Why Dr. Becky’s “Good Inside” Hits You Right In the Marriage
I can’t tell you how often someone sits across from me and says some version of, “Okay, this is going to sound weird, but I read this post quote on Instagram, and it hit me right in the marriage. Only then, I scrolled back up and realized… it was a Dr. Becky post about parenting.”
On the outside, they’ll laugh about it, but underneath there’s this quiet click of recognition — like something inside them grabbed that framework, pointed at it and said, THIS. This is what’s going on. This is what’s missing. This is how I want to be related to. This is how I want to relate.
So when they wonder why a “parenting post” describes their relationship with their 38-year-old husband better than their couples therapist did back in 2019, I tell them the truth: because Dr. Becky’s Good Inside isn’t actually a parenting framework - it’s a systems framework.
And your marriage, your friendships, your adult relationships — all your relationships — yeah, those are systems too. Once you realize that, the overlap stops feeling strange and starts feeling… inevitable.
Behavior Isn’t Moral — It’s a Signal
One of the reasons Dr. Becky’s work resonates so deeply is because it takes the moral charge out of behavior in a way people really understand.
When she presents it in the context of parenting, a kid’s meltdown stops being “bad” and becomes information, rather than a character indictment. Once that clicks, the obvious becomes visible:
Your partner’s sarcasm? Signal.
Your sudden sharpness? Signal.
Their stonewalling? Signal.
Your third “I’m fine” in a row? Definitely a signal. #iykyk
None of it necessarily means what we assume it means. Most of the time, it’s just a protective part of us doing its job a little too enthusiastically.
And relationships get exponentially easier when the behavior of others stops feeling personal and starts feeling readable. Once you understand the signal, you can actually respond to what’s happening instead of to whatever meaning your fear is attaching to it.
People instinctively get this in parenting, but often miss it completely in marriage. But the principles hold true and function the same in both contexts.
Intention and Impact: The Architecture Under Every Adult Relationship
If you strip away the content of almost any argument, you’ll find the same battle underneath them all: intention versus impact. And the space between the two creates the tension underneath most conflict.
Inevitably, one person will be arguing intention, “I wasn’t trying to hurt you” or “That wasn’t what I meant”, while the other person will be arguing impact “Okay - but, it did hurt. What am I supposed to do with that?”
What sounds like a battle about accuracy is actually a debate about goodness and worth.
When we argue intention, what we’re really protecting is our goodness:“Please see that I’m not a bad person.”
And when we argue impact, we’re really protecting our worth: “Please see that what happened still mattered.”
This is why, if you really listen to them, you’ll realize that when kids are “in trouble” and “arguing” about it - they’re always either fighting for their goodness to be seen or for their experience to matter.
Adults fight for the same things — we just get more convoluted about it.
This is where Dr. Becky’s work becomes unexpectedly brilliant in adult relationships. With kids, she teaches that goodness equals safety when it comes to rupture, repair, and responsibility. A child has to feel fundamentally good (as in - who they ARE as a person is fundamentally good) before they’re developmentally capable of taking responsibility for their impact when it’s “negative”. If their goodness feels threatened, they’ll fight tooth and nail to defend it. We all do.
This means that goodness is essential; responsibility is developmental.
This ^^ framework is how we can hold both pieces (intention and impact) simultaneously - and it tends to feel revolutionary for people who grew up in environments where only one side mattered.
Because the reality is….both sides matter.
Two things can be true (or three or four or five).
And when this clicks for people, they can stop treating intention as innocence or impact as accusation.
Read that again. When goodness is treated as essential, and responsibility is viewed as developmental, intention ≠ innocence, and impact ≠ accusation.
That will shift the emotional climate in any relationship almost immediately. The defensiveness will drain out of the room. Resentment can give way to softness and connection. Conversations stop collapsing because there’s enough space for nuance, accountability, and actual repair.
This relational dynamic (goodness is essential, responsibility is developmental, and all that comes with it) that shows up in parenting is exactly the same in adult relationships. The stakes are just higher, and the fears are much, much deeper.
Shame and Threat: The Quiet Forces That Derail Connection
So, logically, if we take this and extrapolate it out, this would mean that if you trace an argument backward far enough, you’ll inevitably find a point where either someone’s system sensed a threat or someone’s shame spiked - and then it was off to the races.
I spend a lot of time tracking arguments and conflicts backward, and I’m here to tell you that’s exactly what happens. It’s predictable to the point that I often know how a story ends before the person has finished describing the moment it began (or vice versa).
Re: parent-child relationships, from the Dr. Becky perspective, we’d strive to reduce shame or fear within the child because those things collapse their sense of safety (goodness is essential).
Adults aren’t exempt from that.
Shame still shuts us down, makes us rigid, and pulls us into over-explanation or total withdrawal. And threats to safety (whether real or perceived, emotional or physical or financial or otherwise) still hijack our nervous systems and make everything — tone, timing, expression — feel loaded.
What this means is that most couples aren’t fighting about “the thing”; they’re fighting for safety inside a moment that’s shaped by shame and/or threat.
That’s why Dr. Becky’s Good Inside approach works beautifully in adult relationships, too. It simultaneously reduces shame/threat and creates enough safety that people can stay in a struggle with each other, emotionally and cognitively, instead of disappearing into old survival strategies. Once shame and threat settle - even a little - communication becomes something other than crisis management.
“Every Behavior Makes Sense in Context”: The Bridge to Parts Work
The phrase “every behavior makes sense in context” shows up everywhere in Dr. Becky’s work, and every time I hear it, I think: “Yes! That’s parts, that’s protectors, that’s internal logic, that’s exactly what I’m mapping out with people every day.”
A child melting down is a part taking over.
An adult going cold or sharp or avoidant? Same thing. Different armor.
As an Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, I see this on the daily. Someone will tell me, “I don’t know why I got so upset,” and within minutes, once we trace what was actually happening internally, the behavior makes perfect sense. Not excusable, not ideal — but contextual. Coherent. Understandable.
Good Inside gives people an entry point into the logic of IFS: behavior is communication, protector parts of ourselves step in when something feels off, that reactions usually tell a story bigger than the moment itself. And if you listen closely, you can hear the echoes of parts work throughout.
In fact, Dr. Becky has openly talked about how much she draws from IFS in her thinking, and it shows. The overlap isn’t accidental; the frameworks are speaking to the same emotional architecture with different vocabulary.
So, of course her work resonates in adult relationships — it’s built on systems theory. So when she names the parts of you that come online when you’re parenting, she’s also pointing toward the parts that show up when you’re wife-ing, daughter-ing, and CEO-ing as well. And once you recognize that, the patterns in your relationship start making sense in a way they never have before.
What Actually Changes When You Apply Good Inside to Your Marriage?
Once behavior starts being utilized as a signal of what’s happening inside someone, it stops being a one-way ticket into crisis town every time one of you sighs too loudly. And once that pressure lifts, relationships start to change in very predictable ways.
Here are a few of the big ones:
Arguments Stop Being Character Debates
In a shame/threat system, arguments quickly turn into trials about who each person is. Miranda rights should definitely be read because anything you say (or didn’t say) can and will be used against you. That’s how you go from being annoyed about the dishes to spending three days trying to prove or disprove stories like:
“You never listen.”
“I’m too much.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m the problem again.”
The whole relationship gets dragged into a story about goodness and worth, and every misstep feels existential because, in that system, it is.
But - when relationships start using behavior as signals instead of identity, the floor drops back into place, and you find your footing.
So, instead of asking, “Who’s the asshole here?” the question becomes, “What just got activated, and what does it need to settle?”
That doesn’t make conflict fun. But it does keep it smaller and truer to what’s actually happening.
The impact? Arguments take less out of you. You recover faster. Small irritations stop morphing into summary judgments about your entire relationship and instead, stay what they are: two nervous systems reacting, then recalibrating.
Repair Stops Feeling Like Heart Surgery
Most people dread repair more than the fight itself. After all, we tend to have way more practice and examples of fighting than repairing, and the “can we talk about what happened?” part feels like walking into an emotional operating room with no anesthesia.
That’s because, in a shame/threat system, “repair” usually means:
one person over-explaining their intention to prove they’re not a monster,
the other swallowing their impact so they don’t seem “too sensitive,” (and to avoid reigniting the argument)
and both walking away feeling more alone.
That’s not repair.
When Good Inside is in the mix, real repair becomes possible. Not because anyone becomes perfect, but because three things start to happen:
Suddenly:
Intention can be named without spiraling into self-defense.
Impact can be shared without collapsing into shame.
And both experiences can sit next to each other without becoming a verdict on who’s good or bad.
When this starts happening — even imperfectly — repair becomes part of the rhythm of a relationship - not the risk.
You Stop Fearing Reactions (Each Other’s and Your Own)
In relationships best described as “stuck”, it’s often not just conflict people fear — it’s the activation itself. The sigh, the silence, the shift in tone. People start spending exorbitant amounts of mental and emotional energy trying to prevent the next emotional misfire.
Over-editing.
Pre-apologizing.
Everyone’s walking on eggshells all the time.
When you start working from a Good Inside + parts lens, this changes. Activation becomes useful information instead of danger.
The whole emotional climate shifts, and you can feel it in small, steady ways:
A sharp tone doesn’t automatically send the relationship into shutdown mode.
Someone needing a minute to breathe doesn’t get interpreted as rejection — it just reads as a human taking a minute.
Moments of activation don’t escalate; they expand like a full-body exhalation. There’s room for that now.
The relationship can stay connected through activation instead of collapsing because of it. One person’s regulation can be enough to steady the whole system. And when the system is settled, everything — communication, intimacy, logistics, daily life — becomes easier to hold together.
Generosity Stops Feeling Like Settling
Whether we can articulate it or not, most of us learned that “understanding where the other person is coming from” often means “ignore your own experience.” Understandably, then, a lot of people trying to apply Good Inside to adult relationships have a tug-of-war with the idea of what Dr. Becky calls the MGI - Most Generous Interpretation - of someone else’s behavior.
My client will regularly express something like “If I feel bad for the part of him that’s scared or overwhelmed, won’t I just wind up letting him off the hook?”
But with IFS, extending a Most Generous Interpretation to your partner (generosity) stops meaning “pretend you’re not hurt,” and can become “I can see the internal logic behind your reaction — and I need to be heard out about the impact.”
When behavior stops being mysterious, generosity feels less dangerous. Seeing the scared part under the shutdown or the overwhelmed part under the snippy tone doesn’t erase anyone’s boundaries — it just gives everyone better information to work with.
Then, the relationship doesn’t have to choose between compassion and accountability. Instead, someone can say, “I get that you were flooded and that really landed hard for me.”
The system becomes sturdier.
More honest.
More adult.
Then, generous interpretations of each other’s behavior stop feeling like self-abandonment and start bringing clarity.
You Can’t Apply This Externally Until It Exists Internally
Something I watch over and over are women who try to apply Good Inside to their relationships - parenting, marriage, or otherwise, before they apply it to how they relate to themselves.
And this is a hill I will die on: you cannot apply something like Good Inside to external relationships unless and until you apply it internally. Not really.
You can believe it. You can understand it logically. You can even “apply” it with your kids where the power dynamic feels clearer and your own protectors stay quieter. But unless you’ve done the work to relate to yourself this way, you will not be able to sustainably or consistently hold this framework in external relationships.
Because, in your closest relationships — the ones that hit the oldest stories and the deepest fears — your internal system will always run the show. If your protectors still feel threatened, if your fear will still spike quickly. And if your reactions still feel shameful inside your own body, it’s nearly impossible to hold a compassionate frame for someone else’s reactions. Not because you don’t want to — but because your system doesn’t have the stability to offer it consistently.
It’s not personal - just predictable, because relationships can only tolerate what the internal systems involved can tolerate.
Honestly, the relationships that move the most aren’t the ones memorizing “When-you-I-feel-statements,” but the ones where one person starts understanding their own signals with more accuracy. Because Good Inside works in marriages for the same reason it works in parenting: it starts with how you relate to you.
This is the adult version of the model — the place where Dr. Becky’s work and IFS quietly meet. It’s not about perfection or endless compassion. It’s about building enough internal steadiness that the relationship finally has something solid to stand on.
If Good Inside Hit You Hard… It Was Never Just About Parenting. Start Working With A Relationship Counselor in St. Louis, MO
If you’ve been applying Good Inside to everyone but yourself — your kids, your partner, your family — and wondering why it still feels like you’re white-knuckling the hard moments, here’s the truth: you didn’t fail at the framework. You just skipped the part where it has to be applied internally first.
Parenting gave you the language, marriage exposed the gaps - but your internal system is the piece that closes the loop.
Start there, and the things that felt confusing, inconsistent, or unattainable will begin to shift in all the ways you’ve been reading about. Not because you tried harder, but because you started from the inside out. You can start your therapy journey with Good Woman Therapy by clicking the link below!
Other Services Offered at Good Woman Therapy
Curious to learn more about IFS therapy? Send me a message! As an IFS therapist, I love helping women and fellow therapists navigate their everyday lives with greater ease using Internal Family Systems Therapy and specialize in therapy for stress & overwhelm, inner critics, perfectionism, peacekeeping, and relationship concerns. My office is located in Ballwin, MO and I help everyday women navigate their everyday lives with greater ease by offering both in-person counseling as well as online therapy to clients throughout Creve Coeur, Ladue, Town and Country, Chesterfield, and St. Peters. I also provide online therapy Missouri -wide to clients outside the St. Louis and St. Charles County area. You can view my availability and self-schedule a free, 20-minute consultation on my consultation page.
