Why Successful People Still Struggle in Love

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: Why successful people still struggle in love, published on 6th July 2026.

On this podcast, we're looking for two things. We're looking for refreshing takes on leadership and personal development - not just the conventional wisdom you might hear in a leadership classroom. We're also looking for practical ways to refresh our leadership and our self-leadership in both our work and our lives.

Today's conversation was a no-brainer for me. It gets underneath something that has a huge impact on our performance, our leadership, and our quality of life, and yet it would rarely make its way onto a typical leadership development programme - and that is our intimate relationships.

Whether you're in a great place in your relationship right now or things feel harder, this is one of those conversations that can build stronger scaffolding in the relationships that matter most before they reach those stress points. Because every relationship is going to face ups and downs and curve balls, and it would be great to strengthen them ahead of that time.

Although personal relationships are often treated as something completely separate from work and leadership and career, when we're coaching, we're coaching the whole person. If we ignore what's happening at home, we often miss the deeper transformation work that is possible and that really allows leaders to thrive.

Today I am joined by executive relationship strategist Katarina Polonska. We're going to talk about the relationships outside work that shape so much of how we show up at work, why high achievers can be particularly vulnerable to relationship breakdown, the deeper emotional drivers behind ambition and over-performance, and why people can end up in a marriage or partnership they no longer recognise.

We're even going to talk about the business case for investing in our personal relationships more intentionally - not to make them transactional, but to give them the weight they actually deserve.

Katarina, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here.

Katarina: Thank you so much for having me. It's so nice having a podcast with another Brit - that rarely happens for me.

I'm an executive relationship strategist. I work with executives and founders on their relationships, both personal and professional, but really the bread and butter of my work is the personal dynamic. So little attention goes on our personal relationships when we are high performers. I just left a breakfast with a lot of very ultra-high net worth founders, and it's really fascinating how many of them don't consider their marriage or their intimate life as relevant to their success. That's a very, very dangerous view to have, because founders have a 72% divorce rate. CEOs have a higher than average divorce rate. And when you get divorced - for anyone who has been through it - it's really challenging in every arena of your life. It absolutely has an impact on your net worth, your career, your company, your kids. It's not something to be taken lightly.

I would argue that we need to spend a lot more time and energy learning about relationships and learning how to show up as best we can, to have healthy, fulfilling, nourishing relationships - because that's really how we're going to succeed more and have better results in our lives.

Maya: Absolutely. And this is why you caught my attention. As an executive coach, the amount of times this stuff comes up in coaching is really high. I know it's of importance, and I know it's sometimes the thing that's going to be the biggest needle mover early on in the coaching. And exactly as you said, when I'm doing group programmes and senior executive programmes, that stuff comes up, and the statistics bear up in reality.

The whole point of Refreshing Leadership is that there's the traditional leadership wisdom, and then there's the stuff that actually makes a real difference but isn't necessarily going to make it onto a leadership development programme - and yet it can unlock so much for us. So that's why I really wanted to have this conversation with you.

The invisible tax on performance

Maya: You mentioned this idea that when there is stress going on in a personal relationship, it can feel like a real invisible tax on performance. Can you open that up a little?

Katarina: I'll start with a story about a client I'm working with right now. He's a fantastic founder, been running his company for about six years, the business is valued in the hundreds of millions, and he's brilliant. He's in his late 40s, has kids and a wife, they've been married about 10 years, and it hasn't been going well. Ever since they had kids, the intimacy has begun to fade - which is a very common pattern. She is a stay-at-home wife, tending to the house and the kids, while he's out being the breadwinner. What's happened in their dynamic is that they've begun to grow apart. The work matters he wants to talk about when he gets home don't interest her, because she's not really feeling seen or heard or understood by him - her life is so different. She's concerned about the rug in the living room; he's concerned about whether to invest in the next phase of his venture. So there's already a tension at the dinner table where they're not really interested in each other's conversations anymore, and they're both starting to feel quite lonely.

Now imagine you've got kids, a busy work schedule, and you don't have the skills to navigate this very natural tension - what really is a power struggle between a couple that will happen when there's an imbalance in work and responsibility. If you don't have the skills to navigate through that, it's going to feel quite scary. Dinner doesn't feel good anymore. And so naturally you start to shut down, stop sharing so much with your partner, and start turning away and finding other outlets.

In this client's case, he has work colleagues who share the same interests and ambition, and he starts confiding in them. There happens to be a woman among them, and he starts to develop a feeling of attraction towards her. They work late together. They talk a lot. Very understandable, all of this.

Meanwhile, his wife is feeling more and more unseen and neglected. Tension grows until it starts to bubble over, and they begin having more conflicts, more arguments. He gets closer to this colleague who is there, empathic, and can relate. And the relationship starts to deteriorate.

At this point, you don't sleep very well. Your stress levels go up. If you don't sleep well, you don't perform well at work the next day. You're preoccupied. Your phone might be going off in a boardroom with messages from your wife. These consequences start to compound, and very few people are equipped to handle them.

As one founder said to me: "There's no ROI in tackling this, because I have no guarantee it's even going to be resolved. We just keep arguing and misunderstanding each other, so why would I even go there?" And so you get further and further out of practice. The problem compounds because you're avoiding it. You're in this pattern of avoidance until you're heading towards divorce - and then potentially a year or two of painful mediation, separation, navigating things around the kids, and a lot of pain.

All of this impacts your work, your mental health, your body, your self-esteem. None of it is good.

That's the area I work in. Because from my perspective, yes, success is about achieving certain income goals and building legacies of wealth. But I want to expand that definition of success to look at our health, our longevity, and the quality of our lives. I have worked with people at billionaire level of net worth who are really miserable, because it's such a narrow definition of success. I'm not here to say you can't have both - you absolutely can - but we need to expand it.

Maya: I love that, and I'm nodding because I always say I want to be ambitious about your whole life, not just your work. And what you've done there is almost make the business case for it, for those who need to hear it in that language. It's a little bit like our dear NHS here in the UK - it can be a case of too little, too late, rather than getting ahead of the situation early on.

Why high achievers are particularly vulnerable

Maya: What is it about ambitious individuals that might make this more of an issue for them than for others? What makes high achievers more likely to find themselves having difficulties in this area?

Katarina: We have to look at how high achievers are wired. I absolutely consider myself a high achiever, and I don't think that high achievement ever necessarily goes away. But I think we develop a different relationship to it when we learn to become more secure within ourselves.

So much of the fuel behind ambition and high achievement is coming from a wounded place rather than a secure place. Let me use myself as an example. I grew up in an immigrant family - a lovely family that loved me very much - but we didn't have much money, and my parents were very busy and distracted. Both were PhDs, both were trying to make it in the world. So much of my childhood was spent alone, either with a nanny or figuring out my own little life, and then we moved countries to England.

In that space, the wiring that became entrenched in me - and our wiring really starts to form between the ages of zero and two, then zero and eight, and continues right up to 25 - was one of feeling quite alone. Because children have a natural egocentricism where they make everything about themselves as they learn about the world, my interpretation of myself and my role in the world was: I'm alone because there's probably something wrong with me. People don't really want me. Maybe I'm not worthy of having love and connection. Maybe I'm not destined to have friends or love.

That formed a wound, and that wound started to fuel inside of me a desire to prove it wrong. A desire to compensate, to get out of my own pain, to get out of my own painful identity. And so that fuelled this really high-achieving, perfectionist, straight-A dynamic, which society rewarded. Suddenly, as a hardworking, high-achieving kid getting good grades, I started to get more praise, more love, more reward from my parents. So of course, the rule in my subconscious became: work hard, get achievements, get validation, get praise, win. Get status, get power, start to be loved.

Then later, as a young woman going to a prestigious girls' school, that became coupled with: also have to be thin, have to be aesthetically pleasing, have to show up in a very certain way in order to be loved and get praise. And that becomes the conditioning of the high performer.

The subtext beneath all of this is: I will perform against all odds. I will work hard, I will power through, I will grind, I will override my own needs, I will override any of my own feelings - because the most important thing is that I get this done. Because my function as a human being is getting things done. When I get things done, I have value in society. I am loved.

And that becomes the wounded energy behind so much of the ambition. What that means is that later in life you become the founder or the CEO who will ignore the fact that you need the bathroom during a meeting. You will work long hours at night because you're overriding the fact that you're really tired. You'll stay late and override the fact that you're actually really lonely, because you don't have time for loneliness - you've got to get this thing done for your investors.

We get really good at performing this role. Fantastic from a capitalist lens. But from a human being lens, it's full of self-abandonment.

The journey is to recondition - to rewire - yourself to overcome these wounded parts and start having a different relationship with your ambition. One where your ambition comes from a really secure, self-loving, healthy place, where you genuinely want the best for yourself and you have full confidence and trust that you can get there in a nourishing way.

What I find with all my clients is that when that relationship changes, when those wounds are reconditioned, when you rewire yourself to be more secure - you will still get the same wonderful results, if not even better, because you're operating from a much more well-resourced and empowered place rather than a scarcity, fear-driven, wounded place.

Maya: You said a lot there, and I'm curious which parts people will identify with, because I know from working with my clients that there are parts of what you said that ring absolutely true - everyone will have slightly different versions or different experiences, but they'll be able to identify with them.

I must say, as you were talking, I was reflecting that I was a high achiever but it actually came from a more secure place. So it's interesting - you eventually want to go through that journey and get there, whether you're coming from the wounded side or not. Once you've crossed over, there's more opportunity.

One thing I hear from friends in private equity is that almost everyone in that environment is coming from the place you described - that's what enables them to function in an environment that demands so much. And then once they do the coaching or the other work, they sometimes suddenly go: "Well, what on earth am I doing here?" and they want to walk away. It's quite interesting, our relationship to that high-achieving, ambitious state, and how it shifts at different stages of life as we examine what we're being rewarded for externally versus what matters to us internally.

What this means for your marriage or intimate relationship

Maya: What does this then mean for your marriage or your intimate relationship?

Katarina: When we are so conditioned to be high-performing from a place of self-abandonment, we are very good at showing those external metrics of success. We're very good at knowing what works in society. When I look back at my previous relationships and my previous engagement, they ticked all the boxes of what I believed a relationship should look like - aesthetically, on a checklist level. And we're very good at showing up and playing the role of being a happy partner, a happy family, a good mother or a good husband. But that doesn't mean we are actually present within it, or that it's actually right for us.

Because when we are operating from this place of self-abandonment, we are overriding our needs and just pushing through. But on a deeper level, we are afraid of being vulnerable. Because if we were really vulnerable, and if we really let people see us, they would see that so much of our energy and our performance is actually coming from this deep fear - I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, no one wants me, I'm actually going to be alone, I'm not worthy. This very vulnerable, wounded, childlike part of us that is dominating so much of our energy and behaviour - if we were truly vulnerable and let people see it, they could reject us. And so we self-abandon that part, push it down, and power ahead and perform the role.

But then you get into these relationships where you're performing the role of being happy families. Is it actually right for you? Are you actually with the right person? Does this person actually see and know the real you, or are you presenting them a manicured version?

In my case, I was the queen of personal development. I had a therapist for 15 years. I did all the work. I knew all the language. But I wasn't actually vulnerable at all - it was still a performance. There was a much deeper part of me that I still wasn't revealing, still wasn't bringing to the relationship, because I'd abandoned that part so long ago.

So what can happen is you're in this relationship not being your real self within it. You're being a function, a performance. You might not even realise that. And slowly over time, that relationship will deteriorate. Or you'll both start living separate lives, a relationship of avoidance - together, functional, fine. Not really fulfilled or that happy, but it'll do. And if you are actually trying to get your needs met, the odds are you're either going to develop feelings for somebody else who actually begins to know the real you, or you're going to start noticing: I'm not really feeling fulfilled in this relationship. Something's lacking. There's no intimacy - physical or emotional.

That's when clients often come to me saying: "I've built my life here. I've got the company, the kids, the house - and I'm really not feeling fulfilled in my marriage. Now that I've, quote-unquote, made it, I don't know if I actually want this for the next half of my life."

And that's where we really have to look at: are you with the right person? And if you are, how do we bridge the gap that has developed, and how do we bring your real self back into that relationship to actually create a more nourishing connection? That's really the work.

Maya: I like the way you explain that in two phases. None of it matters if you're not with the right person - so that exploration has to come first. And then once you've done that, you can hopefully take some steps in the right direction.

Where to start

Maya: Is there anything you can share with listeners around how to go about asking themselves these questions? I appreciate this is deep stuff. Where would you point people as a starting point?

Katarina: It is complex. It's a multifaceted question. The starting point really is: out of 10, how happy and fulfilled am I in my relationship? It's a great little question to start with. And if it's a six or a four, okay - what would you need to bring it to a 10? Start getting curious. Is it that you need to have better conversations with your partner? Is it that you need your partner to show more desire towards you? Is it that you have nothing in common anymore? What is going on that you would need to have solved to bring you up to a 10?

Then we have to get onto track of trying to solve for that thing. But the only way we can really solve for it is by first - and this is why I do individual work before any couples work - looking at: if you were to assume 100% responsibility for your part in the relationship, where are you showing up in a way that is blocked? Where are you holding yourself back? Where are you, without realising it, self-sabotaging? And where is that coming from?

More often than not, we are self-sabotaging in some shape or form, from a subconscious place we're not even aware of. That's the place we need to begin.

It's easy to say, "My partner doesn't show any desire in me." Okay, that's the symptom. But how are you showing up? How are you receiving their desire? Are you even able to receive it, or are you in fact completely blocked around intimacy yourself? Because if you are, nobody is going to be that fulfilling for you - and that colleague over there doesn't count, because you're just in the novel honeymoon phase and that will pass too.

So much of the work really begins with looking at where you are blocked on that deeper subconscious level, and where you are not actually able to receive the very things you want, that are holding you back from feeling fulfilled. Then it's about clearing those blocks. A lot of my work is around neuroplasticity, helping people rewire their brains - not a technical term, but that's the shorthand. And then it's about getting really clear on what you need from your partner in order to be happy.

A lot of the time people are carrying around a whole backlog of resentment and pain towards their partner, and that resentment wears away at any intimacy. We need to clear it out. But it's very often difficult to clear resentment if you don't know what you need in place of it, and if you don't have any boundaries around it.

So there are these different moving pieces we need to go through in order to start reorientating the relationship and your role within it - to discern: am I with the right person? Is it actually possible for me to feel happy and fulfilled with this person long term? And once I take ownership of my side of the street and clear out any resistance and blocks, and then see things clearly - from there I can begin to see: will they step up? Will they meet me here? Or are they actually looking in a completely different direction?

Maya: The 100% responsibility piece is so important - the part you have full control over, your locus of control within the relationship. It also operates best when you know your partner is grappling with the same question. There is a tendency - and there is definitely a gender element here - where perhaps the woman in the partnership will do the thinking, the analysis, the conversations with friends, and not then feel that the same amount of effort is happening on the other side. So the fact that you work with individuals first, and then potentially both individuals, and then potentially together, feels like an important part of how this actually works.

Katarina: Absolutely. So much of my work is really about working with the individual first, because couples counselling is great and there's a lot of place for it - and at the same time, it's primarily talk therapy, so you're primarily engaging the conscious mind, which is only about 3 to 5% of your brain.

You're not actually engaging the deeper subconscious parts. So you can go to couples counselling, talk about the problem, get advice and strategies and communication practices, and then as soon as you get home, of course you don't implement them. Of course you go back into conflict, because the automatic trigger responses come back. You haven't looked at things on that deeper level.

One of the things that frustrated me in my first engagement was that we did a lot of couples counselling, and it was useful for building awareness of the problem - but we never got solid strategies for what to actually do about the fact that he is wired a certain way automatically, through no fault of his own, and I am wired a certain way. We didn't actually tackle that.

In the end, it seems to me a very superficial strategy if you haven't stopped to look at: what am I actually bringing to the conversation? How am I actually wired? Can I start to have a little bit more control over my automatic responses before I even try to take on the more surface-level strategies?

And more often than not, I actually find I don't even need to do the couples work. It's enough to work with the individual.

Maya: Fascinating. I'm going to bring this part of the conversation to a close, and we'll have a part two where I'll ask you all the other questions I have. Thank you so much for sharing all of this - I think there will be a lot that people will be able to relate to, and things they've heard here that will make them think twice about the way they're going about things, and where they perhaps need to do a little bit deeper reflection and work.

Where can people find you?

Katarina: Head over to my website, www.katarinapolonska.com, where you'll find a link to my podcast - I talk a lot about this material there. I also have a YouTube channel, and I'm very active on LinkedIn every single day, posting and talking to people. Feel free to DM me there. I'm also on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, but really I'd say go to my podcast if you want to dive into more of this.

Maya: And what's the name of the podcast?

Katarina: Successfully in Love.

Maya: What a great name. Brilliant. Thank you so much for this first part of the conversation. And thank you for listening today. If there's anyone you were thinking of as you listened who really needs to hear this, send them a link - it costs nothing and it could have a transformational impact on them. I look forward to connecting with you all next time.

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Head over to Katarina's website http://www.katarinapolonska.com/

About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.