Successful but Disconnected: Why High-Achieving Couples Drift—and How the New Science of Intimacy Points the Way Back
Monday, June 30, 2025. This is for a few clients at Google, and their life partners, and kids..
You’ve got the job. The partner. The shared calendar.
You’ve even mastered parallel inbox management and two kinds of password manager. You’ve built the life you were promised would make you happy.
So why do you feel like strangers passing in a very expensive kitchen?
Welcome to the number-one complaint of professional couples in therapy: emotional disconnection.
You're not fighting. You're not cheating. You're not even disagreeing about who forgot to call the plumber. You're just… no longer real to each other.
The Hidden Epidemic in High-Functioning Marriages
The data tell the story most of us are too tired to say out loud: even high-income, dual-career couples experience distress levels on par with lower-income couples, but they mask it better (Lebow & Snyder, 2022). Therapy gets pushed until the third failed vacation or the second year without sex.
By then, the primary complaint isn't "we argue" or "we’re incompatible." It's “I feel invisible.”
This is not about lack of communication skills.
Many of these couples can deliver a TED Talk on conflict resolution.
What they lack is shared presence.
Gottman (1999) might call it the absence of bids for connection; Johnson (2019) would see it as a fraying emotional bond. Both are right. But the most painful part is that these couples are often still in love. They’ve just forgotten how to find each other in the fog.
The Science of Spillover: Work Stress as a Third Party in the Marriage
Let’s talk about what’s really driving the distance.
A meta-analysis of 49 studies shows that work-to-family conflict is directly correlated with lower relationship satisfaction (Byron, 2005).
In high-achieving couples, where both partners may be constantly “on,” the emotional afterburn doesn’t stop at the door—it follows them home, curls up on the couch, and eats intimacy for dinner.
Recent diary studies confirm this.
Pluut, Ilies, and Curşeu (2025) found that when even one partner experiences a stressful workday, both partners report less emotional availability and lower spousal support that evening. This is not “drifting apart.” It’s system overload.
And let’s not forget burnout.
Kocyigit and Uzun (2025) revealed that emotional dysregulation—difficulty identifying or expressing one’s own emotions—directly predicts couple burnout. When high-functioning people can’t be vulnerable, the relationship stops being a refuge and becomes a performance.
Even perfection has a price.
Dual-Career Dynamics and Emotional Equity
If you both work 60-hour weeks but only one of you is still in “rise and grind” mode while the other manages logistics, children, and holidays, you have a structural intimacy problem.
Relational equity matters. A growing body of research in contextual therapy emphasizes fairness—not just feelings—as a key factor in long-term satisfaction (Boszormenyi-Nagy & Krasner, 1986).
When professional advancement comes with asymmetry (e.g., one partner earns more, works longer hours, or has more status), partners often fail to renegotiate their shared meaning system. Resentment fills in the blanks.
Even when partners want to be equitable, they don’t always know how.
A Swedish longitudinal study found that women who were promoted to top jobs experienced a statistically significant increase in divorce risk—especially when partnered with men in similar fields (Rickne & Folke, 2024).
Power shifts require emotional recalibration, not just calendar updates.
Repairing the Disconnection: What Actually Works
Here’s where the science gets encouraging: modern couples therapy actually works—especially for couples who still care but have grown apart.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), based on adult attachment science, has shown consistent positive outcomes in randomized trials (Johnson, 2019). It helps couples identify underlying fears and needs—often hidden beneath sarcasm, silence, or logistical chatter. EFT invites partners to stop performing and start showing up.
Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) , the overlooked model which anticipated Gottman Couples Therapy also offers strong results, particularly for couples with temperament differences or chronic patterns (Christensen et al., 2020). It helps partners stop trying to change each other and instead build emotional tolerance, mutual empathy, and new ways to be “real” together.
And newer models emphasize acceptance, authenticity and self-disclosure as core therapeutic outcomes.
Kocyigit and Uzun (2025) note that in burned-out couples, the antidote isn’t necessarily “more talking,” but more real talking—something that often feels countercultural to high-functioning professionals trained to curate their identities for public consumption.
The Therapist’s Toolbox: Small Rituals That Matter
Even without a full course of therapy, many couples benefit from structured emotional rituals—small acts of presence that pierce the fog.
The 20-Minute Landing Ritual: After work, both partners agree to a screen-free check-in. Just 20 minutes. No logistics. Just: “What’s the best moment of your day? The hardest? Where are you now, emotionally?”
The Sunday Sync: Consider holding weekly meeting not just for logistics, but for shared priorities. What’s our marriage’s mission statement this quarter?
The 5-Sentence Check-In (via text at midday): Think of it as emotional fiber—good for digestion.
These rituals aren’t magic. But they help restore a sense of ongoing co-regulation, which attachment researchers identify as a core feature of relational health (Siegel, 2012; Coan, 2016).
Final Thought: The Marriage Deserves Your Best Self, Too
Here’s what no one told you in grad school or med school or at that Big Four orientation: your bestowed emotional presence is not a luxury item.
It’s not optional. And your marriage cannot run on bullet points and goodwill alone.
There’s no Nobel for intimacy. But if there were, it would go to the couple that figured out how to say “I miss you” without blame, and how to come home to each other after the world has taken everything else.
In 2025, it seems Vonnegut was prophetic. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
Pretend your marriage is your best project—and then, weirdly, it starts becoming one. I can help with that.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., & Krasner, B. R. (1986). Between give and take: A clinical guide to contextual therapy. Brunner/Mazel.
Byron, K. (2005). A meta-analytic review of work–family conflict and its antecedents. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 67(2), 169–198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2004.08.009
Christensen, A., Atkins, D. C., Baucom, B., & Yi, J. (2020). Marital status and satisfaction trajectories in Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 88(5), 440–452. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000483
Coan, J. A. (2016). Toward a neuroscience of enduring love. Emotion Review, 8(4), 292–300. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073916650494
Gottman, J. M. (1999). The seven principles for making marriage work. Crown.
Johnson, S. M. (2019). Attachment theory in practice: Emotionally focused therapy (EFT) with individuals, couples, and families. Guilford Press.
Kocyigit, M., & Uzun, M. (2025). Emotion regulation and couple burnout in marriage: The moderating role of authenticity. Current Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05384-w
Lebow, J., & Snyder, D. K. (2022). Couple therapy in the 2020s: Current status and emerging developments. Family Process, 61(4), 1359–1385. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12768
Pluut, H., Ilies, R., & Curşeu, P. L. (2025). The things I do for you... and for myself: Dyadic and dynamic effects of social support in dual-earner couples. Journal of Business and Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-025-09901-9
Rickne, J., & Folke, O. (2024). Promotions and divorce: Gendered career shocks in Sweden. European Economic Review, 160, 104121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104121
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.