This week's story comes from the friend. They've been close since college. She can't stand the husband, and her best friend keeps saying she's done with him, then posts an anniversary photo about how lucky she is. Now the friend's own kids don't want to go over there, and she's run out of things to say.

Dr. Brittany Woolford and Dr. Mallaree Blake get into why "stay together for the kids" might be the wrong call, why cruelty mixed with affection is so hard to walk away from, and the one sentence to use the next time he puts her down in front of you. Plus whether you can tell a friend you're done hearing about her husband, how to bring up what your kids are seeing, and why you can go to therapy with your best friend.

Before the story: the difference between regret and remorse after an affair, and a famous statistic about relationships that start as affairs that turns out to have no study behind it.

If you've ever been the friend on the other end of those voice memos, this one's for you.

Have a story you can't tell your friends? Share it anonymously through this form or head to our Instagram bio (@ismyrelationshipnormal). We'll clean it up, so you can just get it out.

We're licensed psychologists, but this podcast isn't therapy, and we never use real client stories. If you or someone you love is in danger, call 911, or reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (thehotline.org).

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

William M. Bumberry, PhD, Healing the Trauma of Infidelity: Powerful Skills for Rebuilding Trust and Attachment to Find Love, Commitment, and Intimacy Again (New Harbinger, 2025). ISBN 9781648485725.

Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. About 50 hours to a casual friend, 90 to a friend, and more than 200 to a close friend.

https://news.ku.edu/2018/03/06/study-reveals-number-hours-it-takes-make-friend

Holt-Lunstad, Uchino, Smith, Cerny & Nealey-Moore (2003). Health Psychology. People who wore blood pressure monitors for three days had higher readings around friends they felt mixed about than around people they simply disliked.

https://news.byu.edu/news/nuances-interpersonal-relationships-influence-our-health-new-study-shows

Second Saturday divorce workshops from WIFE.org, for anyone considering, going through or finished with a divorce. And Leslie Garske of Garske Divorce Mediation, the Denver-area mediator Mallaree mentions.

https://www.secondsaturday.com

This week's story is a fight about once a month that always goes the same way. She walks in knowing exactly what hurt. Twenty minutes later she can't find her point, they're arguing about what she "actually said," and somehow she's the one apologizing. He's the calm one, the logical one, and he's been in therapy long enough to have the vocabulary.

Dr. Brittany Woolford and Dr. Mallaree Blake get into why "I'm just being logical" usually isn't, why the calm partner can be just as activated as the one crying, and the three-part move that leaves you comforting the person you came to with a complaint. Plus why you should never tell your partner they're gaslighting you (even when it fits), the trauma response almost nobody talks about, and where the line falls between a couple that fights badly and a relationship that has become emotionally abusive.

And to close on a lighter note: are you and your partner food divorced? Mallaree swears by it.

If you've ever walked out of a fight unable to remember what it was about, this one's for you.

Have a story you can't tell your friends? Share it anonymously through the form in our Instagram bio (@ismyrelationshipnormal). or use this link. We'll clean it up, so you can just get it out.

We're licensed psychologists, but this podcast isn't therapy, and we never use real client stories.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Dr. Ingrid Clayton, Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025). The book Brittany promised to link.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/779579/fawning-by-dr-ingrid-clayton/9798217045327

DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender). Psychologist Jennifer Freyd's name for a common response to being held accountable.

https://www.jjfreyd.com/darvo

Esther Perel, "Would you rather be right or be married?" (Letters from Esther #43).

https://estherperel.com/blog/letters-from-esther-42-would-you-rather-be-right-or-be-married

The Gottman Institute, "The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling." Why contempt is the strongest predictor of divorce.

https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

The Gottman Institute, "Physiological Self-Soothing." What flooding is, and why it's so hard to hear your partner once your heart rate passes about 100 beats per minute.

https://www.gottman.com/blog/weekend-homework-assignment-physiological-self-soothing/

The Gottman Institute, "Managing Conflict: Solvable vs. Perpetual Problems." The 69% finding we came back to from last week.

https://www.gottman.com/blog/managing-conflict-solvable-vs-perpetual-problems/

Roisman (2007). The psychophysiology of adult attachment relationships: Autonomic reactivity in marital and premarital interactions. Developmental Psychology. Partners with avoidant (dismissing) attachment looked calm during conflict conversations but showed heightened skin conductance, a sign of holding emotion in.

https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/the-psychophysiology-of-adult-attachment-relationships-autonomic-/

Dozier & Kobak (1992). Psychophysiology in attachment interviews: Converging evidence for deactivating strategies. Child Development, 63(6), 1473–1480. The original skin-conductance finding.

Internal Family Systems (IFS), Richard Schwartz's "parts" model. No Bad Parts (Sounds True, 2021) is the easiest place to start.

https://ifs-institute.com/

https://www.soundstrue.com/products/no-bad-parts-1

Couples Therapy, the Showtime docuseries with Dr. Orna Guralnik, streaming on Paramount+.

https://www.paramountplus.com/shows/couples-therapy/

Psychology Today, "Can a 'Food Divorce' Help or Hurt Your Relationship?" (October 2026).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/a-funny-bone-to-pick/202610/can-a-food-divorce-help-or-hurt-your-relationship

OFF THE CLOCK

Bourbon & Beyond, Louisville, Kentucky.

https://www.bourbonandbeyond.com/

The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix).

Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury. Chapter 54, if you know, you know.

Our listener figured opening her marriage was a win-win. He'd finally get his needs met, and she'd finally get the couch to herself. Then he slept with a mom she sees at school drop-off. Then she downloaded Tinder and surprised everyone, including herself. For a few months, their marriage was better than it had been in years.

And then it all went sideways.

Dr. Brittany Woolford and Dr. Mallaree Blake get into what happens when "open" is used as a fix instead of a decision: why "just sex, no feelings" was never going to hold, whether you can cheat when you're allowed to sleep with other people (you can), and why so many husbands are blindsided once the door is actually open. Plus the research number that should make any couple pause before downloading an app.

If you've ever said "fine" when you meant something else, this one's for you.

Have a story you can't tell your friends? Share it anonymously through the form here. We'll clean it up, so you can just get it out.

We're licensed psychologists, but this podcast isn't therapy, and we never use real client stories.

*Research and books mentioned

Haupert, Gesselman, Moors, Fisher & Garcia (2017). Prevalence of experiences with consensual nonmonogamous relationships: Findings from two national samples of single Americans. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. The source of the "1 in 5" stat, and every respondent was single.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27096488/

Infidelity Survey, Wheatley Institution & Institute for Family Studies (2019). Nationally representative: about 3% of Americans are currently in a consensually non-monogamous relationship, and 12% ever have been.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/national-survey-reveals-generational-differences-in-consensual-nonmonogamy-

Rogge, Hangen & Crasta (2019). Getting Clear on What You Want: Delineating Types of Consensual Non-Monogamy. Journal of Sex Research. Fully negotiated arrangements looked like monogamous ones. About 60% of people in one-sided arrangements reported significant dissatisfaction, roughly three times the rate.

https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/do-open-relationships-work-405232/

Thompson, Hart, Stefaniak & Harvey (2018). Exploring Heterosexual Adults' Endorsement of the Sexual Double Standard among Initiators of Consensually Nonmonogamous Relationship Behaviors. Sex Roles. Women who proposed opening up were judged more favorably than men. Swinging was judged more favorably than polyamory or an open relationship.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0866-4

Justin Lehmiller, Tell Me What You Want (2018). A survey of more than 4,000 Americans' sexual fantasies. Group sex topped the list.

Tammy Nelson, The New Monogamy: Redefining Your Relationship After Infidelity (New Harbinger, 2012).Relationship agreements and contracts, especially after an affair.

https://www.newharbinger.com/9781608823161/the-new-monogamy/

John Gottman & Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Where the finding that 69% of relationship problems are perpetual comes from.

John Gottman & Nan Silver, What Makes Love Last? (2012). The weekly "State of the Union" check-in.

Multiamory (podcast and book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships). The RADAR check-in for couples navigating non-monogamy.

https://www.multiamory.com/book

That is the first line of this week's listener story, and it is the question underneath a lot of relationships that look fine from the outside.

Her husband has a work wife. That is not her name for the woman. It is his. It is how she is saved in his phone, and it is how he introduces her to the family. He shares his location with her and not with his wife. They have a standing Tuesday dinner. Last year the two of them wore matching costumes to a work party his wife attended. He invited the work wife and her husband along on a family vacation, and spent more time with her than with his own kids.

When his wife brings any of it up, he gets defensive, tells her that a close relationship with this woman is helping his career, and asks when the last time was that she planned a date night.

Brittany and Mallaree are, for the record, each other's work wives. So they explore what dynamics might be oaky in this type of relationship and when it can go too far.

They get into why jealousy is information and not a character flaw, why "my boundary is that you can't go to happy hour" is not a boundary, what monogamous couples could borrow from the way non-monogamous couples actually talk about fidelity, and why the most useful sentence this wife could say has nothing to do with the other woman at all.

Also in this one: the Mike Pence rule, the myth that you need shared interests to have a good marriage, and the TikTok trend where two people call you at the same time to see who you call back first.

Normal, or not normal? They land on an answer.

Mentioned in this episode

The New Monogamy: Redefining Your Relationship After Infidelity by Tammy Nelson, PhD

Have a story you want us to weigh in on?

Our submission form is completely anonymous. Tell us what is going on and we may read it on the show. Complete this form.

New relationship story every Monday. Find us on Instagram @ismyrelationshipnormal

Dr. Brittany Woolford and Dr. Mallaree Blake are licensed psychologists. This podcast is for education and entertainment. It is not therapy, and it is not advice for your specific situation.

*A note on a statistic Dr. Woolford mentioned in the show: the claim that 70 to 75% of relationships that begin as affairs end is widely repeated, but it comes from clinical experience, not research. No study has tracked these relationships over time. The closest evidence looks at relationships formed by pulling someone away from an existing partner (Foster et al., 2014, Journal of Research in Personality), which found lower commitment, satisfaction, and investment. Those samples were young dating couples rather than married adults, and the researchers found that personality traits explained much of the effect. So it may say more about the people than about how the relationship started.

Music licensed through Soundstripe.

Code: 7DVDBXCH82U9V6K8, VDL2HLHGJEBLP2RU

This week's relationship story submission asks the question “is this just what happens now? And if it is, isn't the loving thing to stop making it a crisis and just keep faking it?”

Brittany and Mallaree get into what's actually happening when desire seems to go offline and why "just push through it" quietly makes things worse, the difference between the kind of wanting you've been told to expect and the kind most of us actually have, and the moment a partner who simply misses you tips into something unhealthy.

Is it normal? Yes. Is it something you just have to accept? No.

Got a story you're quietly wondering about? Share it anonymously here

If this one landed, follow the show and send it to the person you were thinking about while you listened.

We all have different reactions to being left on read, but this reaction could actually be based on your attachment style.

In this first episode, Dr. Brittany Woolford and Dr. Mallaree Blake lay out the attachment framework they'll be returning to in nearly every episode of this show, and discuss how these attachment styles play out in their own relationships.

Along the way we discuss a divorce at twenty-seven with no roadmap and nobody to ask. The early, lawless years of Tinder. A first date conducted over video in 2020, and a relationship that got very serious very fast in a 500-square-foot studio apartment.

You'll also find out who we are and why we have any business having opinions about your relationship. That part matters more than it used to, given how much of what you're hearing about relationships comes from people who've never told you where they learned it.

Starting next episode, this show is built entirely from your relationship stories and answer “is this normal?” Submit yours anonymously: anonymous form link

Follow: @ismyrelationshipnormal