Episode 263 - Why Good Relationships Slowly Fall Apart

In this episode of The D Shift, Mardi Winder welcomes back Nancy Perpall to discuss her new book, The Malnourished Marriage, and the powerful food metaphor she uses to explain what relationships truly need to survive and thrive.

After more than three decades as a divorce attorney, Nancy shares why she shifted her focus from helping people end marriages to helping couples better understand how relationships break down in the first place. Drawing from both science and real-world experience, she explains how the early dopamine-driven stage of relationships often blinds people to issues that later become major points of conflict once everyday life takes over.

The conversation explores the emotional “nutrients” that relationships require, including communication, trust, compromise, intimacy, laughter, and emotional safety. Nancy explains why communication functions like water in a relationship and how words can either flow or crash depending on how people approach difficult conversations.

Together, they also unpack the role childhood core wounds play in adult relationships and why people often unknowingly trigger each other’s deepest insecurities during moments of stress or conflict. Rather than viewing compromise as weakness, Nancy reframes it as compassion and understanding for another person’s perspective.

Nancy highlights how:

• Early relationship chemistry often masks incompatibilities and unresolved issues

• Communication can either create connection or intensify emotional damage, depending on how words are used

• Childhood core wounds frequently influence adult relationship dynamics and conflict patterns

• Compromise is not weakness but compassion for another person’s perspective

• Laughter, playfulness, and emotional intimacy are essential parts of long-term relationship health

About the Guest:

Nancy Perpall began her professional career as a critical care nurse. Dedicated to instituting better patient outcomes she contributed to a textbook, Advanced Concepts In Clinical Nursing (J.B. Lippincott). However, to get the rural hospital she was working at to accept those protocols she was told that since she was not a doctor, who were the only ones who could change protocols, she should go to law school since "people listen to lawyers". As a nurse-attorney, Nancy has appeared on radio shows, podcasts, and TV and has published extensively.

To connect with Nancy:

Website: https://nancyperpall.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancyperpall/