You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 114.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi, my strong friends. Hey, I have a special treat for you. Relationships tend to always pop up as an obstacle when you're trying to get your business up and running, or if you've been running it for a while and relationship stuff happens, it can come in sideways. It can derail you in your business. It can also derail you in your professional life if you're an employee.

 

A couple weeks ago, I did an episode on relationship repair using the clarity steps. Now I love diversity of thought. So I had one way of helping you, but the relationship stuff is so big that you might need several different perspectives, lots of different ideas.

 

I reached out to the best marriage coach that I know, and I asked her if she would come on. I had all sorts of questions for her that I know people are struggling with. And also, I had an amazing breakthrough in my own marriage as a result of listening to her on a podcast. So, if I had that breakthrough, I can only imagine the breakthroughs that you are going to have in your relationships.

 

Maggie Reyes is a life coach and modern marriage mentor who specializes in helping driven, ambitious, women, create the marriages of their dreams without waiting for their partners to change or adding more work to their lives. She's the creator of the Marriage MBA program. It's a six-month mentorship in creating a successful marriage using principles from positive psychology, cognitive science, and simple coaching tools that you can learn today and apply tomorrow.

 

Maggie is the author of the best selling book Questions For Couples Journal. I know, I purchased a copy and I love it. And the host of the Top 100, The Marriage Life Coach Podcast. When she isn't teaching or coaching, she loves reading fan fiction and watching superhero movies with her husband. And Bridgeton. Like if you love Bridgeton, you're definitely gonna have a lot in common with her.

 

Meet Maggie Reyes, The Marriage Life Coach

Gretchen Hernandez:

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Maggie. Hi, Maggie. Thank you so much for joining me today,

Maggie Reyes:

Gretchen. It's my pleasure. I am so excited to see what we talk about. I don't know. You don't know it's gonna be a mystery for everybody.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I know! It's so great. Sometimes like you have the perfect timing on things and you just gotta jump in and go for it and be fearless. But I don't have any fear with you because you were like one of the most engaging people to talk with and the most comforting people. Like I've had amazing breakthroughs just by listening to your podcast and by some of the other interviews. And then we recently got to meet in person. I got to hug you and it was so great! Maggie, can you please introduce yourself to my audience?

Maggie Reyes:

It is my pleasure. First of all, thank you for having me and thank you for all the kindness and the beautiful words that you have shared with me. That's an amazing experience to have sometimes as creators, as I know that many people in your audience are, we sort of publish into the void and we just share the things that we think are gonna be useful. And we hope they help a human somewhere down the line.

 

And so to have that like visceral experience of like hearing back, like, oh, you said this thing, and it really helped me has been a treasure to me as well. So hello everyone. My name is Maggie Reyes. I am a marriage life coach. I help primarily Type A women like your checklists have checklists type of people. I'm that type of person. If you have ever written something you have already done on your checklist, just so you could have the thrill of crossing it out. That is my client. That's the person I work.

Maggie Reyes:

I help them when you're struggling in their marriages. And when like they're often very successful in their businesses and then their careers and they come home and things don't quite match the way that other parts of their life are going. And so that's what I spend all my time doing is helping people have stronger relationships.

Maggie Reyes:

And if you're not in a relationship right now, or you're not married right now, and you're listening to this podcast and you came because Gretchen is awesome, here's what I want you to know. All the things I teach apply in all the relationships in your life. So it could be your relationship with your boss, with a coworker, with a family member, with a friend, with your clients. Whatever principles we talk about. I assure you that at the core, there will be something there for every single person who has tuned in. So we'll test it. This is my hypothesis: at the end of the show, we'll see. Was it true? Start listening for what applies to you as we go through Gretchen's questions.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that when I was working as a coach in corporate, there were so many relationship conflicts just between coworkers. And it's amazing how, if you had a relationship coach there helping them with that, how much easier business goes.

Maggie Reyes:

I used to work in human resources, and all I can say is yes! Yes!

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. And the beauty with coaching is a lot of times people, employees, they're scared to go and talk to HR because they're worried that it's gonna get onto their employment record. Yeah. They might be struggling with their relationships with coworkers or even with people at home or in their relationships, their personal relationships. And then it's affecting their work performance.

Maggie Reyes:

Yes.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And so having a coach it's like that separate private area where you can talk, work through all your stuff and then you can go and be productive again.

Maggie Reyes:

And I'll tell you just from my HR time, it was hard for me too, because like you mentioned, people would come to me and open up to me. I have that vibe.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Uh huh!

Maggie Reyes:

and I would sometimes have to remind people. It's like, listen, I love you when I do wanna hear your story. But remember that I'm in a capacity in which I I'm listening right now that depending on where this story goes, I might have to do things. So are you sure you wanna tell me? I would sometimes have to have those conversations now. I don't have to. Now I'm like, you can tell me anything. It's all good.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I love that. Yeah. And that, that's also something that I did, too. I decided I'm gonna go and have my own business so that people could talk to me about all their or stuff and not worry about it getting back to anybody. And so I love that you are doing that too, because you are definitely someone that people open up to.

 

No Defending, No Complaining

Gretchen Hernandez:

So there was a huge breakthrough that I had in my relationship. I was having a little conflict with my husband at one point. And everybody knows, I love my husband. We've been together for quite a while. Like all relationships, there's always stuff to work through. And so I took a little pause, went out of the house and like sat in a car and I listened to you over and over again, as I was crying. And you shared your two things for like a protocol for relationships. And it was no complaining and no excuses.

Maggie Reyes:

It's no defending actually.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, right! That's what it's no defending that's it. Yes. Please tell people all about that.

Maggie Reyes:

Okay. So, Gretchen and I trained at the same life coach school called The Life Coach School. And that school graduates a lot of weight loss coaches. So, I am a marriage coach, but I'm surrounded by coaches that are talking about all the different things they do for their weight loss programs. And one of the typical tools that they use is they do this thing called No Flour, No Sugar, which was when they want to sort of check your metabolism and see are you hungry because you're really hungry or are you hungry because your sugar is off or something like that.

Maggie Reyes:

They just remove flour and sugar. And then they can tell what's really happening in your body. So one day I sat down and it was coaching homework from my business coach, Stacy Beman, who I love. And I was doing my coaching homework, which was to think about what could help my clients, how can I help them get results quicker? How can I help them just have breakthroughs in their marriages?

Maggie Reyes:

And I thought, what is the no flour, no sugar of marriage? What is the thing that if you removed that whatever's left is what you really have to work on. And I just sat with that question and I sort of brainstormed for a little while and I was like, well, I think it's no complaining and no defending. If you remove complaining and you remove defending whatever's left is the stuff that you really need to like dig into. So then what's complaining. So complaining is when we say this is awful over and over again, 54 different ways without making an actual request for what we want instead. So for the two things you're removing, you are adding other things. Just like if I remove cake, I might eat carrots, right? In my case, I might eat the cake and the carrots, but regardless.

Maggie Reyes:

But in this case it's like, okay, if I'm removing, complaining, what's happening instead is I'm making a request. So instead of saying, I don't like being late or you're always late, or this is a problem or whatever the problem is, we say, oh, what I would like is to leave the house by six, what do we need to do to make that happen? How now in a completely different arena of life. Cause now it's actually possible. You can leave the house by six with that. If you just say, I hate being late, over and over again, a hundred times that does not produce the result of you leaving the house on time.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. So slowing it down. So it's yeah. How, how can we leave by this time?

Maggie Reyes:

It's any request. Right. So, for everyone listening and think about the primary complaint you have right now about someone else in your life or in a situation with someone else, what is the complaint? Just think about it for a sec. Now, what is the request that you can make instead of complaining about the thing instead? Right. And that is gonna just open up a completely different arena of your brain, a completely different part of your life of, of exploring. Oh, if I wanted to make that request, what conversations would I be willing to have or not willing to have, or actually, I don't wanna ask for that right now. Great. Then we can just stop complaining and also move on. Right. Sometimes that's where we land. So, so that's the no complaining then the no defending is really, there's a great quote by Byron Katie, by author Byron Katie, she says defense is the first act of war.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Mm.

Maggie Reyes:

Yeah. And that quote really struck me. If I think about, because I work with a lot of women who are married to men and I think about them and their husbands arguing, and it's very often someone will say something and then someone will get defensive and it really isn't an argument until somebody gets defensive. And so if we remove defending suddenly we're arguing less. And one of my biggest principles that I teach all my students and all your listeners right now is the fight you don't have is the fight you don't have to recover from. Think everybody to the last time you fought with someone you really cared about first, there's the fight. Then there's the aftermath of the fight. Then there's the making up. Then there's the, but we're not totally over it yet. Kind of like, you know, segue.

Maggie Reyes:

And we could spend two days, two weeks, two months in the aftermath of fight. But if we never had it in the first place, suddenly we have all this mental and emotional space for so much more. Right? So with defending it's like, what do you do instead? You get curious. So instead of becoming defensive, you just get curious, what did you mean by that? Oh, walk me through it. Tell me more. One of my favorite things that I used to working each other, as I mentioned earlier, is to have these really neutral, open statements. Tell me more. People would tell me all the things. Cause I would just be like, oh, really something happened in the lunchroom and somebody did a strip tease. Tell me more. That actually happened once.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh my gosh.

Maggie Reyes:

Right. Then people would be like, oh, this happen. And that happened. And as opposed to why is that happening? It shouldn't be happening. It should have never occurred. Tell me more. Right. And then that idea is like, you're understanding the person you're talking to better, their mindset, better, how they came to that conclusion better. And when we can have that moment of engaging curiosity, instead of defensiveness, we can actually make progress, which is from my, my point of view as a coach, the whole point.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh yeah. Yeah. If we can have progress and eventually some harmony, then we can get so much more done and our relationships can be so much better. And there's gonna be a lot of mindset shifts needed in order to not be defensive. Right. Because it's just our normal, natural human tendency to have our psychological defense mechanisms like kick in like, no, you're wrong with whatever you're saying. What are some of those shifts that people can have when someone's talking to them? And they're like feeling defensive, like, no, they're wrong about what they're saying about me or about, you know, some other thing in the room, what is a shift that can help them so that they can get into that curiosity?

Get Into Curiosity

Maggie Reyes:

Into curiosity? I would say just very simple. It's like having the mindset of a detective is really helpful. Like we're just putting together some data right now. We can't actually draw any conclusions. We just need to understand more what this person was thinking and how they arrived at this desire or this request or whatever it is that we're talking about. I like to think sometimes like I'm a detective or because I worked with lawyers for many years, I was the training director in a law firm. I think about a lawyer building a case. Wait, we we're gathering evidence. We don't actually, I don't even know enough to get mad at this person yet. I don't have enough data. Right. Is this a good place to take your brain? Like yeah. Do I wanna get mad at what you're saying? Wait, let me just let me check. Right. Just having the one moment of, well, what did you mean by that? Right. Could be a very simple way of, oh, I'm not even mad about that. They meant something totally different than what I was thinking they were meaning. Right.

Gretchen Hernandez:

That's a very good one. Yeah.

Maggie Reyes:

That's one way to look at it, I would say the other way to look at it is sort of the classic cliche of like, well, do you wanna be happier? Do you wanna be right?

Maggie Reyes:

So we're sort of hardwired to wanna be. Right. We think there's a lot of mental and emotional security in being right. But even the idea of rightness, rightness and wrongness as absolutes is like a patriarchal and oppressive construct that in the culture that I grew up in the United States is like the idea that there's one right way. And that's the only way. And everything else is the wrong way is just the ocean that we swim in. It's not actually real.

Maggie Reyes:

I have a lot of clients that are in STEM professions and stuff like that. And they're like, yeah, but when we're building the bridge, if it's one centimeter off that bridge will fall, I'm like, yes, you use that for building bridges. You don't use that when you're like arguing about what to do for Thanksgiving.

Maggie Reyes:

So the difference is context, right? In certain context, like you're doing brain surgery, there is a better way and a less, better way probably. But for everything else this idea that there's one absolute right and one absolute wrong is very questionable. And can feel very confronting. And if you grow up thinking that that was the way, then it also feels very confronting. And if you have a profession where that's the away then you're like, what do you mean? This is how I live my life is by these absolutes, it's very jarring.

Maggie Reyes:

So this is why I'm spending a little bit of time on it. Because if someone's hearing this like, listen lady... This is how it's! yes. In heart surgery. Yes. But when you're making a cupcake, does it matter if you put the egg first or if you put the flour first, like no. You know, so I offer you that, that mindset of do I wanna be happier? Do I wanna be right? Goes much deeper than the cliche we usually hear and that's what I'm talking about. We live in a society where we're told there's an absolute right way for everything. And I offer to you that you will have so much more peace in your life if you question that assumption. What if they have a point? Yeah, let me listen. What? Maybe I was late. Maybe I did miss the memo. Oh, maybe I did skip reading that line and I need to read it again, whatever the case may be.

Maggie Reyes:

So those are the things, some of the ways like the detective persona or the lawyer gathering a case persona or the idea like maybe I don't have to be right about this. Maybe I could just be in curiosity about this.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that. And I especially love that word maybe because there was a time I was having a bit of a conflict at work when I was still working in corporate. And introducing that word of maybe of, well, maybe they're right. Maybe I'm not right. Maybe we're both right?

Maggie Reyes:

Yeah.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And just having that word maybe opens up the door and allowed me to slow down and give them a chance to talk and to share their viewpoint, their expertise with me, any information that they wanted to share. And I found that when I did that for them, they softened up like their defense mechanisms went down and then they were willing to also open the door for me a little bit too, so that I could finally share.

Gretchen Hernandez:

That was one of the things I saw in corporate a lot was people fighting for a chance to talk and not giving each other a chance to talk. But when somebody goes first of opening the door for the other person to talk, then all of a sudden the door gets opened in return for them to talk. So it's not competition. Yeah. It's graciousness.

Maggie Reyes:

I love that idea of not competition, but graciousness. And I also wanna just acknowledge there's a lot of fear in a lot of corporate jobs. There's a lot of entire careers built on avoiding failure and every decision coming from a fear-based response. And if that's your boss, it's really hard. If that's the coworker in charge of your project, it's really hard. You're trying to come from this lofty loving, you know, powerful place of like, let's all win. How do we make it great for everybody? And everybody around you is making decisions from fear. It's okay if you feel uncomfortable. 

 

And I just wanna normalize that because I had those experiences as well. I worked at a very, a large company with thousands of employees where there was a lot of just fear-based decision making. And sometimes there was also nonsensical decision making that like somebody woke up in a mood one day and they switched the whole thing and it's like, okay. And just the idea like rolling with that can feel challenging. And I just wanna normalize that.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, thank you for doing that. Yeah. One of the, the other things that struck me with the no defending, so I mentioned I had a big breakthrough when I heard you talk about that is that I found that I was defending other people's behavior.

Maggie Reyes:

Yeah.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And it wasn't solving the problem.

Maggie Reyes:

Yes.

 

Allowing Others to Experience the Consequences

Gretchen Hernandez:

That was huge. So when I heard that of no complaining and no defending, what I found was that in my marriage. Yeah. I was complaining about my husband to my kids and they were complaining back to me about him. But none of us were making a request of him. We were just like separately in another room complaining about him. And I was also defending him.

Gretchen Hernandez:

So when I was like, okay, no complaining. Okay. So I'll stop complaining. I'll make requests of him directly instead, which could be a little uncomfortable, but you know, something to work up to. And no defending. Because when I would defend, he would never experience other people, like our kids, the consequence of his reactions.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I would get in there and I'd defend him from him. So he'd never have that learning opportunity of how he was interacting with people, how it was making them feel like the impact of that. He wouldn't get that feedback loop. So when I realized that I was doing that, it was like, I'm just gonna step back here and allow him to hear all of that. And it changed a huge dynamic in our marriage and also in our family. And all of a sudden things have like broken wide open. There's been a lot of healing, a lot of things happening where as our family has come together. There's so much more love as a result of that.

Maggie Reyes:

That is such a beautiful thing. Gretchen wrote me that story and I cried, I got all the teary eye and I was just like, this is amazing. Like we just wanna celebrate the miracle that is you listen to me, teach this once. And then you said, okay, I'm gonna do it. And then you went and just did it, which is like, I give you all the kudos for doing it. But a lot of people need coaches like you and me to help hold your hand to walk you through it, to do all the things. So first of all, all the kudos. What I wanna say about that is one of the most loving things we can do that feels counterintuitive, but stay with me, everybody. One of the most loving things we can do is allow people to experience the consequences of their actions.

Maggie Reyes:

And when we are Type A, overachieving, taking care of everything, getting it all done type of people that can feel very uncomfortable. We can have a lot of resistance to doing that. It can feel like not the thing to do. And this is such a beautiful story of how powerful it can be to allow someone to just experience their own consequences. I'm a feminist human, I believe in a collaborative society where everyone is equal. And where I have landed about this beyond the fact that it's good for everybody, it's a healthy thing, is if we wanna live in empowering collaborative union and partnership with other humans, then whenever we attempt to remove their agency, we need to question ourselves. And when we're not letting someone experience the consequences of their actions, in essence, what we're doing is removing their agency, which is the very thing that most of us are adamantly opposed to.

Maggie Reyes:

I'm just gonna let everyone breathe that in for a second. Just breathe.

 

Relationships Experiencing Breach of Trust

Gretchen Hernandez:

That actually opens up a whole nother topic that I wanted to get your input on. I have multiple friends and multiple clients that at some point in their marriage have experienced infidelity.

Maggie Reyes:

Okay.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And there was that painful heart-wrenching decision. Do you stay with that person or do you not? Because you loved that person. But they broke that marriage agreement. And years can go by. They made that decision of, okay, I'm gonna stay with that person, but they really haven't come to peace with it. What do you help your folks with your clients with that experience something like that.

Maggie Reyes:

So when there's infidelity, I'm gonna just frame it this way. I refer to it as a breach of trust.

Maggie Reyes:

It often looks like infidelity, but for someone listening, it might not be infidelity. It might be financial secrets. It might be other breaches of trust that occur. So just for everyone listening, you can sort of put yourself into, is there a breach of trust that I haven't fully recovered from? So here's where that other cliche time heals all wounds. It's just not true. So if time passes and you're not actively looking at the ways in which you rebuild the relationship, no amount of time passing is actually gonna make any difference whatsoever. Which is why you can have someone that experienced infidelity 10 years ago, and emotionally, then they're in the exact same space that they were 10 years before.

Maggie Reyes:

And you can have someone that experienced infidelity two years ago that has done so much emotional, heavy lifting to work through it. That they're completely different humans now. So if you're listening to this and you're like, why don't I feel better, time has passed? There are some actual things we need to do to help you feel better emotionally, mentally, and then relationally in the relationship. So it just depends, everybody is slightly different and I don't wanna sort of blanket say, well, if you do these steps, that's like, yes and no. Right?

Maggie Reyes:

I predicate all of my teaching on the philosophy that there are three buckets that we always wanna look at when there's something we haven't gotten. We're struggling at any topic. So, which is perspective and partnership and pleasure.

Maggie Reyes:

How am I looking at things? How are we creating teamwork here? And are we having fun? What happens in a, in a breach of trust? It's very high like infidelity would be, is most, not everyone, but many, many, many people.

Maggie Reyes:

Think about the people you're thinking about. Now you tell me if this comes up for them? They will come to me and they will say, well, I can't have fun. And we can't be friends. And it's like, we can't play with our toys until we resolve this really big issue. And because it's not resolved, we stop playing with all the toys and we can't be friends anymore. And now I'm just gonna have a sad face. And, I don't wanna minimize, I kind of am saying it in an animated way. It's something that's very emotional that I deeply honor the pain that this, that this brings on. So I don't wanna minimize it in any way. I just get excited. And then I get all riled up.

Maggie Reyes:

But what I see happen is we make this decision that we can't do anything until this problem is solved. And because the problem is like a pretzel, like that needs to be unraveled and has multiple things that require to be solved. Then we stay stuck sometimes for years. Has that ever happened with the people? Some of the people you're thinking about?

Gretchen Hernandez:

Some of the folks, and like I said, there's multiple. And I see a theme happening. Is that they almost feel like they have to continuously punish the person, like keep trying to show them that they were wrong. And they might still have a lot of hatred towards the other person that their partner had a relationship with. But it's like, it's years, like seven, 10 years. And they're still like trying to enforce that lesson and they can't trust the person. And yet it's like, okay, the lesson was already learned way back then. But how can they let go of thinking that they need to keep enforcing that lesson?

Maggie Reyes:

So this is a false premise. Everyone listening right now, if you're going through this, first of all, our heart is with you, but Gretchen and I may be the only people who speak truth into you. And this is gonna be hard to hear. But punishing the person can be convenient, but it's not effective. And the person feels so much guilt often because they do care about you and they do love you. And if they haven't left, then you keep punishing them for years, they care about you a lot. Right. And they feel so much guilt that they're like, yes, punish me, punish me. Right? But it doesn't actually move you forward to thriving, to an enjoying your life, to enjoy your life with them, to building the marriage that you could have with this person now.

Maggie Reyes:

So you mentioned several things, you mentioned the hatred for the affair partner. This is always very interesting to me because very rarely is the hatred directed toward the partner. Sometimes I've, I've coached with this, with the partners, like innocent person who didn't do all these things and I'm like, well, if you hate this person, why don't you hate that person? I just wanna know. I'm just curious. Right?

Maggie Reyes:

So there's all the emotional residue we'll call it. The emotional residue for both partners. The idea that punishing will somehow get you a result that you want. And the idea that doing this over and over again is somehow the thing to do. So let's just shatter that right now. My bias as a coach is, does it work? It's very simple. I do have biases and my number one bias is are you happier? Do you feel better? Is your sex hot? Do you feel amazing? Are your communications on fire? If you have all of these results and you're like, punishing is the way to go. It like turns me on I'm all for it. Keep doing it.

Gretchen Hernandez:

If you get hot sex from punishing them, then go for it.

Maggie Reyes:

That's a viable thing that some people just like, if you're in that camp, I'm all for it. But if that's not you, then I invite you to think about what is the relationship you wanna have? Life expectancy, I think is 79 or 82 or whatever. So if you're 40 and you're gonna live till you're, let's say 70, right? You have 30 more years of that for easy math.

Maggie Reyes:

Or if you're 80, you have four. Do you want 40 more years of what you have right now? This is the ultimate question to ask yourself. If you want 40 more years of exactly what you have right now? You, keep going. And if you don't, then you work with coaches like Gretchen people like me and we walk you through the unraveling of the pretzel.

Maggie Reyes:

Now it's an unraveling. It feels like crap. In the beginning. It doesn't feel that much better. However, one thing at a time we look at, we look at depending on the person, right? It is some individual things. Whatever is the thing that bothering you the most, we usually start with that. And we question why what's going on. What's happening. We also look at your desires. What do you want to happen? What would be your ideal scenario? What would you like it to be like?

Maggie Reyes:

We wanna have a feeling for, for what you would like it to be like. And if you've been in a struggling situation for a decade, sometimes just figuring out what you would want instead feels very far away. It's like, it feels like you're going to another planet. And so sometimes we just spend some time on, if we could be friends, if we could hang out, if I could not be angry every day. It becomes a habitual response. I'm just angry every day.

Maggie Reyes:

Now here's the good news. If you're angry every day, that's a habit and a habit can be broken. Nothing is inherently awful about you or your partner. Nothing is inherently terrible about the situation or insurmountable. It's just a habit and habits can be broken.

Gretchen Hernandez:

That is some fantastic news. Absolutely fantastic news. Cause I don't know about, you know, all of my listeners, but I know that I decided that this year I wanted to have a hot, steamy relationship with my husband.

Maggie Reyes:

Yes. Bring it.

Gretchen Hernandez:

And let me tell you that feels so good. Do we have obstacles that get in the way? Heck yeah, but I wanna work through those because to have a hot, steamy relationship with my husband. Oh, oh yeah. Oh yeah. That's some good stuff.

Maggie Reyes:

That description that you just gave. What I want everyone to hear from that is that becomes a compass. When you're having a crappy day, when it's, you know, raining on your sunshine and you're not feeling amazing, it gives you a place to go as opposed to just sort of rolling around in the mud of the uncomfortable feelings that you're having. One of the things that in my training, I love to continuing education and training and there's a relationship psychologist, I really adore named Esther Perel. She was at the forefront of thinking about relationships differently. And I actually did my overcoming infidelity training with her. And one of the things that she talks about that I really appreciate, and this is for everybody listening is there's no wrong reason to stay married.

Maggie Reyes:

And it's a corollary. There's no wrong reason to leave, but if you wanna stay married, another thing that happens when there has been a breach of trust is there's a lot of shame sometimes around staying with the person. And if you don't process that and come to a new perspective about that, that could be an added layer of you judging yourself, judging them. You're judging yourself, you're judging the affair partner. Like there's just so much there, right?

Maggie Reyes:

So I want you to hear that the person who's going through that, that there is no wrong reason to stay. If you like your reason, bring it. If you don't like your reason let's coach on it. But if you, if you like your reason, there's no wrong reason to stay. And we wanna look at the way that Esther teaches it, which is now the way that I think about it is, whatever happened in the relationship up to the breach of trust. That was marriage 1.0, Beyond the breach of trust. Moving forward is marriage 2.0.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that idea.

Maggie Reyes:

I really love it, too. And I really sort of have expanded on it in my own sort of way of teaching and stuff, which is like, one of the things you wanna think about is there were things that were going on before that led to the breach of trust. We wanna know what those things are. When we're just focused on blaming the other person, we don't actually troubleshoot for the ways in which they were showing up, in which we were showing up the things that were going on that led to that happening. We wanna troubleshoot that! That's the real work and it's kind of like barring us or like a barrier to doing the real work when we're just focused on punishment.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. Yeah. Because, even going back to the, the no complain and the no defending. That in itself might have been what contributed to it in the first place.

Maggie Reyes:

Yeah. It could be. Now I do wanna say this, anything I teach, I teach from a place of personal responsibility and power. Never blame. So maybe you were the biggest complaining person on earth. That doesn't mean that the other person, it's not about blaming you for the other person having this. Right? They made choices. They're human sovereign people who made choices. It's not about that. It's about taking responsibility for what you want moving forward from a place of owning your power to create something different. And I really wanna be explicit about that distinction. Because some people will hear me say that and be like, well, that's, you know, I don't wanna blame myself even more. I already feel bad. This is not about that. This is about what do I want moving forward and how can I own that part?

 

Working with Maggie

Gretchen Hernandez:

That is so good. So you had mentioned that you work with a lot of women that are married to men. Do you also work with women that are married to women or women that are married to nonbinary folks?

Maggie Reyes:

I have never had a client who's in a non-binary relationship. I have had clients that have been women married to women. I do work with women primarily, so I don't work with men. And I have also in my private practice and I was doing one-on-one. I've worked with people in all kinds of like ethical, non-monogamy, and really different relationship setups that are nontraditional and all of that. And so a lot of the examples that I give are women and men, and I always sort of call it out because I also wanna call out like my both conscious and unconscious heteronormativity. I call it out because it's so many of my examples are that and I always like to say if that would make someone uncomfortable in the coaching, I just want you to know ahead of time.

Maggie Reyes:

But I have had several clients that are women married to women. And the relationship dynamic, the actual, like the science of the psychology of the different things that we talk about. That's the same. I like to refer to the Gottman Institute that does a lot of evidence-based research interventions on what makes relationships work and what doesn't. And then what are the interventions we do as a result? And the studies that they've done on same-sex relationships are like the core issues with some nuance, of course, but the cores are the same. And so the thing like no complaining, no defending you can't get yourself out of that.Even if you're a throuple, you still gotta do that.

Maggie Reyes:

So I love that question. Yeah. Thank you for asking that.

Gretchen Hernandez:

So do you still see clients one-on-one?

Maggie Reyes:

Okay. So we're record this in April of 2022. So if you're hearing this in the future, maybe not, but in the present I have a handful of one-on-one clients that they sort of have to get through, like they have to ask.

Maggie Reyes:

It's kind of by invitation only kind of thing. It's, it's a significant investment. It's really for someone who's really wants a very specific thing. But the primary work way that I work with people is called The Marriage MBA. And that is a six month intimate group coaching program. We meet weekly and where I do a mix of teaching and mentoring and coaching. And so I teach some of the concepts. The thing we've been talking about this whole episode is called emotional weight loss tools. That's the name.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I like that emotional weight loss tools

Maggie Reyes:

Right? Cause it was inspired by the no flour, no sugar. So it's like emotional weight loss. So I teach tools like that tool and then I coach you when you get stuck, actually practicing it. And that's in a six-month container and we do zoom calls and we have a Facebook group and it's very comprehensive. We talk about communication and I teach you my communication framework to help you with that. We talk about holistic sex tools to help you connect with your sexual self. It's very in terms of the things around perspective, partnership, and pleasure, the things that are the core that will help you thrive. We address all of those through different lessons and things that I teach you.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that. And so since it's a six-month, all-inclusive thing, you probably don't offer this all the time. It's not always open, right?

Maggie Reyes:

It is currently not always open, but who knows? That could change. If you ever wanna know, you can just go to maggiereyes.com and whatever I'm doing then. I just imagine people listening to this like 10 years from now being like, what is this lady doing now? But in the present, if you're hearing this in April 2022 it is open for enrollment actually right now, as we record this episode and I...

Gretchen Hernandez:

Fantastic opportunity people, you want to go check this out.

Maggie Reyes:

Yes, it's open for enrollment now. And then most likely the next enrollment won't be until November or December.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Okay. Yeah. So if people want to get this extra help with their marriage, this sounds like a fantastic opportunity. And so they can come to your website now and they can enroll.

Maggie Reyes:

Yeah. So it's MaggieReyes.com/group

Maggie Reyes:

You'll see all the details there about how the program works and all the things that you would wanna know about it. There is a very simple application that they would fill out that comes directly to me. I will review that and then I will either ask them more questions or I will send them the link to register. One of my personal values as a coach is I really focus on working with people that I know that I can help. And so that application sort of serves two purposes. Sometimes I will make recommendations for other things, depending on what they're presenting with in the application. And also, on the application, I ask you questions, like on a scale of one to 10, how would you rate your sex life right now? On a scale of one to 10, how would you rate the level of joy that you experience in your relationship right now?

Maggie Reyes:

And what we wanna do is add some structure and some concreteness to some things that feel difficult to measure sometimes. A lot of people come to me and they're like, well, I just wanna feel better. Okay, great. In which area do you wanna feel better? What would feeling better look like what would be happening on a Tuesday if you felt better? So the application is meant to help you really become super clear on which area you want to work on or areas in our time together. And to help me as your coach become super clear of what your priorities are. So you come to maggiereyes.com/group, fill out the application and we go from there.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh, I love that. And I'm gonna put all of those links on my website so people can go and enroll right now. What I think is so great about this is that our relationships and especially our personal relationships can completely derail our business or our professional lives. And so it's like sometimes that is the obstacle and we need to spend some time and actually work on that so that we can have the success in our businesses and in our professional life. And sometimes it's our relationship that gets derailed by our business and our professional life. So it's like, it works both ways.

Maggie Reyes:

Yes. It's so important. One of the things I always say is how you love is how you live.

Maggie Reyes:

And I cannot tell you the amount of times that I've worked through things with people on their intimate relationship. And then it has spilled over to situations at work. Situations as family members. Situations in community groups or volunteer things or different projects. It's like once you have the hardest conversation, which is usually with your partner, then talking to your boss, asking for a raise, right. Telling a client you're offering a new thing. All of those things become so much easier.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I've seen some entrepreneurs that want to just throw out their business or throw out their marriage because they're struggling in their business and it's like, no, no, no. You can have all of it. You can have a great marriage, you can have a great business, but spending some time to work on both, I think is really important. And so I wanna respect your time, but I want to ask one last question!

Maggie Reyes:

Sure.

 

The Power of Collaborations like Guest Coaching

Gretchen Hernandez:

You are a phenomenal businesswoman. And we have a lot of entrepreneurs in our audience. And one of the things that I see you do that I don't see a lot of other people doing as much, or maybe they're just starting to get the idea is collaborations with other coaches and other businesses. And so you do a lot of guest coaching. And so can you, you extrapolate on what that's like, how many you got involved in how that has helped your business along the way.

Maggie Reyes:

First of all, thank you for the compliment. I talk about marriage all the time, so it's kind of fun to talk about business things. For me that happened very organically. It wasn't like a business strategy per se, that I followed. Although now I think it is a little bit more intentional in the sense that I like to spend time with audiences that feel like kindred spirits to my audience. It also helps me grow just as a thought leader. When I'm guest hosting or guest teaching or depending on the different thing that I'm doing. It just helps me think about what I'm saying more clearly more succinctly, if it's someone who hasn't heard, you know, I have over a hundred podcast episodes, right? If I bring up emotional weight loss in my group program, most likely people have heard about it, but if I'm bringing it up to somebody who's never heard of it before I learn how to teach it better.

Maggie Reyes:

So there are some things that I now do more intentionally around practicing, uh, doing those things than other containers, but it really happened very organically. And I think the first that comes to mind is my business coach asked me to coach in her program because I was just a successful student of her program. I did all the things she said to do and had success. And so that was a sort of a very organic thing. And at the time that occurred, I was like, I want everyone to have the success that I've had and it would be my pleasure and my joy to help do that. And I love my coach and I'm more than happy to sort of participate in this way. So that was kind of how it came to be.

Maggie Reyes:

I'll tell you probably have people discovered me through some of those things. Yes. Like, so is it a way of networking? Sure. But I'll tell you something that maybe wouldn't occur to you that has been really helpful to me. Which is being a guest in a container that's different than mine, or sometimes larger than mine. Beause I do a lot of intimate work with people. It has helped me practice, for example, coaching a group.

Maggie Reyes:

So I coached in a group when I was still doing one-on-one primarily. And by the time it came time for me to coach in a group, I had practiced it so many times. I had a comfort level that was very high. And that was kind of a byproduct I didn't really even expect to occur. And for which now, like upon reflection, I'm very grateful for that opportunity and that collaboration. And if I am teaching in someone else's program or something like that, I also, I believe in the sacredness of the work that we do. And I believe like I'm a steward of that person's contribution. And I really take it like a really sacred, beautiful thing. And that feels very special to me. And I get a lot of gratification out of that. Other than just sort of the business, the business parts of it. I get, there's like a spiritual gift from it.

Maggie Reyes:

So, I'm trying to sort of tell you something that maybe people wouldn't about.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I love that. That's why I love having diversity of thought at the table. It's like, let's hear everybody's viewpoints on things because it broadens our mind. The things that we've never even considered before.

Maggie Reyes:

Yeah. So there you go. Yeah.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Thank you so much for sharing that insight, and your experience with that. And thank you so much for coming and talking all about marriage and tell people about your podcast too. Because I want them to know about it.

Maggie Reyes:

Okay. So my podcast is called The Marriage Life Coach Podcast. If you're listening to this and you're enjoying our conversation and it's resonating with your heart, I really invite you to just go to episode one. Start at the beginning because I teach a lot of sort of foundational things episode by episode. I teach a lot of the concepts that then I go deeper into in the marriage MBA. I also interview my clients and there are so many different, vast variety of different experiences that we talk about. And I love having them on because you kind of hear humans that are very successful, that have amazing lives that had one tweak to make in their relationship. One thing going on that breaking that broke everything else open. And I love just showing examples of what's possible when we do this work. So it's called The Marriage Life Coach Podcast. It's available anywhere you listen to podcasts and come on over.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Oh thank you for giving that gift out into the world. I mean that's uh, you're doing such good work. Maggie, thank you so much for taking your time to come and talk with us today.

Maggie Reyes:

My pleasure. Bye everyone!

Gretchen Hernandez:

Thank you.

Gretchen Hernandez:

Maggie dropped so many gems in that interview. I think I'm gonna listen to this episode five more times. I don't know about you, but I know that some of these things it's gonna take a while to sink in. I'm gonna think about it. And then like a month or two later, I'm gonna come back and listen again because all of a sudden I'm gonna have that shift and be a like, oh this! Like I understand this from a different perspective now. Right? Because in our relationship, something new happens every day. So listen to this episode a whole bunch of times.

Gretchen Hernandez:

I highly encourage you to consider joining Maggie's Marriage MBA Program. Remember that's open right now. I think it's only open for enrollment for another week. So you don't wanna miss your opportunity. It doesn't open again until the fall. Head on over to MaggieReyes.com/group so that you can put in your application right away.

Gretchen Hernandez:

All right. My friends, I wish you lots of love and hugs in all of your relationships have a wonderful week and I'll talk with you soon. Bye-bye.

 

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