Life Kit – "Dear Life Kit: I'm at my breaking point"

Host: Marielle Segarra (NPR)
Guest Expert: Mariah Seger de Geer, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist
Reporter/Interviewer: Andy Tagle
Date: October 9, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode of NPR’s Life Kit, host Marielle Segarra and reporter Andy Tagle tackle questions from listeners experiencing relationship crises—at their breaking points with friends, partners, and colleagues. Marriage and family therapist Mariah Seger de Geer (BFF Therapy) offers compassionate, practical advice for handling fraught moments in friendships, marriage, infertility struggles, and tricky boundaries with exes, while also exploring deeper themes of grief, hope, and self-respect.

Key Topics and Discussion Highlights

1. Supporting a Friend Returning to an Abusive Ex

Segment Start: [03:29]

• Listener’s Dilemma: A best friend has gone back to an ex-boyfriend who was previously abusive (physically, mentally, emotionally), after years apart and with a restraining order in the past. The friend claims he’s changed, but the listener is struggling to support the relationship and worries about the friendship suffering as a result.
• Expert Advice:
  • Mariah underscores the emotional conflict: “[Your] friend, their values are very misaligned with yours right now because they came out of this breakup. I would imagine they're in a place of a very different type of loneliness than you have ever felt.” ([04:15], Mariah Seger de Geer)
  • She notes that avoiding the issue is not sustainable:
    • “If you avoid the boyfriend or create a friendship of avoidance, you’re actually reinforcing the exact thing your friend is doing... You're kind of doing a similar thing of I'm avoiding this big thing to get a need met, which is maintaining this friendship that has such value to me.” ([05:50], Mariah)
  • Mariah advises not to "build your friendship on a big fake sort of version of yourself.” ([05:23])
  • Importance of “repair” if the ex is to re-enter the social circle: “If you’re gonna build a life together, how have we created any repair with these other important people in their life?" ([06:25])
  • Holding space for your friend while upholding your boundaries is vital.
• Notable Advice:
  • “Adult relationships are hard. Friendships are hard... coming back together in friendships can be like some of our most cherished moments of sort of like reacquainting and going deeper. It’s profound intimacy that you have in these non romantic relationships.” ([07:05], Mariah)

2. Navigating Grief, IVF Failure, and Divergent Hopes in Marriage

Segment Start: [07:26]

• Listener’s Dilemma: After three failed IVF cycles and drained savings, one partner wants to try again, the other wants to pursue adoption. Both partners are grieving intensely, but one is immobilized by loss while the other is focused on moving forward.
• Expert Advice:
  • Mariah breaks it into three layers:
    1. Supporting your deeply grieving partner.
    2. Making a collective decision amid divergence.
    3. Tending to your own grief, especially when your partner’s emotions are more overt or intense.
  • She reframes the problem: “It’s not just the baby, but it’s grieving the entire image of what your future life was gonna look like.” ([08:29], Mariah)
  • Warns against urgency and binary thinking (“It’s almost like you’re gambling a little bit.” [09:01])
  • Prescribes finding safety BEFORE making decisions:
    • “For both partners to talk about, like, what do we need to feel safe about having these conversations again?... To get to that conversation could be therapy, could be overall wellness... Right now, before we even get to making a plan, thinking about our options, I need to help calm my body down.” ([09:49-10:10], Mariah)
  • Importance of self-care and joint de-stressing activities (workouts, meditation) as groundwork.
  • On hopelessness and control: “Allow yourself to grieve, right? It’s actually easier to hold on to hope when we allow ourselves the space of like it simply might not happen.” ([11:03], Mariah)
  • Dig into underlying beliefs—often grief about parenthood involves older personal wounds ("I wasn't close with my mother...so if I adopt...I’m not gonna be close").
• Notable Moment:
  • Andy Tagle: "I think what makes this question so painful is that the outcome ... is so entirely out of their control." ([10:43])

3. Marital Discord Over Work Habits During Remote Work

Segment Start: [13:04]

• Listener’s Dilemma: One spouse resents their partner’s laissez-faire remote work habits, especially compared to her own work ethic and burnout. The partner earns significantly more, but seems to “slack off” during work hours, driving the listener “up the wall.”
• Expert Advice:
  • Mariah sees envy and self-worth issues:
    • “Their sense of belonging, purpose, value is tied to output and they're seeing their partner. Even though they're bringing in the nice income, their output isn’t there...you've lost some respect for your partner ... because that's how you respect yourself.” ([14:17], Mariah)
  • Warns against demanding misery in your partner:
    • "You don't need to force them to be miserable so that, you know, like, the misery loves company...why would you do that to them? You love them." ([15:14], Mariah)
  • Encourages self-reflection: “What are we doing about your burnt out versus projecting out like, you fix that, I'm going to feel better. That's not sustainable either.” ([15:34])
• Notable Quote:
  • "It's easy to blame the relationship for your unhappiness..." ([15:34], Mariah)

4. Boundaries with a Spouse’s Ex Who Has Mental Health Struggles

Segment Start: [16:12]

• Listener’s Dilemma: A wife is frustrated by her husband's continued (and compassionate) engagement with his ex, who regularly texts, calls in distress, and sends personal packages—despite knowing it upsets his spouse. The ex struggles with mental illness, and the wife wonders how to set boundaries.
• Expert Advice:
  • Mariah identifies enabling: "He's enabling the past girlfriend because he's available."
  • On boundaries: “He needs to reinstate to the ex, like, hey, you know, please don't call after a certain time in a moment of distress, like, who else can you call X or not?”
  • Reframes the husband’s struggle: “If you understand why the husband feels like, I cannot abandon someone in distress, you can start to see it's not about the ex. It's about my partner's need to show up here.” ([18:39], Mariah)
  • Guidance to listener: Focus on sharing your own feelings, not making demands: “So keep talking about how it feels for you versus telling them what to do.” ([18:39])
  • Identifies that deep personal wounds about abandonment, not love for the ex, may prevent a shift (“...most of the time, it’s not that he’s in love with his ex. It sounds like worry, fear, guilt.”)
• Broader Reflection:
  • On obligations: “Love is not 1000% showing up at all times in any state or any form...at any cost to yourself. That's not love...We have a lot of names for those things—codependent, relationships....” ([20:03], Mariah)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On boundaries and authenticity:
  • “It’s really important to not continue to build your friendship on a big fake sort of version of yourself.” ([05:23], Mariah)
• On parallel avoidance in relationships:
  • “If you avoid the boyfriend or create a friendship of avoidance, you’re actually reinforcing the exact thing your friend is doing....” ([05:50], Mariah)
• On loss and grieving the future:
  • "It's not just the baby, but it's grieving the entire image of what your future life was gonna look like." ([08:29], Mariah)
• On love and boundaries:
  • “Boundaries is distance between loving myself and loving you.” ([20:03], Mariah)
• On honoring your gut:
  • "When we don't listen to our intuition, we're actually really betraying ourself and we need to stop doing that." ([21:03], Mariah)

Final Segment: Mariah’s Best Life Advice

[21:03]

• “My advice that I’m really sitting in is about listening to yourself. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we’re actually really betraying ourself and we need to stop doing that.” — Mariah Seger de Geer

Important Timestamps

• [03:29] Supporting a friend dating an abusive ex
• [07:26] Grieving and navigating IVF failure in marriage
• [13:04] Work-from-home resentment between spouses
• [16:12] Spousal boundaries with a needy ex-partner
• [20:03] The broader meaning of boundaries and love

Takeaways

• Authenticity, repair, and honest boundaries are fundamental for healthy relationships, even—especially—at our breaking points.
• Grief and hope can coexist only if we honor difficult emotions without slipping into avoidance or magical thinking.
• Conflict over values (work, money, family) often points to deeper wounds around self-worth and control—not just immediate irritants.
• True love means setting boundaries for the well-being of all parties, not sacrificing oneself endlessly for others.

For listeners in crisis or experiencing domestic abuse:
National Domestic Abuse Hotline: 800-799-SAFE