Relationships don’t fall apart overnight. More often than not, they crumble under the weight of small missteps that quietly accumulate — until they become too heavy to manage.

As a psychologist who studies couples, I’ve seen many versions of this. Partners come into my office thinking their problem has something to do with frequent fights or arguments. But when we dig deeper, we often find the same root cause: what they say to each other in their arguments.

There’s one phrase I’ve seen come up in these exchanges that’s more damaging than you think: “Why can’t you be more like [insert other person’s name]?”

If you use this toxic phrase, your relationship is in trouble.

At first glance, it might seem like a throwaway line or a sigh of frustration in the middle of an argument.

What couples fail to recognize is that the person named is actually irrelevant, whether it’s an ex, a best friend’s girlfriend, or even “how you used to be.” The real message will always remain the same: “You’re not enough, and someone else — anyone else — could do a better job at being my partner.”

Over time, this kind of comparison can give rise to irreparable insecurity issues. Rather than feeling loved for who they are, the person on the receiving end will start questioning their worth and constantly wonder if they’re living up to expectations.

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Relationships can’t thrive when we ask our partner to be someone they’re not. Happiness can only be achieved when we communicate what we need clearly, without shame or comparison.

That’s why this phrase itself isn’t the real problem. It’s usually a symptom of a much deeper dysfunction: the fear of openly speaking up.

Research helps explain why some partners might not express their frustrations openly — at least, not at first. According to one study, when a partner feels uncertain about the relationship, or unsure of how their partner will respond, they’re more likely to hold back. 

Rather than just saying outright, “I feel disconnected when we don’t spend quality time together,” they compartmentalize it. These moments only pile up over time, until the day comes that they inexplicably blurt out something like, “Why can’t you be more like Sarah’s husband? He actually plans dates.” 

It’s not necessarily that they want a different partner; it’s that they don’t feel safe enough to voice their needs plainly. The more secure and emotionally close a person feels in their relationship, the more likely they are to communicate directly. 

Instead of pointing to someone else as a model, turn the spotlight inward. What are you really asking for? And why are you so afraid to ask it plainly?

If you catch yourself about to say, for instance, “Why can’t you be more like Alex? He never blows up over small things,” give these a try instead:

• “I know we both get frustrated sometimes, but it would mean a lot to me if we could speak to each other kindly, without yelling.”
• “It’s hard for me when our arguments escalate so fast. I’d love for us to work on staying grounded together during tough moments.”

Notice how these versions are rooted in your own experience, not someone else’s behavior. This makes them bids for connection, instead of a sweeping accusation of failure.

Relationships require the willingness to love each other as real, flawed, irreplaceable humans — not as comparisons to someone else. Similarly, they require the courage to speak openly, as well as the trust that your openness will be met with respect.

Mark Travers, PhD, is a psychologist who specializes in relationships. He holds degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the lead psychologist at Awake Therapy, a telehealth company that provides online psychotherapy, counseling and coaching. He is also the curator of the popular mental health and wellness website, Therapytips.org.

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Sarah Myers loves the great outdoors.

“I love the sense of history you get in the forests,” says the 33-year-old, who’s based in Hot Springs, South Dakota. “I love the idea that these trees have been here for generations and they’ll outlive me.”

It’s fitting, then, that Myers works as a forester in federal land management planting trees, helping young trees grow and managing commercial timber sales.

Getting into forestry, however, is not easy. She spent years proving herself before she found a sustainable job. Here’s what it took to get hired.

While studying natural resources and conservation for her undergraduate degree at Cornell, Myers had a mentor who explained what she’d need to have on her resume if she wanted to work for the federal government.

“She mentioned to expect about six to eight years-worth of seasonal positions,” says Myers. Forestry requires experience doing field work, which by nature is often seasonal.

So after she graduated, from 2013 to 2017, Myers took on seasonal positions, including summers in Virginia, Maine and South Dakota and winters in Arkansas, Arizona, New Mexico and in Alaska, “which was fabulous,” she says. She often worked on forest inventory measuring tree characteristics like species, age, height and diameter.

But the positions were tough.  

“Seasonal work is hard because you’re not settled anywhere,” she says. “You’re living out of suitcases and what you can move in your car. You’re constantly applying. Pretty much as soon as you start one job, you’re thinking about the next one.”

And they don’t pay much. “The seasonal jobs tend to be entry-level positions,” she says. “I was making about $15 an hour,” which she had to stretch as long as she could because there was no guarantee she would get hired again.

Myers finally landed her first permanent position in Colorado in January 2018.

“I was still making the same $15 an hour,” she says, “and it took me six hours away from home. So I was actually paying rent in two places, one place during the week, one place on the weekends.” But at the very least, “it made the potential of making this a career feel real.”

She received her master’s degree in geographic information science and cartography in 2020 and was hired for her current position of supervisory forester in September 2022. In 2024, she brought in $92,100, including overtime pay.

“The position I’m in now feels like it was made for me,” she says. “It’s exactly what I want to be doing.”

As far as her advice to anyone who wants to follow a similar work path, “the field is interdisciplinary,” she says. “Learn as much as you can from the hydrologists, wildlife biologists, fuels specialists, etc., and help them accomplish their goals, too.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘that’s not my job’” in the position, she says.

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While Erika Roberts was a high school student growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, she participated in a two-week exchange program that took her to Munich, Germany. She didn’t know it at the time, but that experience would shape the rest of her life.

Fast forward to 2016, when Roberts was a freshman in college, studying biochemistry with a pre-med focus in Massachusetts. Even as she worked towards earning her Bachelor’s degree and attending medical school, she was feeling unfulfilled.

“I was a young adult who wanted to experience the world and all that came with it,” she tells CNBC Make It. “All the places I toured in high school promised diversity, community and personal growth but the reality felt different. I decided I needed to seek out my own challenges if I wanted to truly experience this. I just didn’t feel like I was working towards a future that I was excited about.”

At the same time, Roberts started to think about what life would really be like if she transferred to a different school, specifically one back in Germany.

Unlike the United States, in Germany, you don’t need a Bachelor’s degree to attend medical school. Instead, students enroll in a six-year program that is divided into three stages, with exams administered after each one.

Most public universities in Germany are either free or offer lower costs compared to those in other countries.

All of these factors continued to influence Roberts’ thinking. She considered this move to be her best option because she could become a dermatologist without more lengthy schooling.

Roberts started to pick up the German language again after briefly taking classes in high school.

“I set out to challenge myself and to meet people from all over the world. That’s definitely not something that you necessarily get in the States unless you’re in a major city,” she says. “I feel like Europe does a better job of treating young adults in a way that gives you the responsibility so you’re exposed at a younger age, and you know what to do versus in the States it’s more waiting until you’re 21 and then all of a sudden all hell breaks loose.”

Roberts attempted to discuss attending medical school in Germany with her dad, but he dismissed the idea. He wanted her to finish her education in the United States. But when Roberts ended her freshman year with a 3.9 GPA, her dad changed his mind and gave her the green light to continue her studies in Germany.

“My dad was like, ‘Okay, if that’s what you think is really the right direction. You gave the typical route a try and if it still feels like you need to go and figure that out, then sure you can try it out’,” she says.

Roberts completed her freshman year of college in 2017 and registered at a language school where she also planned to live while getting settled in Germany.

Just a few weeks after registering, Roberts got on a plane and headed to Germany. She lived in a dorm at the language school for less than a year before moving in with her boyfriend at the time’s family. That living arrangement ended when the two broke up. She moved into a shared apartment with two other people where she lived for about a year.

Eventually, Roberts landed in an apartment with roommates and lived there for five years. When she first moved in, she paid 565 euros or $648 a month. By the time she moved out, her rent was 659 euros a month or $751.

Today, Roberts lives on her own but isn’t comfortable disclosing what she pays in rent. Instead, she shared that her total expenses outside of rent are 749 euros or $859 a month.

According to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It, those monthly expenses include 230 euros for groceries, 144 euros for health insurance, 24 euros for a gym membership, 28 euros for her cellphone bill and 38 euros for transportation. She also pays 85 euros for medical school tuition and typically spends 200 euros going out to eat or hanging with friends.

“Taxpayers make it possible to keep the fees of public universities so low, so I’ll have the chance to properly pay back my share once I am working here,” Roberts says.

Roberts has noticed that since living in Germany, she structures her days differently, has healthier eating habits, and overthinks things a lot less.

“I think coming from my Philadelphia experience of wanting to be really individualistic and seeing how people exist here in that universe of not trying to do that has been balancing me out,” she says.

″[It’s] making me confront who I genuinely am outside of what the world around me is telling me I’m supposed to be.”

Roberts has been in Germany for almost eight years now, she says she loves the sense of safety, access to good food and accessibility. Being there has also forced her to learn how to adapt.

“Recognizing the environment that you’re in and the rules that dictate that environment is really essential for understanding how to succeed,” she says.

“What I have definitely noticed is how slowly over the years, I’ve adapted the German culture more. I’ve grown up here in so many ways. I’ve grown into the person that I am now.”

Roberts’ family is mostly all in U.S., so moving back there will always be a possibility, she says. But for now, she can see herself in Europe for a long time to come.

“I would not have thought 10 years ago that I would be living in Germany for as long as I have and how everything’s turned out the way it has. I wouldn’t have been able to predict where I am now 10 years ago,” she says.

“I don’t try to strictly predict where I’m going to be 10 years from today but right now I feel really happy over here and I could see myself staying here.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to 1.14 USD on April 23, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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While going to college tends to mean better pay, not all degrees guarantee high salaries — especially if you study liberal arts.

That’s according to a new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which shows that graduates who major in education, social work or the arts tend to earn the lowest median incomes within five years of finishing school. The analysis includes only full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree and excludes those still enrolled in school.

The salary figures are based on 2023 data, the most recent available, and show early-career pay in these fields falls below the U.S. median wage of $48,060 for that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

While engineering majors can make upward of $80,000 early in their careers, many liberal arts and education majors earn closer to $40,000. The median salary of all majors examined was $50,000.

Here’s a look at the 10 majors linked to the lowest median salaries for full-time workers ages 22 to 27.

While learning a foreign language is a valuable skill, a degree in the subject doesn’t always lead to high-paying roles. That’s likely because language can be learned outside a formal education and many graduates tend to go into relatively low-paying fields, like education, translation or public service.

Liberal arts majors also tend to earn less than graduates in technical fields like engineering or math, largely because there’s less demand for their skills in higher-paying industries like technology and finance.

Unfortunately, many liberal arts majors don’t fare much better as they get older, especially those in education. Here’s a look at the 10 lowest-paying majors for full-time workers between ages 35 and 45.

Early childhood education majors earn the least of all mid-career graduates, with a median income of $49,000 — just $8,000 more than what they earned five years after graduation.

By contrast, engineering majors typically break into six figures by mid-career.

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As a leadership consultant who studies workplace psychology, I’ve spent more than 30 years helping thousands of individuals and CEOs at multimillion-dollar organizations.

I’ve always been observant of the different personalities I work with, especially when I was an executive myself. During team meetings, extroverts always jumped in first, eager to lead the conversation. They often brought energy, but not much more. The people who earned my trust were the ones who listened and then spoke with precision. Almost every time, they were the introverts.

To understand why introverts often communicate — and execute — more effectively, you need to understand that their brains work differently: It often resists discomfort, but it also performs best when it’s forced to confront that discomfort.

So interacting with people, for example, especially in groups or without preparation, is uncomfortable. But that very discomfort pushes them to think more deeply, plan more intentionally, and choose their words more carefully. The result is communication that’s precise, thoughtful and far more impactful.

Here are five phrases introverts use that make them more successful than extroverts:

So much time gets wasted when people pretend to understand, derail conversations with vague statements, or stay silent while decisions move forward based on shaky assumptions.

Introverts shift this dynamic by doing the rare thing of admitting what they don’t know. It comes naturally. Why? Because they’re simply telling the truth. That honesty is more than just refreshing, it’s productive.

It also makes other people feel safe admitting uncertainty, which leads to better thinking and decision-making.

In most organizations, people compete to have all the answers, especially within their own area of responsibility. The cost? Missed input and limited collaboration.

In contrast, introverts express themselves in ways that show a genuine belief in the value of others’ perspectives. They know they don’t have the full picture and actively seek out others to complete it, which makes space for diverse viewpoints and untapped ideas. 

Many people feel the need to talk up the effort they’ve put in, often to mask incomplete work or to protect their status and territory.

Introverts bring the opposite energy: substance without theatrics or fancy claims about effort. When they say they’ve “looked into something,” it’s usually because they have. Instead of inflating their effort, they let the quality of their input speak for itself.

That makes them a quiet but vital force in decision-making.

In today’s business world, there’s immense pressure to move quickly and appear decisive. But teams that skip over ambiguity or bluff their way through uncertainty end up chasing the wrong problems.

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Introverts help protect against that. They know when it’s time to slow down, not to stall progress, but to ensure it’s real. Their instinct to press pause and think deeper fosters a culture where decisions are made with more accuracy, and far fewer regrets.

One of the main reasons why things don’t work well in organizations is because of unresolved tensions that linger under the surface. People nod along, but underneath, there’s hesitation, frustration or quiet resistance.

When those feelings aren’t acknowledged, they cause missed deadlines and poor follow-through. Introverts, given their reflective mind, help defuse that because they’re truly listening and tuned in to what people aren’t saying. Hence, they bring clarity to what’s really going on.

That clarity accelerates progress, because when people feel heard, they stop resisting and start contributing.

1. Speak with purpose. When you walk, you always have a purpose and a destination. Your speech should work the same way. Every word and sentence should serve a clear purpose and move the conversation somewhere meaningful.

2. Stop using vague generalizations. Saying “We need to improve team collaboration” might sound smart, but it’s meaningless. Replace it with actionable specificity: “Teams A and B are misaligned because their goals conflict. Here’s how we can resolve it…”

3. Structure your thinking before important interactions. Ground your thinking, sharpen your questions and give your communication the quiet confidence introverts are known for by using pen and paper to organize your thoughts under three headings:

• What I’m certain about
• What I believe but am not fully sure about
• What I’m currently clueless about

Becoming more like an introvert in your interactions is all about learning to quiet your brain’s constant chattering. Your goal should always be to communicate with intention.

Stefan Falk is an internationally-recognized executive coach, workplace psychology expert, and author of “Intrinsic Motivation: Learn to Love Your Work and Succeed as Never Before.” A McKinsey & Company alumnus, he has trained over 4,000 leaders across more than 60 organizations and helped drive transformations valued in excess of $2 billion. Follow him on LinkedIn.

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