Episode 19: Think It. Feel It. Ruin It: How Your Brain Might Be Sabotaging Your Relationship

In this episode of Lucky in Love, we’re diving deep into the sneaky world of self-fulfilling prophecies in relationships. Ever feel disconnected from your partner and then catch yourself acting distant too? That’s not just a mood—it’s your brain quietly sabotaging your connection. Kari breaks down how thoughts like “They don’t care,” “I feel alone,” or “We’re growing apart” can spiral into real disconnection, even if they weren’t true to begin with.

You’ll learn how beliefs shape behavior, why assumptions can wreck intimacy, and how to break toxic thought loops before they damage your relationship. Plus, Kari shares a weekly challenge to help you reconnect and rewrite the mental script that’s been holding you back.

Whether you're feeling stuck, misunderstood, or just want more emotional connection in your relationship, this episode is your wake-up call.

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Transcript

Kari Hoskins (00:01.034)

So the title of today's episode is Think It, Feel It, Ruin It. How your brain might be sabotaging your relationship. Now I picked this title because I think that it does such a great job of not only summarizing what today's episode is about, but also it just reflects what so many of you are doing in your relationships. Now in full transparency, what I did was I copied and pasted

my episode, like speaking notes into chat GTP. I think that's how you say it. And asked it to please create some titles for me. And this is what it came up with. Absolute genius. I love it. So I'm sure that most of you have heard of a self-fulfilling prophecies, but really quickly, a self-fulfilling prophecy occurs when you have a thought. Now you can call it a thought, an assumption,

belief, whatever. And that thought influences how you feel and how you behave. And how you behave eventually makes that thought come true. Okay, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And what I see happening in so many of your relationships is you all have these really negative self-fulfilling prophecies. So you're creating in your relationship the things that you don't actually want.

and you're doing it over and over and over again. And so that's what I wanted to talk to you about today. So in the case of negative self-fulfilling prophecies, what that means is that, you know, the original thought, belief or assumption that you have is negative, which it then has that whole, you know, ripple effect. It creates negative feelings and negative behaviors that will eventually create that reality.

in your relationship, which is not what we want. We don't want the negative reality. We want the positive reality. Okay. But I think self-fulfilling prophecies are pretty straightforward. So I thought that I would kind of share with you three common negative self-fulfilling prophecies that I see happening over and over again in relationships. So the first one is that they don't care about what I have to say. Right. So the thought or assumption is she doesn't care what I have to say.

Kari Hoskins (02:24.77)

He doesn't care about what I have to say. He doesn't wanna listen to me, right? And so what happens is you have this assumption or this belief and you have that thought happening in your head repeatedly and regularly. Then you start to feel irritated, hurt, maybe even a little bit angry, right? And so you stop sharing little things about your day. You stop sharing that funny thing that happened. You...

might enter a conversation in a little bit of a snarky way, make side comments, you know, just with an edge in your tone of voice. And what I also see happening a lot with people that have this self-fulfilling prophecy is they subconsciously start trapping their partner. So they'll walk into a room, I'll just give you an example, they'll walk into a room with something to share and they see that their spouse, let's say, is on their phone or reading a book or watching TV.

And instead of saying something like, I have something important to share with you, you just like walk in and you start talking. While they're distracted, you see that they're distracted. Maybe they stop what they're doing, maybe they don't, but you're like, see, they don't care about what I had to say. They didn't turn off the TV. They didn't put their phone down. But you also didn't ask. You also didn't wait for them to be done, right? So you just like walked in and started sharing with them while they were distracted.

And then what happens is that affects your energy during the conversation. And nine times out of 10, what I see happening is the partner who was supposed to be listening in quotation marks disengages. Right. And in fact, what a lot of times happens is because this will happen over and over again, they will start avoiding deeper conversations. They'll stop asking questions because they're afraid of being accused of not caring and not listening. Then you're like, see,

told you so, I know you didn't care about what I had to say, right? But in reality, you helped create that. The one that I probably see the most often is a self-fulfilling prophecy of disconnection, right? So the thought or the assumption is they don't want to spend time with me. And when you have this belief, it sucks, it hurts. It's, you know, you feel like you're really alone. And then what happens is you start to withdraw and

Kari Hoskins (04:51.232)

Again, you don't really bother sharing what's on your mind. You start putting up walls because you're feeling disconnected, because you're feeling very hurt. And then what usually happens is your partner will notice the shift and they'll likely ask you, everything okay? And instead of telling them how you're feeling that, no, I'm feeling lonely, I'm feeling disconnected. You say, no, everything's fine. Cause you kind of want them to be a mind reader. You want them to keep asking you.

but instead you ask or sorry, you start acting like standoffish, mopey or cold, right? Which of course pushes them away. And so you end up creating more distance when there didn't need to be more distance. And the last one is they're always so critical. So you have this belief that your spouse is always criticizing you or always has a negative thing to say about whatever it is that you're doing or saying. So you feel annoyed on edge,

And then you enter into these conversations already defensive. You enter into them expecting them to be critical. And guess what? You're going to find it because what happens is they may say something that is absolutely neutral, but your brain is assuming they're going to be critical. And so you misconstrue their comment or like they're part of the conversation as being critical or negative.

even if they weren't actually being like that, even if they weren't actually criticizing you or being negative about anything, right? And so what all three of these self-fulfilling prophecies do is they, again, they create the very thing that you don't want in your relationship. You make it come true. So what do you do about this? How do you break the cycle? Well, there's a couple of suggestions I have for you.

The first one is, of course, you have to be aware that you're doing this in the first place. And so many people are not aware that they're doing this. Okay? So what I would encourage you to do is think about one belief or assumption that you've been holding onto about your partner or about your relationship that might be quietly shaping the way that you act. And then what I want you to do is pick just one thing and do one thing.

Kari Hoskins (07:13.698)

that contradicts it, okay? So for example, if your assumption is they don't want to spend time with me, instead of believing that assumption, tell them, I miss you, and then suggest that you go for a walk. Suggest that you watch a TV show together. Suggest that you do something together, right? Don't wait for them to take the first step. You get to take the first step.

Another example would be like if you think that your partner spouse is emotionally unavailable, instead of reading into silence, instead of reading into the fact that they may not be sharing a lot with you right now, don't read into it, flip it around, have a conversation, ask them, hey, is anything going on? What's been going on with you? How are you feeling these days? Right? Is there anything you want to talk about?

Or there's some things I would like to talk about. Would you join me in a conversation or however, know, I'm a nerd, that's how I would say it. But however you would say it. The point here is to like literally contradict the negative assumption belief or thought that you are having, right? You contradict it with an action. The second suggestion I have for you is to flat out change your assumptions. I think this is more the easier one to do.

If your beliefs about your partner or your relationship are negative, then choose a more positive one, okay? This creates positive self-fulfilling prophecies. So when you can assume that your significant other wants the best for you, when you can assume that they want like the best for their, for your relationship, when you can assume that they enjoy being around you, you're going to feel and act better. You're going to feel and act differently, more positively, which is then going to, of course,

create more positive feelings and experiences in your relationship. Okay. So this is all about disrupting whatever your default brain goes to. And most of us, our brains default to negative thoughts, even if you're a positive person, even positive people do this. In fact, it kind of cracks me up because I swear every time I record a podcast, something happens in my life that

Kari Hoskins (09:35.212)

like reinforces what I just recorded. So I was cracking up because just about an hour ago, my husband jumped on the tractor and he's, you know, got to go down and work with the guys down on the road. And he jumps in the tractor and normally he gives me a kiss before he, you know, takes off or whatever. But he jumped on the tractor and he was going to leave. And I'm standing there, I was actually loading the camper because we're getting ready for a trip. And I'm standing at the door of the camper and I'm like,

The honeymoon's over. He doesn't want to kiss me anymore before he leaves out on the tractor. And I felt sad for a minute. And then I'm like, what am I doing? So I jumped off the camper and I ran over to him. I'm like, husband, stop. So we stopped and we both started cracking up cause he knew, right? And so he gets off the tractor and he gives me a kiss and it gives me a hug. And we had kind of had a funny laugh about it. And then he went along his way. So I recognized what my brain was doing. Had I not

jumped down from the camper and stopped him this whole time in the back of my mind, I would have been a little bit sad like, he didn't want to kiss me. But I know that's not true. I know that he's just distracted and anxious to get down because all the guys are down there working, right? So you have to take responsibility. You have to be the person that takes the steps, that takes the initiatives because you are the person that has those thoughts, assumptions or

beliefs. And I would say that when your significant other has negative thoughts, assumptions, or beliefs, it's their responsibility to jump in and disrupt those themselves. Okay? So just try this out and see what happens because when you change the story that you've been acting from, when you change the way that you are playing out what's going on in your head, your relationship is going to change.

your relationship is going to feel better, right? Because positive self-fulfilling prophecies are just as powerful as negative ones. And they're a lot more beneficial. They're a lot more work than negative ones, but they're definitely worth it because they're way more beneficial to your relationship than the negative ones. Okay, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I hope you all have a lovely week and I'll talk to you next time.