Trying to Do Everything, All At Once??
Why You Need Relationship Triage
I was walking this morning, turning something over in my mind. You know how it goes - your feet are moving, your mind is working, and suddenly a connection clicks into place.
I was thinking about how people in relationship crisis try to solve everything at once. Every problem feels urgent. Every issue feels critical. And the voice in their head keeps saying, “I should be doing more. I should have this figured out. I should be better at this by now.”
Then I remembered something from years ago. I’d injured myself — nothing life-threatening, but painful enough that I ended up in the ER. And what struck me wasn’t the injury itself, but how they handled the chaos of an emergency room.
They had a system. Triage.
The person having a heart attack? Immediate attention. The kid with a possible broken bone? Important, but stable. They could wait a bit. And me? I fell into an interesting category. Not high-risk, but also not complicated. Quick assessment, straightforward fix, moved through efficiently.
Nobody was trying to solve everything at once. They were making strategic decisions about what needed attention when, and in what order.
And I realized: People in relationship crisis desperately need triage thinking.
Why Everything Feels Urgent (And Why That’s the Problem)
Here’s what happens when your marriage is in trouble. Your brain goes into threat-response mode. And when you’re in threat-response, everything related to that threat becomes urgent. Everything feels like it needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW.
Your spouse said they need space? Urgent. You haven’t had a real conversation in weeks? Urgent. The dishes are piling up and nobody’s dealing with them? Somehow also urgent. Your mother-in-law made a comment? Definitely urgent.
Except... they’re not all urgent. They’re not all the same level of threat. But your brain can’t tell the difference anymore because you’re trying to make sophisticated decisions with a hijacked nervous system.
This is different from normal life decisions. In your work life, you might use something like the Eisenhower Matrix — urgent vs. important, prioritizing accordingly. That works when you have stable assessment capacity.
But in relationship crisis:
Your assessment capacity is compromised by emotional flooding
Everything feels both urgent AND important because it’s all connected to your marriage
You can’t see anything as “important, but can wait” when the relationship feels like it’s dying
So you need a different framework. One that works even when you’re dysregulated.
You need triage.
The Critic Doesn’t Triage — The Coach Does
Before we get to the framework itself, let’s talk about that voice in your head. The one saying you “should” be doing more.
That’s not your coach. That’s your critic.
And critics don’t triage. They catastrophize.
The critic says everything is urgent, everything is your fault, everything should have been handled yesterday. There’s no assessment, no sequencing, no strategic thinking. Just panic and blame and an endless list of “shoulds.”
The coach, on the other hand, triages naturally. The coach asks:
What’s actually happening here?
What genuinely needs immediate attention?
What can I realistically address given my current capacity?
What builds my capacity to handle harder things later?
What can strategically wait?
If you’re “shoulding” all over yourself, you’re not making strategic decisions. You’re just adding more crisis to the crisis.
Triage thinking is coaching thinking. It’s how you shift from panic to strategy.
The Five Categories of Relationship Triage
So here’s the framework. Five categories, adapted from medical triage, but designed for relationship crisis:
Category 1: Life-Threatening These require immediate intervention or the relationship cannot survive. This is:
Active violence or abuse
Illegal actions or manipulations
Situations where someone is genuinely unsafe
This is rare. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably not in Category 1. And if you are, you need professional intervention beyond what I can offer here.
Category 2: Urgent Stabilization These need attention soon or they’ll become life-threatening to the relationship. This is:
Active affairs that are ongoing
Imminent separation or divorce filings
Severe disconnection where one person has emotionally checked out
One person actively has “one foot out the door”
Patterns that are rapidly deteriorating
This is where many people in crisis actually are. It’s serious. It needs attention. But it’s not going to be solved in the next 24 hours, and throwing everything at it in panic mode usually makes it worse.
Category 3: Important Prevention These aren’t urgent right now, but they prevent future crisis. This is:
Building regular connection rituals
Addressing small resentments before they calcify
Creating friendship and fondness systems
Recognizing and addressing drift before it becomes disconnection
This is your Un-Pause work. This is what keeps relationships from sliding into Category 2. And here’s what’s interesting: people in crisis completely eliminate this category. They think, “I can’t work on prevention when I’m already in crisis.”
But that’s exactly backward. Category 3 work is what keeps you from cycling back through Category 2 repeatedly.
Category 4: Quick Wins These are minor but fast. They’re things you can do that:
Take little capacity
Generate positive momentum
Build hope
Create small positive feedback loops
This is your invitational connection work. Small gestures. Micro-moves. Things that slip past defensive systems through their very smallness.
People dismiss these because they seem insignificant compared to “my spouse wants a divorce.” But here’s the thing: quick wins build Agency, which is one-third of the Hope Formula. And hope is what gives you capacity to address bigger things.
Category 5: Life Satisfaction This is neither urgent nor directly fixing the marriage. This is:
Exercise
Sleep
Time with friends
Hobbies
Things you do just for enjoyment
Basic self-care
People in crisis eliminate this category first. “How can I go to the gym when my marriage is falling apart? Isn’t that selfish?”
No. It’s not selfish. It’s “medical” necessity.
You know what happens when you eliminate Category 5? You show up to your marriage depleted. No emotional reserves. No capacity for patience. Every interaction carries too much weight because you have nothing else in your life providing satisfaction or regulation.
Category 5 isn’t separate from the marriage work. It’s the infrastructure that makes the marriage work possible.
The Triage Strategy
Here’s where this gets practical. When you’re in crisis, your instinct is to:
Eliminate Categories 3 and 5 entirely (prevention and life satisfaction)
Throw everything at Categories 1 and 2 (crisis response)
Ignore Category 4 because it seems too small to matter
But that strategy fails. Here’s why:
Without Category 5, you have no capacity for Categories 1-2. You can’t do sophisticated emotional work when you’re running on fumes.
Without Category 3, you just keep cycling back to Category 2. You’re treating symptoms, not building systems.
Without Category 4, you have no hope. And without hope, you can’t sustain effort on anything else.
So the actual triage strategy looks like this:
First: Stabilize yourself (Category 5) Not because you’re avoiding the marriage. Because you need capacity to address the marriage. This might mean: getting enough sleep, eating actual food, moving your body, connecting with one friend. Baseline stuff. And you can do this almost simultaneously with the second step.
Second: Identify one quick win (Category 4) What’s one small thing you can do that might create a tiny positive moment? Not a grand gesture. Not a big conversation. A micro-move. This builds your sense of Agency — belief that you can actually affect the situation.
(This is where tools like invitational connection come in. I’ve written extensively about this, and if you’re in the VIP program, you have access to detailed training on exactly how to identify and execute these moves.)
Third: Assess what’s actually Category 2 vs. what feels like Category 2 Not everything that feels urgent is actually urgent. Some of what feels like crisis is actually chronic — it’s been going on for a while, and while it’s serious, you have more time than your nervous system is telling you.
This is where something like the Hope Formula helps with assessment — can you identify clear goals? Do pathways exist? Do you have any sense of agency? If yes, you’re probably not in immediate crisis. If no, that tells you something different.
(If you want detailed guidance on this assessment, the Field Guide to Marriage walks through this systematically.)
Fourth: Make one strategic move on Category 2 Not everything. One thing. The thing that’s most likely to create some stabilization.
This might be where you use my PIVOT framework, to interrupt a reactive pattern. Or where you work on shifting from expectation to agreement. Or where you start implementing one piece of a communication framework.
(All of these tools have dedicated training available — PIVOT, the CURIOUS framework, the work on expectations vs. agreements. I’m not going to detail them here, but they exist for exactly this implementation phase.)
Fifth: Build one Category 3 system Even while things are difficult, build one small prevention habit. This might be as simple as: every evening, you do one small thing that acknowledges your spouse positively. Not for immediate crisis response. For system building.
What This Actually Looks Like
Let me give you an example. Say your spouse has said they’re “not sure about the marriage anymore.” You’re panicking. Everything feels urgent.
Bad triage: Stop sleeping properly. Abandon your morning walk. Cancel plans with friends. Spend every spare moment analyzing what went wrong. Try to have big conversations every night. Write long letters. Make grand gestures. Exhaust yourself trying to fix everything.
Good triage:
Category 5: Maintain your morning walk. It’s 30 minutes where you can think, regulate, and maintain some baseline wellness.
Category 4: Make coffee the way your spouse likes it. Just that. No big conversation attached. Just a small positive.
Assessment: Is your spouse saying they want out immediately, or that they’re uncertain? Uncertainty is Category 2 (serious, but not immediately terminal). That gives you more space than your panic is suggesting.
Category 2: Pick ONE thing to shift. Maybe it’s using PIVOT when you feel yourself getting reactive. Just that one thing, practiced consistently.
Category 3: Build in one small moment of non-crisis connection daily. Maybe it’s eating one meal together without relationship talk.
That’s triage. That’s strategic. That’s what works when you’re operating with limited capacity.
The Thing About Triage
Here’s what I’ve learned over 30 years of doing this work: The people who save their marriages aren’t the ones who do the most. They’re the ones who do the right things, in the right order, while maintaining their capacity to keep going.
They’re the ones who learn to coach themselves instead of criticizing themselves.
They’re the ones who recognize that taking care of themselves isn’t separate from taking care of their marriage. It’s essential to it.
They’re the ones who can tell the difference between urgent and important, between crisis and chronic, between what needs attention now and what can be strategically built over time.
That’s triage thinking.
And it starts with stopping the “shoulding.”
You don’t need to do everything. You need to do the right things. In the right order. While keeping yourself functional.
That’s not avoiding the work. That’s being strategic about the work.
Want to go deeper?
If you’re working on saving your marriage and need more specific tools:
The PIVOT framework for interrupting reactive patterns: GO HERE
Understanding the Hope Formula for assessment: GO HERE
Invitational connection and micro-moves: GO HERE
The Field Guide to Marriage for comprehensive guidance: GO HERE
The Save The Marriage System when it truly is the crisis — or to keep the crisis from happening: GO HERE
And if you’re serious about this work and want regular training and support (and already have my System), the VIP program gives you access to detailed implementation guidance on all of these frameworks and more. GO HERE to learn about coaching options, including VIP.