The Successfully In Love Podcast

Katarina Polonska
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Relationships
  • Updated Biweekly

Creating and keeping a healthy, meaningful, and fulfilling relationship can feel extra hard for top-performers, especially when you're a career-driven professional with limited time, emotional bandwidth, and a lot on your plate. And of course, you want to maintain high standards for yourself. Join Strategic Relationship Advisor and gender dynamics social scientist Katarina Polonska (University of Oxford M.St, ICF ACC NLP IAT) as she delves into the complexities of having true healthy love, discerning whether to stay or go, and levelling up to create your ultimate relationship. If you are an ambitious professional who knows you deserve more in life but can't seem to figure out your relationships - whether that's improving your current partnership, getting clarity on what you should do, finding the love of your life, or transforming the painful patterns that hold you back - this show is for you. Each episode contains powerful insights into relationships, to help you create your best relationship yet, and live your best life. Discover more about how I can help you at: www.katarinapolonska.com @katarinapolonska on Instagram https://www.linkedin.com/in/katarinapolonska/ Successfully in Love® provides relationship coaching and educational content. I am a certified coach, not a licensed therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical professional, and nothing on this site or in my programs constitutes psychological treatment, diagnosis, or therapy. My work is present-focused, skills- and strategy-based, and intended to support, not replace, any mental health care you may need. This work should be seen as an addition to therapy and professional medical support. If you are currently working with a therapist or other licensed provider, I encourage you to keep that relationship active alongside any coaching work with me. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact a licensed professional or local emergency services rather than relying on coaching support. Coaching outcomes vary by individual; nothing here should be read as a guarantee of specific results. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 1d ago

    Why Smart CEOs Blow Up Their Lives Over an Affair

    Smart, careful, calculated CEOs, the same people who can model a nine-figure acquisition in an afternoon, keep blowing up everything they've spent twenty years building over an affair. You'd think they would see it coming a mile away. They almost never do. In this episode, Katarina Polonska explains why. Not as a moral lecture, she's not interested in moralizing, but as a clear-eyed look at the state a person is actually in when this begins: hormonal, intoxicated, feeling genuinely wanted for the first time in years, and convinced, from inside that haze, that they can see clearly. Cloud nine is a terrible place to run a risk assessment from, and nobody plans to blow up their life. She walks through everything that state makes invisible. The reputation built over decades that has no insurance policy. The financial restructuring of an entire life that a marital breakdown triggers, assets, equity, spousal support, control. The structural end of a partnership with the one person who knew you before the success. And the strange, specific loneliness of the person who can't tell the board, can't tell friends, and has nowhere to take the one question consuming them. Then the way through: the three steps Katarina walks clients through in exactly this position. Saying what's really happening out loud, unedited. Getting underneath the affair to what it's actually solving for, and what you genuinely need long term. And building the sober strategy, real numbers included, so the decision you eventually make is one you can stand behind with integrity, whatever it turns out to be. Handled from the haze, this is a midlife crisis. Handled clearly, it can become a midlife awakening. The difference is the work in between. Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska/20minconsult About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedInwww.theaffairadvisor.com Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  2. Aug 28

    5 Signs Your Marriage Is Quietly Drifting (And the Small Move That Reverses Each One)

    Most marriages don't end with a big dramatic event. They end slowly, over years, through a handful of patterns that feel completely normal while you're living inside them. No fights, no crisis, nothing anyone outside would notice. Just two people drifting into parallel lives under the same roof. In this episode, Katarina Polonska walks through the five signs of that quiet drift. The low-conflict marriage you might even be proud of, where the peace is really an unspoken agreement to keep everything shallow enough that there's nothing left to fight about. The conversations that have narrowed to pure logistics. The lopsided emotional load, and the low hum of resentment that builds where the asking stopped. The affection that faded through nothing more dramatic than years of tired evenings. And the moment both of you stopped asking real questions, settling instead for a picture of each other that's years out of date. Every sign comes with a move: something small, concrete, and entirely within your control to try this week, without waiting for your partner to go first. Because every one of these patterns is co-created, which is exactly why one person starting is enough to shift it. Katarina closes with an honest way to read your own result: when a sign or two is just a season under load, when three or more compounding over a year means it's time to act and where to start, and what it means if none of them apply, in which case, take the win. None of these signs mean your marriage is broken or that you chose the wrong person. They mean very human patterns have been running without much awareness. And patterns built without awareness can be rebuilt, faster than most people expect. Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska/20minconsult About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. Aug 21

    Should I Stay or Should I Go? The 3 Things to Do Before You Decide

    It's 2am and you're replaying the fight from three weeks ago. You've run the pros and cons list a thousand times. You've asked yourself "should I leave my partner?" more times this year than you'd admit out loud. And you already know that asking again isn't going to change anything. In this episode, Katarina Polonska explains why that question keeps looping: it's being asked before the three inputs that would let you actually answer it exist. She walks through building all three, in the order that matters. First, your own patterns. What you do when things get tense, how a strategy that once protected you now runs on autopilot inside your marriage, and the uncomfortable ownership question that surfaces blind spots fast. Second, your actual needs, not your wants: the granular, concrete picture of what a nourishing life looks like for you, which most people running the stay-or-go loop have never once defined. And third, the strategy: turning each need into a specific ask, building the counter-move for each of your own patterns, and running it for a defined 90-day stretch that produces real data instead of a vague feeling. At the end of that runway, one of two things happens. Either your partner responds to clear asks and the day-to-day experience of the marriage genuinely shifts, or they don't, and that tells you something more useful than another sleepless night ever could. If you stay, you stay with evidence instead of exhaustion. If you go, you go with the inner peace of knowing you left no stone unturned. Katarina also covers where therapy fits alongside this work, and why the looping question was never proof that something is wrong with you. It's a sign the inputs haven't been built yet. Certainty is available, and it comes faster than most people expect once the real work starts. Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska/20minconsult About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  4. Aug 14

    The Fear of Intimacy: Why You Can Be Present for Everything and Known by No One

    You can be married for fifteen years, genuinely like your spouse, show up for every school play and every anniversary, and still feel like nobody has actually known the real you in a long time. Most people in that position quietly conclude the marriage is the problem. In this episode, Katarina Polonska offers a different explanation: somewhere along the way, you built a real skill at being close to someone while keeping the honest truth of who you are out of reach. She defines the fear of intimacy precisely, as the gap between being present and being known, and walks through the small, reasonable-sounding habits it hides inside: the automatic "I'm fine, just tired," the joke that deflects the vulnerable moment, the peace that's really shallowness, the overfunctioning that keeps every conversation at the level of logistics. She explains where the strategy comes from without sending you digging through your past, why the same pattern that built your success is now running in the wrong room, and the compounding cost of ten thousand small moments where the polished answer replaced the real one. Then the practical turn: why the fix is not one dramatic tell-them-everything conversation, but one honest sentence swapped in for the automatic one, and what a completely ordinary Tuesday night looks like six months into that practice, when your partner asks the same question they've asked a thousand times and, for the first time in years, gets you. The episode includes a simple test to know whether this pattern is running in your relationship, and an honest answer for the listener who runs the test and realizes it isn't: protect what you have. You haven't failed at intimacy. You succeeded at a different skill. And a strategy built on purpose can be updated on purpose. Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska/20minconsult About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. Aug 7

    Why I Called Off My Own Wedding: The Story Behind Successfully in Love

    A few months before her wedding, Katarina Polonska sat in her car outside her apartment, unable to go inside, because inside was the dress, the guest list, and a man who loved her. In that car she finally told herself the truth she'd been outrunning for months. In this episode, Katarina tells the story she rarely tells in full. Growing up as an immigrant kid in England and learning early that performing was the safest way to belong. Becoming the high achiever everyone leaned on, the friend everyone confessed to, the responsible one who mediated her own parents' divorce. The quiet costs that strategy carried. And the engagement that forced her to finally look at the pattern underneath it all. She shares why years of doing the conventional inner work gave her real ground to stand on but didn't shift the pattern, what finally did, and how that journey became the Successfully in Love method: a structured, present-day process for seeing the patterns you're stuck in, getting certain about what you need, and building the strategy to create it, in your relationship with yourself and with your beloved. This one isn't advice. It's the story behind all of it. And if you're carrying a decision you've been debating longer than you'd like to admit, it's proof of one thing she believes completely: it's never too late. Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska/20minconsult About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  6. Jul 31

    A Sexless Marriage Is Rarely About Sex (Here's What It's Actually About)

    You've read the articles. Schedule it. Prioritize it. Make time. You've tried all of it, and somehow you're still lying next to each other like strangers who happen to share a mortgage. In this episode, Katarina Polonska explains why a sexless marriage is almost never actually a sex problem. It's a safety problem, and you can schedule all the intimacy you want, but it won't return until you address what's actually missing. She walks through how it happens: the chemistry that felt undeniable when you met, the roles that life slowly hands each of you (provider, parent, the dutiful one), and the way intimacy erodes like a coastline, so gradually that neither person can point to the day it disappeared. Because here's the mechanism underneath it all: you don't want to be physically open with someone you no longer feel fully seen by. It's not low libido. It's not the spark fading. It's two people quietly guarding themselves against opening up to someone they're no longer sure they're safe with. She also shows the same pattern wearing different clothes: the breadwinner carrying the household, the finances, and the emotional load, too depleted for closeness by the end of most days, with resentment quietly building a wall where desire used to live. What reads as rejection is usually exhaustion with nowhere to go. Then the honest question that starts the work: where have I stopped feeling fully seen by my partner, and where have I stopped making them feel fully seen by me? Katarina shares her own experience of noticing this pattern in her own marriage, and why one moment of real visibility often does more for physical closeness than a year of scheduled date nights. Physical intimacy isn't the work. It's what returns once the work is done Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska/20minconsult About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  7. Jul 24

    Why Emotional Affairs Happen (And What They're Really Telling You)

    You haven't crossed any physical line. And you still feel like you're cheating. In this episode, Katarina Polonska takes on one of the most misunderstood experiences in long-term relationships: the emotional affair. Her argument is one almost nobody makes out loud. An emotional affair is rarely about the other person. It's a redirection of a need you stopped believing you were allowed to bring home. She explains why these connections so often form with someone geographically or practically impossible, and why that's the detail that gives the whole thing away. She walks through the needs that most commonly get redirected, the learned belief that asking for them at home leads nowhere, and the quieter fear underneath it all: that being fully known by the person closest to you feels more dangerous than being admired by a stranger. None of this makes an emotional affair harmless, and Katarina is clear that she's not condoning it. But shame has never resolved one either. What resolves it is the question she gives her clients, and gives you in this episode: what need am I meeting outside my relationship that I stopped believing I'm allowed to ask for inside it? The answer will tell you more than the affair itself ever will. Whether you're inside this right now, recovering from it, or protecting a relationship you value, this conversation is about restoring the need to its rightful place. However old you are, it's never too late to bring it home. 🎯 Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ 💬 Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and Gender Dynamics Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. 🎁 To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  8. Jul 17

    Why Date Nights Won't Fix Your Relationship (And What Actually Will)

    You booked the reservation. You sorted the babysitter. You made the effort. And somewhere between the appetizer and the bill, you felt it: nothing actually changed. In this episode, Katarina Polonska takes apart one of the most repeated pieces of relationship advice there is, and explains why scheduling more date nights so rarely brings couples closer. Because a date night's real job, most of the time, is to give both people something to point to so that neither one has to raise the conversation they're actually avoiding. The dinner isn't failing. It's working exactly as designed. She walks through the tensions that usually live underneath a "we're fine, we just need to reconnect" relationship: resentment that fermented one small disappointment at a time, wants that feel too dangerous to say out loud, and the question almost no one dares to voice. She shows how the same pattern plays out on both sides, from the provider who built an identity around handling everything and stopped being allowed to need anything, to the breadwinner holding the entire relationship together through sheer competence while quietly becoming its only engine. Then she introduces the framework at the heart of the episode: the Ledger and the Truth. The Ledger is everything you can point to, the date nights, the anniversaries, the split chores. It's real, and it matters. But the Ledger was never built to carry truth. The Truth is the sentence you haven't said yet, and it usually starts with "I." The episode ends with a five-minute practice you can do tonight, before your next reservation: naming, honestly and privately, what the evening has been helping you not say. Because more often than not, you don't need twelve more date nights. You need the one real conversation you've been avoiding, and it usually moves faster than you think. 🎯 Watch this free video to learn more: https://www.successfullyinlove.com/ 💬 Book a free strategy call with Katarina: https://calendly.com/katarinapolonska About the Host Katarina Polonska is a Strategic Relationship Advisor and a Gender Dynamic Social Scientist from the University of Oxford. She has 15 years of experience studying love, gender, and relationships. Follow Katarina on Instagram: @katarinapolonskaConnect with Katarina on LinkedIn Want deeper support? Apply for a free Consultation Call with Katarina today: Click here to book your call Enjoyed this deep dive into love and leadership? Please take a moment to subscribe, leave a 5-star rating, and download a few more episodes. As a gift of gratitude, I will send you my program, the Over-Givers Reset if you leave a 5-star review and share what you love about the show. 🎁 To claim your gift, submit your review screenshot to this email: team@katarinapolonska.com Disclaimer: This episode is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not therapy, counseling, mental health treatment, or a substitute for working with a licensed healthcare or mental health professional. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, abuse, trauma symptoms, or thoughts of self-harm, please contact a licensed professional or emergency resource in your area. Testimonials and examples reflect individual experiences and are not guarantees of similar results. Coaching outcomes vary depending on the individual, circumstances, and implementation of coaching tools. Coaching is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Creating and keeping a healthy, meaningful, and fulfilling relationship can feel extra hard for top-performers, especially when you're a career-driven professional with limited time, emotional bandwidth, and a lot on your plate. And of course, you want to maintain high standards for yourself. Join Strategic Relationship Advisor and gender dynamics social scientist Katarina Polonska (University of Oxford M.St, ICF ACC NLP IAT) as she delves into the complexities of having true healthy love, discerning whether to stay or go, and levelling up to create your ultimate relationship. If you are an ambitious professional who knows you deserve more in life but can't seem to figure out your relationships - whether that's improving your current partnership, getting clarity on what you should do, finding the love of your life, or transforming the painful patterns that hold you back - this show is for you. Each episode contains powerful insights into relationships, to help you create your best relationship yet, and live your best life. Discover more about how I can help you at: www.katarinapolonska.com @katarinapolonska on Instagram https://www.linkedin.com/in/katarinapolonska/ Successfully in Love® provides relationship coaching and educational content. I am a certified coach, not a licensed therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical professional, and nothing on this site or in my programs constitutes psychological treatment, diagnosis, or therapy. My work is present-focused, skills- and strategy-based, and intended to support, not replace, any mental health care you may need. This work should be seen as an addition to therapy and professional medical support. If you are currently working with a therapist or other licensed provider, I encourage you to keep that relationship active alongside any coaching work with me. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact a licensed professional or local emergency services rather than relying on coaching support. Coaching outcomes vary by individual; nothing here should be read as a guarantee of specific results. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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