 13 year old son, I do the same thing with him as well. I might notice that I'm trying to help or do or be really active or push or encourage. You know, sometimes it feels like I'm encouraging, but if I really notice my nervous system response, there is a forcefulness, there's a push or pushiness that really is happening and that's not really received well by my husband or my son's nervous system because it's really a fight response in me and so it lands poorly for them. And so it's really important to start to realize that when you're in this dynamic and those frustrations are coming up or that shutdown is coming up, depending on what side of this dynamic you're on that you need to reach for nervous system regulation and I've talked about this in other episodes. You can go back and check them out, or you can do a search and find lots of information on how to regulate your nervous system, and I will absolutely talk about it again. But just to know that sometimes you need to disconnect with love and, instead of focusing on your partner and what you think they need to do, to really take a breath and take a moment and say, hey, I don't think I'm going to be helpful in this situation right now. I'm going to take a breather and I'll come back and address this later when we might have a more helpful conversation that moves us both towards feeling better instead of sort of getting caught in this dynamic where we have been before. And so this idea of regulating your nervous system is absolutely key. It's one of the most important things to do, and you'll hear me continually talk about it because it's that important. And the second thing that I mentioned in the last episode that you can really do that is incredibly important and also rather challenging at times certainly is what I called last time staying out of the story, and what I was referring to is that when our nervous system experiences a queue of danger for example, a queue of danger with my husband might be after I've had a long, busy day of doing things for work and for myself and for the kids and for the house and for everything. And I walk into the room and my husband's sitting watching YouTube. So that is a cue of danger for me a lot of the time, and my nervous system takes in this cue and it sends a message up to my brain, and very quickly, without me even thinking about it or even knowing it's happening.

Speaker 1:

A story gets attached. Often, many stories get attached. In that particular instance, some of the stories that my brain might attach is he is wasting time. The real responsibilities always fall on me. I'm always doing everything by myself. He just gets to relax and rest and unwind after the end of his day and I can't do that, and so these are things that really can start to foster this disappointed, disappointment experience, because I can walk into the room and already feel disappointed and my husband is just doing something that's actually very often really good self-care. He's taking a moment at the end of a day to do something that helps him unwind, and so he is in a perfectly fine space. Maybe he's letting off some steam from the day and I walk in. My nervous system takes in this cue of danger seeing him watching YouTube, and then I attach all these stories to what's happening, and then I'm already frustrated and annoyed, right and so being able to notice, number one, that my nervous system has experienced something that made it feel unsafe, and then, number two, noticing that the stories in my head are just interpretations that are automatically attached by my brain. It doesn't mean they're true. Let me by my brain. It doesn't mean they're true. Let me say that again. It doesn't mean they're true.

Speaker 1:

If I get through everything today, I will talk in the next episode a little bit more about the stories in a broader sense, but just for today, I'm going to stick to the stories and the disappointed and the disappointment sense. But, like myself, I'm the person in the relationship who commonly finds themselves feeling disappointed. Then, some common narratives that we often hold are things like if I don't do it, nobody else will, or the responsibilities always fall on me, or if I do ask for help, I won't get it, or if I ask for help, it won't be done correctly, or it won't be done the way I want it to be done, or it won't be done in the timeframe that I want it to be done in, and this can apply here or in a broader sense but things like things will never change. This is hopeless, or the only way to change this dynamic is for me to end the relationship, those kinds of narratives and really being able to notice that and know that those narratives mean that you're dysregulated. And so what you have to do is go back to the first point regulate your nervous system, as I said before, disconnecting with love, taking a break, taking a breath, a sigh, allowing your nervous system to reset. And so, for me, when I'm feeling safer and grounded and my nervous system is back in that safe ventral state, then I can start to be curious, or I can communicate differently and ask for help which I'll talk about a little bit more in a moment to have like how to communicate about this dynamic, because it's not all just about regulating your nervous system and putting up with things that might, in fact, be frustrating for you. I would not be able to be a couples therapist or coach, or be able to even stay in my relationship with my husband If, at the end of the day, my belief was you just have to always regulate yourself and just manage how you feel all the time, and, by the way, that is actually a common narrative of the disappointed. It's another version of I have to do it all myself, I have to take care of everything. So it's very easy to get stuck in these narratives. But if you start to realize that these are in fact, just narratives, and what they are are indicators that you're feeling dysregulated, then once you get regulated, you can be curious what is going on here? What do I need to communicate about this?

Speaker 1:

In addition to being able to communicate with your partner which I guess I'll talk about in a moment you can also start to have some curiosity about how you're contributing or not contributing to the relationship experience you actually want to have. And again, it's not that you have to do it all. It's that if you focus on yourself, that's way more empowering and, honestly, much more helpful than focusing on your partner. And again, there's a whole piece that your partner also has to do their work. So this isn't just about you. This is like a parallel process. You and your partner have to be doing your own work, and I've done episodes about this, about the importance of taking steps together, of working in partnership, how to support that, because that's how healthy relationships work, when both partners are involved.

Speaker 1:

But if you're always focused on your partner, you're probably stuck in that frustration and you're probably not communicating very effectively, but also you are missing your peace. And in this particular dynamic, it is so common for one partner to feel disappointed because they don't think their partner is doing it right quote unquote or they feel like they're not doing it at all, whatever the it is and it could be household responsibilities, kids responsibilities, relationship responsibilities, like I said before and if you start to think, how am I creating a space for this to be different? How am I contributing to the environment where my partner can try things? Or how am I contributing to the environment where I'm communicating in a way where my partner can hear what my real needs are? And so this begins to allow a shift to happen. So I encourage you to think about what's showing up for you and what's contributing to keeping this dynamic the way it is.

Speaker 1:

And I can tell you, for me, a huge part of my identity is being independent. I want to be able to feel like I can handle anything and no matter what comes at me. I got it and this, of course, is connected to my childhood experience and it is very ingrained that I can do it all. I have to be able to do it all. It makes me feel safe, as a matter of fact, to think that way, and so when I'm doing it all quote, unquote my relationship it supports my identity that I can do it all. And so there's a part of me even though that another part of me does want my husband to be a partner and I want to feel like a team and we're working on all the life things together. There's also a part of me that doesn't really want that. I want to be able to say that I'm doing it all, that I can handle it all. It's kind of like a badge of honor, right? It's like a gold star for me. That unconscious piece has kept me locked in that dynamic or stuck in that dynamic for many, many years, and I was often blaming my husband for it without realizing how much a part of me actually wanted things to stay the same. So this is pretty important and again, as I mentioned, this is really related to your childhood experience in many ways.

Speaker 1:

So, thinking about, what was your role in your family, what did you observe between your parents or your caregivers, or the adults in your early life. Can you identify the disappointed disappointment role in them? What did you learn about? What relationship dynamics are supposed to look like? Just start to really question these things. And when you can kind of say, hmm, maybe the story that I thought it was, that narrative that my brain attached to my nervous system experience, maybe it's not totally accurate, maybe there's something else there, and all of a sudden curiosity can emerge. And when you'd be curious about your partner's experience, it can really be helpful both in actually being able to have a conversation and say, hey, like, what's going on for you, I actually really want to know. I want to know what feels good, what hurts, what I'm doing that is painful for you, what do I do that can be helpful for you? Right, like you can have great conversations that way, and how to create safety for those conversations and that connection to be able to happen with your partner.

Speaker 1:

And I will share a couple of examples, one of my own and one just sort of a general one that comes up very frequently in the couples therapy office. So several years ago our washing machine broke and we needed to get a new one. So consciously in my mind I thought I'm not going to do this task, I'm going to delegate it right, I want to help. I want to create a relationship that feels like a partnership. I'm going to ask my husband to do this and he was like sure, no problem. He did the research and he found this washing machine and it was on sale and it was all good and I thought he ordered it. I had no involvement at all. I was like great, I didn't want to do that. He helped me out, that was awesome.

Speaker 1:

Come to find out the next day that, for whatever reason, he didn't order it the night before and the sale ended and I was furious. I laugh now because it's kind of embarrassing to think how angry I was and fast forward. By the way, we just waited another few days and another sale came back up and we ended up getting the wash machine and it wasn't the exact same sale but it was pretty close and it really was no big deal, no actual harm done. But I was so angry that my husband quote unquote made a mistake that he dropped the ball and I had all these stories going like I have to do it myself. If I let anybody else do it, they mess it up. I can't really trust my partner to do anything it If I let anybody else do it, they mess it up. I can't really trust my partner to do anything. It was really awful, but luckily I was able to at some point eventually step back and say wait a second, you know, it could happen to anybody. It could have happened to me. Maybe if I was ordering the washing machine I got tired, or maybe I put it in the car and forgot to hit the very final button, right, or whatever it is. But it's okay that he didn't order it that night and that the sale stopped the next day. Right Again, there's no life or death situation happening here. We got the washing machine in just about the same time and all was well in the end.

Speaker 1:

But it was so clear to me how I was creating a dynamic where it wasn't safe for my partner to try, because when you try you might make a mistake. And so again going back to that nervous system when people hide, withdraw, freeze, collapse to protect themselves. This is why Because I was this big, scary, frustrated, disappointed monster that was coming at him for being human, for making a totally possible mistake that anybody could have made, and so I was able to really start to see how I was contributing to him, not trying and not taking on responsibility. Because I was able to really start to see how I was contributing to him not trying and not taking on responsibility because I was responding in a really unhelpful way and when I started to notice that and own that, then I started being able to make shifts and say, okay, if I want my partner to do things that I need to create safety for him to try and maybe make mistakes sometimes, or for him to do it in a way different than I do it, which can be hard sometimes, and so really to start to think what are unconscious things that may be stopping you from allowing the change you want to actually happen? And also, how are you potentially keeping things stuck in that dynamic?

Speaker 1:

And the second example, just briefly, that comes up again a lot for couples is stuff around, household responsibilities like cleaning or laundry or whatever. And a lot of partners will say in the office I want my partner to help me with these responsibilities, I'm feeling overwhelmed, I'm doing all this, but then, much like with my experience with a washing machine, if their partner does it and they don't do it to their standard, that's their right right. If you're doing a task, you get to choose when you do it and how you do it, and it's something that happens so frequently and there's so much more underneath that on both sides why somebody wants it done their way or why they want it done at a certain time, and what that means. And also, on the flip side, what is happening when someone is receiving those messages do it my way or do it this way or do it in this time and how that again contributes to things not changing and actually continues things feeling bad, usually for both partners, not just for one.

Speaker 1:

And, as I mentioned last time, I used to think it was so difficult being me and I could get on a high horse and get really validated by a lot of people in my life telling me like, oh yeah, you do so much and I feel like, yeah, I do so much. Then I started to realize, oh my gosh, my partner feels like I'm frustrated with him all the time, it seems like, and that must really be horrible. So again, this is looking at how you're contributing to the dynamic that you say you want, and maybe you do really want it. I mean, I definitely want to feel like I'm working in partnership, but understanding why that's not quite happening is key, and so I mentioned already a few times but how do you figure all this out? This is not easy stuff regulating your nervous system and looking at your stories and staying out of the stories and thinking about how you're contributing. Well, how do you do all of that? Well, luckily I have an answer for you.

Speaker 1:

I would not be presenting all of this and just be like, oh, figure it out, you're on your own. I don't think that would be particularly helpful, and so there's not only one way to look at these things, but what has been completely transformative for the way my husband and I communicate is what, in Imago relationship therapy, is called the Imago intentional dialogue, and now it is my hope that my husband will accept my invitation to come on an episode and do a dialogue together for you, so you can really hear what it sounds like. So I'm not going to go into all the mechanics of it today, but I will just share a little bit about why it's helpful, and you'll hear me talk about Imago and the Imago intentional dialogue in many other episodes, for sure. The intentional dialogue is a structured way of speaking and listening. So each partner has a role as the sender and the receiver, and in one dialogue you'll have both roles, so you'll have the chance to speak and you'll also have the chance to listen, but you won't be doing it at the same time, because when people are having a quote, unquote regular conversation, they're often having two simultaneous monologues. Right, they're both saying what they need, what their problem is, what their hurt is, at the same time and no one's really listening to each other. Or one person might not be saying anything and might already be shut down and the other person might just be talking at their partner and the message is not getting received, and this is very unhelpful. It's very frustrating, very painful, very difficult for both partners. And so this creates this structure that helps create safety and you know what to expect, you know what you're supposed to do, you know if you're supposed to be speaking, you know if you're supposed to be listening and you have these guidelines that help you understand what's kind of like what's happening and what comes next.

Speaker 1:

And when you're in the sender role or the speaker role, it helps you focus on exploring your experience. And, again, this could be noticing the state of your nervous system. It could be noticing the stories that you're telling yourself. It certainly could be looking at your underlying needs and how you're contributing to these situations in unconscious ways. That might be linked to your childhood experience and what you learn growing up, and it helps you really understand these things, because that's what you need to understand in order to make change. And again, this is one side, but if you flip it, the same exact thing is true for your partner. Your partner needs to understand their needs and what's underlying their behavior and what's happening in their nervous system and all of those same things.

Speaker 1:

Using the intentional dialogue helps partners understand each other and validate each other and empathize with each other, and it is in that space where real change is possible, because you then come to whatever the conflict is, whatever the problem is, so to speak, together in a relationship with somebody. Of course, you want your own needs met and you also want their needs met, and a lot of the time we get caught fighting and this disappointed disappointment dynamic is again at the core of so many challenges in relationship and so many relationship conflicts. But it's not because we want to stay stuck feeling disappointed and we certainly don't want our partners to feel like a disappointment, any more than the partner who's identified as the disappointment wants their partner to feel disappointed all the time. Right Like nobody wants that. We just don't know how to get out of this dynamic, and the intentional dialogue allows us to start truly mapping what's actually happening so we can do something about it instead of getting stuck. And it really does get to the core needs underneath the problem, and it also highlights or shines a light on the places where each partner needs to grow, because change does in fact need to happen. Right Like that's what being human is all about. We learn, we grow, we expand. The universe is ever expanding, Humans just the same. We're ever expanding, and growth is doing things in a new way that creates more of what you want, and so we want to understand what needs to change.

Speaker 1:

As I said earlier, this is not about just keep regulating your nervous system and feeling grounded so you can put up with all the junk in your relationship. That is not the message that I am putting out there at all. This is a message of if you want change to happen in your relationship, there are ways to understand what's really happening underneath the thing that's causing the problem, so to speak and there's ways to figure out a path to grow through that together with your partner, and that's really what this is all about. So that is all I'm going to say about the intentional dialogue for today, even though there's so much more I could say.

Speaker 1:

But just again, I want you to know there is actually a way to explore this dynamic of disappointed and disappointment, because it's really difficult feeling frustrated all the time and again it's also really difficult feeling like you're the disappointment regularly, and there are tools that are totally teachable and not so hard to learn In practice. They might be hard to use sometimes when our nervous systems are dysregulated, certainly. Again, that's why it's important to be able to work on grounding, because then you can connect and communicate effectively. But I want you to know that it's not some foreign thing that exists somewhere else that's only available to certain people. This is something that's available to everybody. And again, I will talk a lot more about Imago and hopefully we'll do a demo with my husband so you can hear it in action. And if you're interested in learning more now, you can always contact me. I am available for relationship therapy and relationship coaching and I also run Getting the Love you Want relationship retreats and workshops where we teach the Imago Intentional Dialogue and we practice how to have conversations in this way and how to explore frustrations in a way that actually leads to things changing and relationships feeling better. So stay tuned as I talk about all these things and more, and again next week I will talk a little bit more about the stories and what that means, the narratives we're creating in a little bit more of a broader sense.

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. It can be observed or measured, or it could be a step you visualize taking in your mind 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.

Speaker 1:

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. Today is possible for everyone, including you, and even when depression is in your bed. 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.