Episode 87. 10 Thought Patterns That Wreck Marriages (and How to Stop Them)
Stop the Spiral: How Small Thoughts Become Big Marriage Problems
Marriage is often described as a journey. What people don’t tell you is that sometimes it feels less like a romantic road trip and more like you’re trapped in a minivan with a GPS that keeps screaming, “Recalculating!”
And much of that detour isn’t because of what your spouse said or did—it’s because of how you thought about it. Our thoughts can either build connection or quietly sabotage it. Psychologists call these sneaky brain habits cognitive distortions, and once you start spotting them, you’ll notice they show up in your marriage more often than you’d like to admit.
Let’s dig into two of the big ones: mind reading and should statements.
Mind Reading: The Psychic Power Nobody Asked For
Mind reading sounds impressive, but in marriage it usually plays out like this:
You hear your spouse sigh when you suggest talking about finances.
Your brain instantly translates it as: “He thinks I’m irresponsible and doesn’t respect me.”
Reality check? He was probably just reading the news about politics.
Mind reading is one of the most common traps couples fall into. We assume we know what our partner is thinking, and usually it’s something negative. The problem is, once we “decide” what they’re thinking, we start reacting as if it’s true. Cue defensiveness, arguments, and a frosty silent treatment over something that never actually happened.
How to break free: Instead of interpreting your spouse’s sigh, ask. A simple, “Hey, I noticed you sighed—what’s up?” is much more productive than launching into a financial monologue or an emotional meltdown.
A little humility goes a long way. You don’t know what’s in your partner’s head. And honestly? Some days they don’t even know what’s in their own head.
Should Statements: The Marital Buzzkill
Few words poison a marriage faster than “should.”
He should know I’m upset without me telling him.
I should be more patient, more romantic, more everything.
We should never fight this much.
Here’s the problem: “should” creates a world where there’s one right way to do things—and you and your spouse are constantly failing at it. Instead of motivating, it shames. Instead of drawing you closer, it wedges resentment right between you.
How to break free: Try swapping “should” with phrases like:
“I’d like it if…”
“It would mean a lot to me if…”
“I’m working on…”
See the difference? One drips with judgment; the other opens space for connection.
Why These Distortions Matter
You might think distorted thoughts are just mental background noise, but they actually ripple outward. Emotions: mind reading fuels anxiety; “shoulds” create shame. Behaviors: anxiety leads to withdrawal, shame leads to snapping or shutting down. Outcomes: you feel disconnected, misunderstood, or stuck in the same fight on repeat.
But when you start challenging these thoughts—asking, “Is this really true?” or “Is there another way to see this?”—you loosen their grip. Your emotions settle. Your reactions soften. And suddenly, the same old argument doesn’t feel like the end of the world.
The Marriage Experiment
Here’s a little homework (don’t worry, no pop quizzes). Notice your go-to distortion. Are you more of a mind reader or a “should-er”? Catch it in real time. Next time you feel yourself slipping, pause and ask: “Is this true, or is this my distortion talking?” Then reframe it. Swap it for a kinder, truer statement.
It won’t be perfect every time, but practice adds up. Over time, you’ll see less tension, fewer misunderstandings, and more of those “we’re in this together” moments.
The Bottom Line
Marriage isn’t about eliminating every negative thought (spoiler: impossible). It’s about noticing the distorted ones, laughing at them when you can, and choosing something more balanced and true.
So the next time you catch yourself thinking, “If he loved me, he’d know what I need without me saying it,” take a deep breath, roll your eyes at your own brain, and try: “I’ll just tell him what I need.”
Turns out, marriage gets a lot easier when you stop being your spouse’s psychic and start being their partner.
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0:02
Welcome to Marriage IQ, the podcast helping you become an intelligent spouse.
I'm Heidi Hastings.
And I'm Scott Hastings.
We are two doctors, 2 researchers, 2 spouses, 2 lovers, and two incredibly different human beings coming together for one purpose, to change the stinky parts of your marriage into scintillating ones using intelligence mixed with a little fun.
0:32
Welcome back everyone.
We're so excited to see you again for another exciting episode of Marriage IQ.
We are your loyal hosts, Dr. Heidi and Scott Hastings back again.
We love what we're doing because we want to help people throughout the world save civilization one marriage at a time through our Hastings Institute for Advanced Marital Studies.
1:05
That's starting to almost have a ring to it there.
We're excited to have Doctor Heidi Hastings kind of take the lead on today's topic, all right, which I'm excited to get into.
Great.
Well, let's rock'n'roll.
OK, so everybody, today I want to share with you one of the most powerful secrets that I use with my clients.
1:27
And it's one simple tool that can create major shifts in both personal happiness and marital happiness.
And it's not really complicated.
It doesn't cost anything.
And when you practice it every day, it can diffuse tension in one little circumstance that happens in a day or something that's been building up for years and years.
1:51
That sounds like a very valuable tool.
I I think it is.
I'd probably spend a lot of money to learn this tool.
Nope, I'm giving it to them for.
Free today for free.
So this is a way to really calm explosive emotions in really just a few minutes.
2:10
OK, so here's the catch, though, it does take using some emotional intelligence.
Oh darn.
Which is really at the crux of a lot of what we teach here on marriage IQ.
You have to be willing to take a hard look at your own thought patterns.
2:28
But if you're willing to go there with me today, this tool could change the way that you experience so much in your marriage I.
Like it?
So let me give you a quick example of what I'm talking about.
Several clients that I've worked with came to me carrying years of anguish, anxiety, depression, the weight of betrayal, some painful power struggles over money and parenting, and even some old trauma.
3:00
In one session, we really drilled down to the root of distress.
We came up with two core beliefs that she had two thoughts that she was telling herself.
And the first one that surfaced is I am not lovable, which is so sad for me to hear.
3:18
And the second one was I'm a bad mother.
And when you look back at the brief history I gave you, I think you can connect the dots on why she may have felt both of those ways.
But think about that for just a minute.
The role that she valued most in life was motherhood.
3:36
That was what she spent so much of her time doing, and yet she felt that she was failing at it.
And as far as the other thought, the thing that every human being really, truly longs for is to be loved.
But she believed it was impossible for her.
3:53
So let me see if I got this straight.
So what?
One of her core values was being a good mother.
Yeah.
And because that's a core value, it's any kind of a challenge to that value is met with pretty significant reactivity because, again, it's a core value, right?
4:16
And so now she feels like because of all these experiences of some issues of being a mother, she feels like she's a bad mother.
Right.
That's really bad.
Yeah, it is super sad.
4:32
And you know, the same with feeling like she's unlovable with maybe the previous trauma, with difficulties with fidelity in her marriage and and other communication difficulties that became evidence to her that that's true, that she is unlovable with those thoughts really running the show.
4:55
No wonder that she had so much anguish and was suffering so deeply.
So let's pivot here and explore the emotions that have been described by her and others of my clients with similar experiences.
Sadness and grief.
5:12
A sense of loss over never feeling like she was accepted or cherished.
She had fear and anxiety, worrying about abandonment, feeling about being rejected or alone.
She had shame and this deep sense of defectiveness or unworthiness.
5:30
She had anger and resentment toward her husband for her perception of him not loving her enough and hopelessness, the belief that she will never be loved by her husband fully.
And then emotional numbness.
5:45
Eventually that emotion is shutting down emotionally.
So you don't feel all of that pain.
OK, So what actions or behaviors then follow the emotions that we feel?
Well, in this specific case, and I'm just going to make a conglomerate of this with some other clients as well, you might pull away emotionally.
6:10
You might avoid intimacy and spend a lot less time together because it's just really painful.
You might become clingy or seek constant validation and reassurance, or you might be jealous or possessive out of fear of abandonment.
6:29
You might be constantly critical and angry with just lashing out whenever you feel that your needs are being unmet because that confirms the original thought of being unlovable.
Or again, you might numb out in avoidance with things like scrolling on your phone, shopping, substance use, distractions or even other kinds of addictions, gaming, different things like that to avoid sitting with the shame that came from the thoughts so.
7:01
That what makes a difference.
Then why do some people react with anger, other people just tune out, other people create just different behaviors, different to the same core fundamental shame, right?
Do you know why that is?
7:17
Well, typically in my experience, they exhibit a lot of these behaviors, not just one.
So they may exhibit all of them.
There may be times that they're lashing out, there may be times that they're numbing out, there may be times that they isolate themselves because of the shame.
7:36
It sounds to me that maybe there's some learned behaviors in childhood and.
It's possible some some.
Personality traits that came with.
That could be.
Or with them a.
Lot of it could also be trauma responses, could be what they've seen their own family of words.
7:53
Kind of modeled for them.
It could be a lot of different things, and I saw a lot of this in my research as well, but the big thing that I want us to focus on today is this is how distorted thoughts ripple into marriage.
8:10
You may be able to connect some dots already, but we're going to talk a little more later about specifically how the thoughts actually manifest, the opposite of what we're trying to accomplish.
So, but aren't these thoughts if you're saying there might be distorted?
8:28
But isn't there some truth behind some of them sometimes?
Are they always distorted?
Well, in my experience in working with clients with this, there is maybe an element of truth, but there is a more true way to look at this.
8:44
OK.
Maybe magnified under a very heavy lens so.
Today, we'll come back to that story in a little bit, but I want to talk about the tool that helped her begin to change some of the most painful parts of her marriage, and that is cognitive behavioral therapy, or DBT.
9:01
And we've talked about this a little bit in some other episodes, but I want to look at it from a little bit different viewpoint today.
So CBT was pioneered by a psychiatrist named Aaron Beck in the 1960s, and he noticed with his clients and patients that depressed patients were having these streams of negative thoughts that they just ruminated in that they couldn't get out of.
9:28
And these negative thoughts had to do with how they saw themselves, the world and the future.
The model that he came up is what he called the cognitive triad.
So his discovery was really simple but profound.
9:45
If you change your thoughts, your emotions and your behaviors begin to change too.
OK, I can go with that.
However, a lot of people say that if you change your behavior, then that can also change your thoughts.
10:00
Yeah, that's true.
It comes different ways.
Some theorists think it starts with behavior, some people think it starts with thoughts.
So.
You're saying and he's saying that this is really all start with this thought process our beliefs, right?
10:16
Our cognition about whatever experience we had, whatever circumstance just happened.
So here's how it plays out in marriage, and we'll use the example that I just shared a moment ago if you think I'm unlovable.
10:33
Again, the emotions follow sadness, shame, fear, embarrassment, hopelessness, and then those emotions lead to behaviors like withdrawing from your spouse, isolating, becoming clingy, jealous, lashing out in anger, or numbing out with distractions.
10:53
The thought sets off a chain reaction, reinforcing the belief that you just started with.
But CBT gives us a way out.
It helps you catch those distorted thoughts, which most of us don't even have any clue that we have, Challenge them and then replace them with truer, more balanced ones so that you can feel better and respond to your spouse in healthier, more connecting ways.
11:24
So it's like an interruption.
What I believe to be true is my truth.
Yeah, until we look at it a different way.
So in other words, I have to be amazingly humble and say it could be wrong.
11:42
Well, or just through a little help of this tool, have another way to look at it.
I, I think it's important you talked about this tool is very simple, but it requires emotional intelligence in the.
Beginning and humility.
You're right.
Think that one of the first steps to emotional intelligence is humility.
12:05
Asking myself, am I wrong the story that I'm telling myself?
Yeah.
It is it wrong?
Could be?
Let me reassess.
Yep.
Well, CBT is kind of like cleaning the lenses of your glasses.
12:22
If your lenses are smudged with distorted thoughts and everything that your partner does looks worse than it actually is, or things that you do seem worse than they actually are, you you can clean those lenses.
12:38
I'm telling you right now, Doctor Hastings, my lenses aren't smudged.
That is what I get.
That's.
For most people.
For most people.
Myself too.
I'm throwing light itself in there.
My lenses aren't smudged, Dr. Hastings.
12:56
Yeah, it's got to be someone else's lens who is smudged.
Somebody else is wrong.
Somebody else is distorted in their thinking.
That's true.
But here on Marriage IQ, we always start by looking at ourselves because we can't control anyone else.
13:13
We can only control ourselves.
Clean those lenses and suddenly you see your spouse and your marriage a little bit more clearly.
Brilliant deduction, Yep.
CBT is shown to be just as effective as antidepressants in the short term.
13:34
I agree.
Yes, the studies do support what you just said.
Yeah, there are dozens of studies that showed that, but then also show CBT or looking at our thoughts is actually more effective than antidepressants in the long term.
13:51
I agree.
So we both agree on this.
Yeah, it must be right It.
Doesn't just numb the pain like an antidepressant might for a while, but it actually helps you rewrite the story that you've been telling yourself, and that is what brings relief.
14:10
Doctor Hastings, though, that if I rewrite my story, that's kind of scary because that means I'm saying everything that I thought before is is not true.
Who am I?
I'm I'm not who I thought I was.
That I have to restructure my life.
14:25
And that is scary.
Like all of my beliefs in the past are now out the window.
The negative beliefs.
OK.
The negative beliefs, you're able to just see them a little more clearly.
And I don't think it's scary.
I think it's actually relieving.
14:42
Well, I I think it can be scary though.
Before you start.
I agree with you, it's very relieving, but it can be scary thinking about the possibility of that I'm wrong a lot.
Today we're going to take one of my favorite resources.
David Burns is a medical doctor and he wrote the book called When Panic Attacks, and we're going to apply his spin on CBT directly to the challenges that we face in marriage.
15:11
So if you are ready to clean up some thought patterns and lower the temperature in your relationship and bring more joy into your marriage, let's dive in.
Let's do it.
OK, when an upsetting event happens, at that very moment we're suffering.
15:33
We try to work out that problem in our head.
We usually don't write it down immediately or talk to somebody else about it immediately, but we start creating a narrative that goes around and around in circles because of our negative thoughts and our emotions, which are so convincing.
15:55
So Doctor Burns has helped us identify 10 thought distortions that most of us automatically go to, and most of us have one or two that are favorites, and we don't even realize it in that moment of distress, like going in a House of mirrors at a circus or a fair.
16:16
The images are distorted, but it's so far from reality.
It makes it a little fun in our daily interactions in marriage.
It's not that fun.
It actually can be quite painful and I guess if you're in a House of mirrors, it is circus and you.
16:32
You know you're in a House of mirrors.
In this case, you don't know.
It Yeah.
So that's what we're trying to show, is this might be your House of mirrors.
I have my own House of mirrors that distorts my thought patterns.
Yeah, mine.
Yeah, we were talking about a few right before we started and this is reality for everyone.
16:52
So the first one is all or nothing thinking and this distorted thought pattern, do you think an absolute black and white and there's no room for anything in between?
So one example might be if we fight, our marriage is broken and we're going to end up divorced.
17:10
It's just either we have a great marriage or we have a terrible marriage and there's nothing in between.
I can see where this could happen in people with borderline personality and histrionic personality disorder.
17:26
But it also happens in you and I.
Yes.
We.
I can see little similarities there.
The second one is over generalization and with this distorted thought pattern we view a negative event as a never ending pattern of defeat.
17:46
Like you never help around the house.
If I ask you to do something and you don't do it, it changes to you always or you never, and I have to do everything myself because you never do anything.
18:02
So is that really true?
You know, yeah, that kind of goes back to our bias episode too, biases that we come into our relationship with.
Another example might be something like you're never in the mood, you don't want me anymore.
18:18
Our sex life is doomed to be terrible for the rest of my life, so that and all or Nothing are quite wishy washy.
As far as the lines, they are very similar.
18:34
Catastrophic thinking?
Yep, absolutely.
Along with that.
Right, the third one is jumping to conclusions.
So this is done in 2 specific ways.
First is mind reading.
We try to read our partners mind and in doing so we assume that they're reacting negatively to whatever it was that just happened.
18:57
Like if I were to say, can we talk about finances tonight and you go, I might read his mind thinking he thinks I'm irresponsible with finances.
Don't forget the I roll.
That's important.
19:14
But it is interpreting the reaction of someone else in a way that's reading their mind, and it might be that he was just reading something on his phone about politics and side with that.
Doctor Hastings, my love, we've been married for almost 30 years.
19:32
Don't you think I know you by now?
Nope, not enough to read my mind.
So the answer to that people is no 30601052 months.
19:48
You do not know your spouse.
Sorry.
Don't read their mind.
Don't read their mind.
Ask questions instead.
You could say, what was that sigh about?
Another way we do this is fortune telling, where we predict things are going to turn out badly.
For example, if I text Scott while he's at work and he doesn't respond to me for several hours, I might tell myself something like.
20:13
His work is more important than me or he's ignoring me.
He's probably just so upset with whatever I did this morning that our marriage is in jeopardy.
So that fortune telling just taking it all the way or it.
20:29
Could just be that I'm really busy at work.
I mean, that's a thought.
Could be about, but sometimes we have these thought patterns without really thinking through what reality.
Might be all right.
All right, the next one is mental filter where we dwell on the negative and we ignore the positives and we do this about ourselves sometimes and we do it about our spouse sometimes where all I can think of is the things that I do wrong or bad or I'm not good enough, especially, you know, if that's that narrative that we've written a lot, we just don't even see the positive things going on.
21:07
So for example, if Scott said 5 compliments to me during the day, really wonderful things about me and then he also made one a little bit critical comment, but my thoughts turn to he's always criticizing me.
21:25
I can't ever do anything right.
We are just viewing only the negative and not the positive.
And this is what John Gottman says can be one of the most dangerous parts of dragging a marriage to death is just rewriting everything where all we see is the negative, the positive.
21:47
OK, so the next one is discounting positives that also might look like where he says you look really sexy in that dress.
And I just say he just wants sex tonight.
That's the only reason that he's saying that.
He doesn't really mean that.
22:02
So we discount things instead of believing what people say to find truth in that.
The next distorted thought pattern is when we either magnify or minimize things.
We blow things way out of proportion or we shrink the severity of it down.
22:21
So if your spouse forgets to pick up something at the grocery store, magnified thought might be This just proves that you don't care about me or the family.
You can't be trusted with anything.
It's just taking something pretty small and making it much larger than what it needs to be.
22:41
Or when we minimize, and I see this a lot with the clients I work with, infidelity of some sort or compulsive sexual behaviors where one partner feels like you talking to an old flame on Facebook is breaking those bounds that we have around our the fidelity of our marriage.
23:01
And the one who did that is like, it's not a big deal.
I was just talking to somebody on Facebook or it wasn't a big deal.
I was just looking at porn.
It wasn't like I was having sex with somebody.
So just minimizing what is very hurtful to the other partner and minimizing the impact that it might have on them.
23:23
The next one is emotional reasoning and that is going from I feel like taking the emotion that we feel and projecting it to I must be so making those feelings into our reality.
23:40
OK.
I feel really fat or really unattractive or really whatever tonight.
So I am ugly, or I am.
And because I am that, my spouse must also believe that.
23:58
OK.
The next one is should statements or shouldn't or must or ought to or have to or need to.
When we say those to our partner, telling them what to do all the time and if we believe this is all the things that they should be doing and they're not living up to that, then it causes stress in the marriage.
24:26
But likewise, we can also feel those things about our own selves.
I should be doing this.
I should be more patient, I should be more loving.
I should be, which maybe that's true.
But if we use, should it brings shame or as if we just say I think I'm going to try to do.
24:46
This I consider that, yeah.
So this distortion shows up when we place rigid rules on our expectations and on ourselves.
Labeling this is a distorted thought pattern where instead of saying that you or your spouse did something bad, you say you are bad.
25:07
Instead of saying like your spouse forgot to pay a bill or made a mistake, your distorted thought would be he's so irresponsible or he's so immature or whatever it is.
25:23
I think the labeling is A2 edged sword.
It's very sharp, 2 edged sword.
I think it's very positive and very negative.
The way that it's used.
It's not universally good.
It's not universally bad.
If it's constantly negative if I'm.
Labeled as a an addict that could be helpful, could be hurtful, depending on the context.
25:43
But it's not all bad, it's not all good.
So when we label, we should be careful that in the context that you're using, it's a negative context, right?
Because we're having negative thoughts.
Yeah, because.
Sometimes labeling can be very good and that's I'm going to put, I'm going to have an episode just on labeling someday.
26:05
We can talk about that.
OK.
Thanks for your input on that one.
The last common distorted thought pattern is blame.
And we can blame ourselves or we can blame others.
Either way, when we do it in a way that's not something that we're really totally responsible for, that can be really negative.
26:26
For example, if your spouse is kind of withdrawn after a hard day.
And my thought, my distorted thought is I must have done something really wrong.
I'm a terrible wife that is taking upon myself something that really doesn't belong to me.
26:47
It might just be that they had a hard day.
Or in blaming my spouse if I know that we have some conflict over finances, for example, or sex or whatever it is.
And I think he's the reason that we're in this mess that is blaming him for something that he's not entirely responsible for because both of those situations we have joint responsibility for.
27:13
So to wrap up the 10 distorted thought patterns we have, and when I say these again, I'd like you to think of some circumstance that you've had in your life lately that has really caused you some distress and identify what thoughts you had around that situation and see if they fit in any of these categories.
27:37
All or nothing thinking everything's black or white over generalization where we see one negative event that's. #2.
That's number two as a never ending problem and a never ending pattern #3 mental filter where we dwell on the negative and we ignore the positive #4 discounting the positives where we insist that our own positives don't count.
28:05
Those two are kind of related in some ways #5 jumping to conclusions.
We do that through either mind reading or through fortune telling.
Number six, we magnify or we minimize the whole situation, our own part or the part of our spouse. 7 is emotional reasoning.
28:26
I feel this way, so I am this way #8 should statements which also include shouldn't, can't, don't, must, ought to, have to anything where we're telling somebody else or ourselves what we have.
28:42
To be doing, yeah. #9 is labeling where instead of I made a mistake, I say I am a jerk, I'm terrible, I'm horrible, or same with my partner, and then lastly self blame or blaming my partner for something that wasn't entirely their own.
29:03
OK.
OK, so.
Well, that's a lot to think about.
Look at those as and maybe you'll pick two or three where you're like, Yep, I do that a lot.
Yes, I can pick a few right now that I really struggle with.
OK, I can too.
29:19
So in Part 2, we're going to go a little deeper into this and look at how to actually reframe those thoughts, what happens when we have those thoughts and then reframing them and create new cycles in our marriage that are just working a lot better.
29:37
So thank you everyone for joining us for this episode of Marriage IQ.
And we are excited to see you again on Friday where we can pick up, put some personal spin on this, some stories.
We're excited to see you.
Until next time, we'll see you on another exciting episode of.
29:54
Marriage IQ.
