Relationship resuscitation — coming back from the brink
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I was convinced it was over. There was just still so much resentment and so much hurt and I didn't feel I could trust my husband with my heart again. I remember feeling like I'd actually rather be alone than feel like I'm with someone and we're just two ships in the night. People

People that have really nice relationships spend a lot of time working on the relationships and building that intimacy currency. We had to burn the house down and start again. It really felt like I got to know him all over again as if he was a new person. PHONE RINGS

Doctor! Doctor, I need you over here. This is a serious case. I think this relationship is bleeding out. Yeah, they came in showing signs, build-up of resentment, frustration levels code red, intimacy has plunged. Their chart says it's been going on for years and no treatment has been effective. Oh, no, their communication is unresponsive. I think we might be losing them. Let's start CPR.

Sometimes when two people love each other and cohabitate and maybe have children, they might, after a while, start to get on each other's nerves.

They stomp about the house, living together but not connecting. And then realise that there is something worse than stomping. Creeping. Two ghosts creeping silently around the house in apathy, resentment, avoidance and contempt. And then one day, before you've had time to argue about all the ways in which you don't feel seen, the relationship has flatlined.

When a romantic partnership reaches this point, it's usually over. Kaput, done. Time to divide up the wedding china and cut the dog in half. But what if a couple chooses to stick it out and fight for the survival of their relationship? What does it take to bring it back from the brink? I'm Yumi Steins. Ladies, I'm Yumi Steins.

We need to talk about relationship resuscitation. We saw each other on the dance floor and kissed.

This is Yvonne. She first hooked up with her now husband on the sticky dance floor of a nightclub on one of those balmy, sexy Sydney nights. Been together for 20 years and married for about 14. Yvonne and her husband were 23 years old when they got together. She felt safe with him, like she'd known him for years. They were a couple for almost a decade before their first daughter came along, and this was 11 years ago.

I took a year off and he just kind of continued his own life. I had stopped working where I was working full-time as an accountant. His life was still golfing and playing squash and going to work, staying back for a few drinks on a Friday night where I'm at home and getting on with that. And he just kind of expected it to all just, I've got it under control. Yvonne was starting to feel the building resentment of trying to do it all.

Like a lot of us do, she gritted her teeth and got on with it. Then she fell pregnant again. Only 18 months later, their second daughter was born. The second one just kind of added that extra layer of stress. So did your husband think that you would just do everything? He thought he did a lot by, like, changing nappies and he did help at night to settle them, but...

It was all just the other stuff, like thinking about getting out the door, dinners, who has the nappy bags, what are we doing on the weekend? Just that mental load. You just feel like you just don't stop thinking because you're thinking of two other humans, yourself and sometimes your husband as well. Yvonne would try to raise the issue of her husband sharing the mental load, but they'd inevitably end up butting heads and he didn't seem to notice the burden that she was carrying.

For instance, there was one time when her second daughter was just six weeks old, so a tiny baby, and her eldest was 18 months old, and Yvonne's husband went to the races with his work all day. And then didn't come home straight after the races. He went out, continued partying with friends. The next day I said, look, I don't feel supported. And his response was, oh, that's too bad.

And then that was it. Yvonne added this resentment to her growing stash of it and tried to get on with life. They had a third daughter and both were working. There were good times, but day to day the same patterns kept repeating until last year when things reached a crisis point. I said, I can't do this anymore. We need to see someone, otherwise it's divorce. And...

Reluctantly, he agreed to see someone. By the time they got here, Yvonne and her husband had sought help already, like lots of it. We did years of talk therapy. We did Fair Play, which is a book about sharing the mental load, dividing all the kind of tasks in the house and putting them on a card and you take a card and, yeah...

You might have heard a whole Ladies We Need To Talk episode about Fair Play. It was developed by Eve Rodsky and is a system designed to divide the household labour among partners equally, including the mental load. Look out for the episode Solving the Mental Load in your feed if you want to find it.

Okay, back to Yvonne. So her husband would pick up the slack, lift his load while the inspiration was running hot. And then it's out the window, you know, and I just felt like I'd tried everything and then it just wouldn't stick. Was there a particular incident that was a catalyst for you to go, yep, that's enough? Yeah. So my husband smacked my daughter and we've always agreed not to

handle the girls in that way. And that was always a non-negotiable for me. And it was just that step too far.

for me and we tried to repair, we tried everything and I said, look, it's just with all the history and I just don't seem to be getting through to you. I've grown, I've left you behind, we need to separate. So they did. Yvonne and her partner did what's called bird nesting, where the children stay in the family home and each parent takes turns looking after them.

She and her husband would stay with their own parents for the rest of the time. Just so we could work out what was happening with us and the family. So what was the plan at this point? Did you think the marriage was over? I did. I did. I just said, I just feel we're just surviving. There was still that underlying resentment, a connection that was missing. The day-to-day just being connected.

Resentment is so sticky. It's so hard to get rid of. This is sex and relationships therapist Toya Ritchie. She's used to seeing couples at their wits' end. By the time they come and see her, the little scratchy sores of annoyance have turned into full-blown open wounds of resentment.

A lot of it comes back to deep-seated hurt that's been repeated over and over again. A lot of times I think couples have the same argument. They're arguing about the same things, but it just gets attached to different things. What Toya is saying is that you might be fighting about who's emptying the dishwasher, but what you're really arguing about is the deeper feeling underneath. For Yvonne, the arguments were about the mental load and not being seen.

It's themes and oftentimes the themes are presented with lots of different complications or nuances. But for the most part, it's connected to not feeling seen, heard or understood. Can we talk about this resentment and its build up a bit more? Because this feels to me is what happens is like you have something that bugs you, you bring it up and they don't change and you bring it up and they don't change and on it goes. Right.

How does it fester even in spite of good intentions?

I think because it is one of those things that the person is like, if you really could see and hear and understand me, you would understand what I'm saying now. And the other person is like, oh, well, that's not a big deal. Like, it's not important to them at all. And sometimes they may not see it because of their own insecurities. Sometimes they might not catch on to it because of their own resentments. And they secretly don't want to give that partner what they need because they're not getting what they need in another situation. Ah, okay.

Or they are just literally completely oblivious to it. So, okay, so what I'm seeing with this idea of repeating your fights and also being stuck in resentment is what is required is change.

Yeah, and actually, we're not great at change. No, change is hard. Yeah, and it's scary. People hate change. Even if they think that they're embracing it, then no, they don't. But if you can't change, then you're stuck, and it's the stuck couples Toya often sees on the brink of breaking up. They don't feel like they connect anymore or there's not intimacy anymore.

And when I talk about intimacy, there's different levels of it. There's sexual intimacy, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, practical intimacy. So all of those things that just make us feel good and juicy in ourselves and that our partner brings out in us, they tend to dry up over time unless they're fed.

I always say that people that have really nice gardens, it's because they spend a lot of time in their gardens. So the same with relationships. People that have really nice relationships spend a lot of time working on the relationships and building that intimacy currency. Something that absolutely drains the bank of intimacy currency is betrayal. And that's what happened to Sophia.

It was in a drawer and I found like a burner phone and opened it up. Sure enough, I saw lots of messages from actually lots of different women. Sophia had been with her partner and the father of her children for 12 years when she made this discovery. It was devastating. Even though I knew things weren't great, I just never thought that they would go there.

They first met when she was 24. They dated, broke up and rekindled years later. They had an amazing chemistry. I hadn't had that real...

soul connection and sexual connection with someone before the way I did with him. So it got real pretty quickly. Even though their sex life was great at first, Sophia was still trying to comply with their shared idea of what a good Italian girl was and never felt like she could be truly honest with her partner about her sexual past, including her experiences with women.

We both came from these environments where there were so many rules about what a good girl is and how to be. So he was sort of holding me to that standard. I already had my own issues and so I was very much wanting to subscribe to that way of being, even though I was very sexually curious. Like I knew that about myself, but it's not something I shared personally.

Sure. So you kind of kept it quiet, but you're a bit of a horndog. Yeah, absolutely. Despite not being her full sexual self, Sophia and her partner were happy, and not long after they got engaged, surprise, they got pregnant. No surprise, becoming parents meant their sex life took a hit. We were a couple that loved... You know, we didn't like...

the quickie, it was always about, you know,

music and drinking and having a great time and the build-up and sexy lingerie and, you know, like, and all of the sudden you don't have that time. I'm exhausted. Underneath this exhaustion, a simmering resentment had started to build for Sophia. It's that common story of her partner not pulling his weight and she started viewing him as just another person to care for.

And also I was feeling a bit like I've got two children, like one's just an adult and that's not very attractive, you know, that's not very sexy. And it affected our relationship because he was really disconnected emotionally and so we just weren't,

I remember feeling like I'd actually rather be alone, do this alone, than feel like I'm with someone and we're just two ships in the night. And her partner's solution to try and build connection? A joyless duty shag. He would be constantly irritable and everything, but then it would come to night time and he'd want to have fun

like sex and I'd be like really reluctant because I'm already annoyed, tired and you've not been very nice all day and now I'm supposed to be like, yes, let's have sex. My resentment just continued to build and I didn't, I just didn't, I was still feeling sexual as a person but I didn't feel like I wanted to have sex with him.

Sophia and her partner had another child four years after the first and the patterns repeated themselves. Then Melbourne COVID lockdowns happened and if you know, you know. Sophia's husband set up his home office in the backyard. He may as well have been interstate during the day because Sophia was still working as well, but she was also home with the kids all day, working, parenting, schooling, cajoling.

It was on me to be present and doing all of that. And I would ask, you know, like, can we maybe do shifts? And then we'd just end up in a fight and an argument. And I felt like...

In order to avoid a flare-up or a screaming match, I would just have to do it myself, you know? Right. So he wouldn't be of much help, say, homeschooling or doing the housework? Not at all. Unsurprisingly, things in the bedroom continued to tank. There was no sex at all. So, OK, so there's a...

deterioration in your sexual connection. And then at some point in the relationship, it started to feel sus. What were you noticing that triggered that suspicious feeling?

They were just always on their phone, always on their phone. Sophia's antenna was up and then one night her partner was showing her something on his phone when a notification popped up from someone she'd never heard of. I remember the name, it was a female. And when you're with someone for so long, you know all their female, you know all their friends. You know everyone, yeah. Yeah, right. And...

I remember mentally going, I need to go back to that. I need to do some research. And what did you discover? I found like a burner phone and opened it up. Sure enough, I saw lots of messages from actually lots of different women. And so when you saw that phone and you read all those messages, what did that feel like, that betrayal? I went through lots of different stages, but my first one was anger.

such anger because I felt like I've had two children with you. I have like had to rearrange my career. Like I felt like I've sacrificed so much to be in this relationship, to create this family and I'm not even happy. Yeah. But also I have been trying to communicate that I'm not happy. Like

We'd always end up in fights whenever I would say how I was feeling, what I needed. And so I was just furious to know that,

While I've been trying, you've just taken the easy route, like quick gratification and gone elsewhere. For once, Sophia decided to put herself first. I got in my car and I thought, you know what? You can look after the kids. You can juggle your work. You can cook and clean. I'm going. You can deal with this. I'm going.

Sex and relationship therapist Toya Ritchie sees couples dealing with infidelity all the time. And while we might have preconceived ideas about what that means for the viability of a relationship, she says it's more complex than one strike and you're out. And our scripts are like, it's always black and white and, you know, it's always disaster and ending. But there's so many different things and people who have previously thought I would never tolerate it, they are able to come back from it.

After there's been cheating, Toya says it's time to burn the old relationship to the ground and start again. Because you can't go back to the relationship that you had before because that's kind of gone, but maybe that's OK. You know, how do you want to build a new relationship? By the time a couple gets to therapy, they can be ready to lash out. They finally have an audience for their bloodletting.

But if resuscitating the marriage is the aim, both sides have to be willing to listen to each other and make concessions. I think everything comes down to what our insecurities are and what we need to feel safe. So what do they need to feel safe? Okay, there's physical intimacy, but that's non-sexual. That's just the amount you're being touched or hugged or just little kisses or, you know, if you have time on the couch together that you're just cuddling up or something. For some people, that's really important.

Other people, it is definitely about the practical intimacy and it's like, okay, can we manage the running this business of life together? Like, can I count on you to have my back when things get hard? Where do you start in repairing it or bringing it back? How do you do that?

I usually start with their motivations. Like, why do you want to stay in this relationship? What's the benefit? And a lot of times it comes down to, oh, because we really love each other still and we want to make it work. If you want to make it work, that's what helps you put in all the really hard work.

Toya reckons that part of this hard work of repair is being invested in the other person, in their wants and their needs. I think a lot of times in long-term relationships, that's what dies is the curiosity about the other person. You should always be curious about your partner and where they're at and what's happening. So never think that you have them completely figured out. I felt furious and then I felt sad, just overwhelmingly sad to think that

that this is where this great love has got to. Sophia, our frustrated mum who found her fella's burner phone, she thought she knew him inside out, but then she realised she didn't know this version of him at all. And that hurt. It was the first time in our relationship that I really had to ask myself, do I want to be with this person?

After leaving her partner at home with the kids, Sophia stayed with a friend for a few days before agreeing to meet up with her partner to talk. He said, I know you're angry and I would really like to sit and talk about this. He immediately acknowledged what he had done. He was really capable of accepting things

the enormity of it. For the first time, he really talked about his mental health, how bad he'd been feeling, how he didn't really know anymore how to communicate with me.

He felt like a shit father, like a lot of issues with his own dad. Sophia was honest too, brutally honest. Because I was like, you realise how incredibly selfish that is? Your sexual gratification is the most important thing and not once did you think that maybe...

I was missing out as well or I wanted more as well. It wasn't just the cheating that Sophia wanted to address. It was the whole wifedom burden. I was like, if this is going to work, I need the way that we move around our house, the way that we do this parenting thing, it needs to change drastically. I

I need a partner that's going to show up. I need a partner that doesn't think I'm just like the maid. So I need you to cook dinner a couple of times a week. I need you to do some pickups and some drop-offs. Like I'm literally doing it all. I need you to understand when we're out of milk or just like notice what needs to be done. And I need you to also be an emotional backdrop for the kids because I'm managing all of that as well.

Why do you think it was then, after he'd betrayed you texting and messaging other women, why was it after that that you could share your resentment about the mental load with him? There is something about seeing your partner...

that he had fucked up so royally that it was like, okay, everything's on the table. And I can be as honest now. I'm going to also shed my kind of always trying to be a good girl and tell you exactly what I think, what I've been holding back. I'm not going to be nice about it anymore. These are the things that piss me off. These are the things that need to change. And also I was like...

I don't like the way you go down on me. I was like, while we're talking about it, you need to, like, have some, like, training down there, you know? It was like, let's just talk about everything. You need some tweaks. The truth bombs kept coming. We talked until the sun came up and we talked about...

what we like, what we don't like, what we want out of a sexual relationship. Like for me, I felt such a relief to be able to say, actually, I think I'm bisexual. That's not something I'd ever said out loud to anybody and that I've had lots of experiences with women and I've played with more than one person at a time and he was just like, really? And I was like, yeah. There's this whole other side to me that I have felt like

guilty, ashamed of. Sophia moved back in. The conversations kept going. He picked up his game as a dad and around the house. And they started exploring sex in a completely new way by opening up their relationship. And we met this girl and we had a great time. And I

And I also realised I really like being dominant. I was the one basically telling everyone how this was going to go down and I fucking loved it. And I'm not really that dominant a person. Are you sure? LAUGHTER

Well, you know, it turns out maybe I am. And, yeah, I really enjoyed myself and we did that a few times. But also we also came back together and was like, that was fun. But I don't think we need, like, we had this whole conversation about, are we swingers now? And we were like, I don't think so. Like, that was fun and fun.

Who knows what will happen in the future, but it's not something like we're going to, you know, every Friday night, we're not shipping our kids off and having a party at our house or anything like that. So what's the metaphor that you would use for your marriage? It's sort of like, was it burnt down or bulldozed? Yeah, we had to burn the house down and start again. Absolutely. It really felt like I got to know him all over again as if he was a new person.

Remember Yvonne, our mum of three girls? Once she decided that she wanted to separate, she was trying to move forward and get on with her life, but her husband didn't want to split. I felt there was no other option because I felt I wasn't getting through to him and I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel happy and felt very alone. So what was the plan at this point? Did you think the marriage was over? No.

I did. I did. So the plan was, I said, we need someone to help us navigate this stage. The pair found a marriage coach and her approach was unorthodox. She's like, okay, you're going to need to have relationship death.

which is basically chucking the old marriage in the bin because that didn't work for us and going into this grey zone. So you're not together, you're not married, but you're not going off shagging other people either. My husband and I weren't living together before

And so we just had months of just not talking, just only the necessary things for the logistics for the kids and just having time apart. And then it was a process of rebuilding? So first it was a process of rebuilding yourself because I was such a shell of myself coming out of that marriage. Like I was just...

So depressed, so my confidence was low. I just lost myself. Being a mum and just hoping for my husband to step up finally and just felt, you know, hopeless. So it was just coming and finding myself again and finding out who I actually am and reconnecting with that. And that was so empowering. There was a moment that started the process of you two coming back together. Can you tell me about that?

I was convinced it was over. I just felt there was still so much resentment and so much hurt and I didn't feel I could trust my husband with my heart again. So I had the divorce lawyers lined up a meeting but then I told my husband, look, I think I'm ready to stop this bird nesting. I'm ready to move on.

And he's like, look, I hear you, but I want to talk about it face to face. The two met up and Yvonne's husband repeated that he loved her and wanted to be with her, but agreed he would walk away if that's what would make her happier. He just wanted to check one last time that breaking up was what she wanted. And I just froze and checked in with my body and there was just something in my body just saying, no, no, no. And I'm like, this is weird. And I said,

no, it's not what I want. I said, we've got all these new tools, amazing tools. I want to move in together and try them. Wow. And I said to my marriage coach, I said, oh, I feel a bit like a fraud, like a phony, you know, like here I am one week with a divorce lawyer and the second week, oh, no, we're back together. And she's like, well, you know, that's relationship death. You need to kind of sometimes go that deep and then realise actually that

No, that's not my truth. Wow. So that even surprised you. Yeah. And my best friend. What did she have to say? She was like, what? Are you sure? So wait, so you're sitting there at the lunch and you're checking in with your body and your body is saying, no, be closer to this man. Yeah. Yeah. Is it still saying that?

Yeah, yes. How long after you started living apart was this? Six months. So you had a good fat six months apart. Yeah. Okay.

There's a couple of words that have come up in this conversation that are really powerful in marriage counselling. One is resentment and one is respect. So I'm curious about how you overcome resentment because it's a very sticky feeling and it's really hard to get off you. Yes. So first of all, do you feel like you have overcome resentment? Oh, no. No, I'm going to keep going. Let's go.

What's it going to say? How the hell? Okay. It's there. It's there. It's there, but you still work through it. The resentment I had from the old marriage, that's gone from the death, but, you know, I still get it day to day. And like anything, it's working through it. And then respect. You mentioned that respect was a big thing for you and you felt like that was missing. Yeah. How did your husband show you that he does respect you in a meaningful and true way?

He now hears me. So when I talk, not always, like when I talk, he would always try and just come in and fix it. But now I can say, honey, I do not feel heard. And then he'll just take a step back and he'll be like, okay, darling, I hear that you're feeling overwhelmed or

Just that validation of, OK, yes, I see you, I hear you. That makes me feel respected and a team and slowly working a solution out for a better result. Yvonne knows that her marriage might be out of the ER, but it does require ongoing health checks.

It's always going to be ongoing. But that's, you know, the amazing because we're modelling this for our girls and how to repair, how to communicate effectively and hopefully seeing them bring it into their relationships one day. But for my husband and I, I just hope our relationship only comes stronger and deeper and we have a long life together.

I guess when you're ready to look at your watch and call time of death on your relationship and you have nothing left to lose, it is at that point that you can be truly honest. And no, that doesn't necessarily mean that you tell your partner you hate their mother and that they've never, not once, stacked the dishwasher properly.

Issues like that can make you feel murderous, sure. But it's the stuff that's underneath that matters. How they listen to you or don't. How they show up day to day. And whether or not there's any curiosity left in the relationship. Because sometimes what gets lost underneath the piles of dirty washing and resentment is the love that brought you together in the first place.

So whether your relationship is hooked up to a drip and the heart monitor is erratic, or your relationship's fine, or like me, you don't have a relationship, we can all learn from these women that a little bit of radical honesty, standing up for your own needs and communicating openly may be the defibrillator we need to snap us out of our ruts.

This podcast was produced on the lands of the Gundungurra and Gadigal peoples. Ladies We Need To Talk is mixed by Anne-Marie de Bettencourt. It's produced by Elsa Silberstein. Supervising producer is Tamar Kranzwick and our executive producer is Alex Lollback. This series was created by Claudine Ryan.