Ep #65: How to Have a 5-Star Marriage with Maggie Reyes

You are listening to The Overthinker's Guide to Joy, episode 65. This is the one
where I interview expert marriage coach Maggie Reyes on how to have a five -star
marriage. Let's dive in. This is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers and
overachievers who are tired of feeling overanxious and just want to feel better. I'm
your host, certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis.
So today I am super excited to have on my podcast, Maggie Reyes,
who is not only a friend and colleague, but is a master certified life coach and
modern marriage mentor. She specializes in helping driven, ambitious people create
their best marriages without waiting for their partners to change or adding more work
to their lives. She is the creator of the Marriage MBA program, a six -month
mentorship in creating a successful marriage, using principles from both 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, which has over 3 ,000 four -star ratings on Amazon. And she is also the
host of the Marriage Life Coach podcast, which is consistently ranked among the top
2 % of podcasts out of over 2 million podcasts tracked by listen notes.
When she isn't coaching, she loves obsessing over Bridgerton, reading fan fiction,
sexy romance novels, and watching superhero movies and Mexican rom -coms with her
hubby. So with that, I want to welcome my friend Maggie Reyes. I am so excited to
be year, I cannot wait to dive in into everything we're talking about. And thank
you for having me and for just being amazing. Oh, thank you. Well,
I love talking about this subject. And this is not something I coach on a lot. I
sort of stay out of this lane because it is such a wonderful niche. And you are,
I don't stay out for Europe because it's your lane, but you are such a master in
this world. And I know from all of our mutual friends and clients how extraordinary
your work is as a marriage coach. But what is unique about you,
which is different than other coaches I've known or therapists I've known in this
arena, is you coach individuals on making their marriage better.
And what a lot of people who have a barrier to entry is I would like to go to
marriage counseling or therapy or coaching, but my spouse,
my partner, won't do it or isn't open or doesn't think there's something wrong with
our marriage. And that leaves an individual really stuck because if their partner
doesn't want coaching or therapy or counseling, then a person could feel very alone
in whatever they're struggling with in their couple them. And you offer this
beautiful pathway to say, "Hey, you're not alone and your marriage isn't over. I can
help you work on cleaning up your side of the street." So I'd love with that just
to jump in on how do you do that? How do you coach somebody on a relationship
that requires two people? How do you coach them so that they can fix it on their
end? You know, it's not that different than when you do leadership development
coaching and you're coaching someone that has a team and you don't have the whole
team in front of you, just for everyone listening, you look at your role in the
relationship, your role as a leader in the relationship, what you want to create,
and what parts of that are in your power. And one of the things they say a lot
is not that you do all the work. It's that you go first. And so if you think
about any relationship, whether in my case, obviously I go to a marriage all the
time. But if you're thinking about anyone that you want to have a more thriving
connection with, whether it's a co -worker, whether it's a friend, family member, how
do you do that? You start with the parts that are in your control, you do those
things first, and then they react to those things. And very often, subtle changes
start happening where more collaboration starts occurring. That's amazing. So is it an
energetic shift or is it also practical tools? I think it's both. I think the
energetic shift is to decide that you want to pour love or you might have been
pouring some resentment in before, right? That's an energy. Think of everything my
partner does is annoying. How am I showing up? What energy am I putting out? It's
like I'm persistently annoyed. That is not fun. So there's that energetic component
of like, "Well, what are the reasons I'm with this person? Why do I value them?
Why does this still matter to me? Can I find any love or grace or forgiveness?"
Whatever I find that opens the door for me to relate to them a little bit
differently. So that's the energetic part. And then the practical part is literally
things that you do in your day. Are you expressing appreciation? Are you making
requests instead of complaining about things? It's like, oh, we never go on vacation
anymore. We never go out to dinner, let's say, right? Some simple things. Instead of
saying we never go out to dinner, if I say that, does that produce me going out
to dinner? No. If I say, hey, I noticed we haven't gone out in a month,
let's go out, where do you wanna go? It's starting to make requests that then
propel you to a different experience. - Super interesting. you have an analogy that
you talk about four -star? - The five -star marriage. - Yes. - Excuse me, five -star
marriage. Talk to us, walk me through that a little bit. - Okay, that's so much
fun. Okay, so there's a little background. I used to work in human resources and I
worked for a cruise line for many years. And after I worked with them, I worked in
the ultra luxury segment of hospitality at something called the world. Everyone should
look it up. it's a yacht that has residences on it and it's like a four seasons
or a rich Carlton at sea. And so I learned a lot about five -star hospitality,
five -star service. And then when I became a coach, I thought about some people are
living in motel marriages right now. It's like a one -star situation. There are
scratchy sheets, there's cold showers, it's like the basics. And wouldn't it be
amazing if we thought about what living in a five star marriage could be? What
would that look like? And I started really looking analytically at hospitality and
how your experience is engineered. So when you walk into your favorite hotel and
they're like, welcome back, right? And they maybe have your favorite candy bar for
turn down service or they have your favorite drink at the bar or those kinds of
things. It's like they write down your preferences, they put you and a database,
they learn what you like. And so many of those things are engineered as like, well,
we can engineer that at home as well. And so that was how I started thinking about
what is a five star marriage? Is a five star marriage is like a place where your
home feels like your sanctuary and where there are many pieces of that that can be
engineered, expressing appreciation, just like a hotel does for its guests. I call it
your love database, which is knowing your partner's interior world.
So research tells us that couples who thrive know what's happening for the other
person. And this is just like a hotel. When you write down your preferences, they
know what you like and what you don't like. So right now, as you think about for
everyone listening, if you think about your partner, do you know what they're worried
about right now? Do you know what they're excited about right now? Have you already
made some dreams come true? Are there new dreams you haven't made come true yet?
What are they? If you know them and you're like solid and that you know them,
that's awesome. That is very much a contributor to thriving,
to closeness and connection. If you don't, this is the perfect opportunity tonight or
this week to have a conversation. What are you worried about right now? What are
you excited about? What's a dream you need to come true yet. So that's how that
came to be, the Firestone Edge. I love that so much. It's a beautiful metaphor and
it's a beautiful set of guideposts for how to conduct something you value, which
obviously your relationship and your home and your significant other. Yes. How do you
avoid or how does a client avoid when they start thinking in terms of like what
sites my partner, or what are their dreams, or what cocktail do they like, or how
do they like their tacos or whatever. So fun. And women, I believe,
are more inherently geared towards that anyway, just whether you're a mother or a
wife, or it tends to be, we tend to be a little bit more detail oriented about
like, my husband doesn't like milk and his coffee, he likes cream or whatever. When
you're putting out that energy to your partner, if you're in a traditional male
-female relationship, I'm using that example. And they aren't returning that. Do you
ever find the clients are like, "Well, I'm really stepping into what their dreams
are and what their needs are and remembering their favorite cocktail and remembering
their favorite bedtime or show to watch," or whatever, if they're not getting it
back, what happens? I think you have to test it. I really think there's no way to
know until you test it for a while and you see how it starts evolving. So an
example that I'd love to give actually happened before I was ever even a coach. It
was just me and my best friend talking. And she was very frustrated with her
husband at the time. And I have her permission to share this story. So anybody's
wondering. So she was very frustrated with her husband at the time. And I said,
Well, when was the last time you thanked him for something? And she said, Well, why
should I thank him for things he's supposed to do in the first place, you know,
typical answer. And I said, you know, I don't know, but you're frustrated and
unhappy. And I'm delighted with my husband. So maybe try it. So it was one of
those where she's like, oh, whatever, okay, fine. When you're talking with your best
friend. So she started just thanking him for little things, little things. Thank you
for taking out the trash, which in her mind, she he was supposed to do anyway, But
she's like, thank you for doing it. Thank you for bringing me, you know, this
plane, you know, little tiny, tiny things. And two weeks later, two or three weeks
later, she called me and said, oh, you're never going to believe what happened. But
I get that all the time. So I always believe what happened. She said, you know, he
stopped at Starbucks and bought me my favorite coffee on the way home from work.
And he hasn't done that in five years. Wow. I'm like, like, wait, what? Tell I was
like, "Hold that." Now I was like, "Tell me more." - Wow. - She's like, "Well, you
know, I did that thing more." I started thanking him like he told me. And then he
started thanking me for things. And now we're like so much nicer to each other. And
he thought I might like it if he stopped at Starbucks. And it was literally from
the tiniest, tiniest thing and doing it repeatedly and then seeing how it went.
That's really the approach. So if someone is trying something like this, this simple,
which is to just express gratitude on a daily basis. It's a very good idea.
Everyone should do it. And you say, okay, I'm a day 30 and my partner has shown
me no appreciation whatsoever has not shifted in any way. There's no tenderness.
There's no kindness here. Then my thought about that is that's data you want to
have. And I always think most of you listening are not married to jerks.
You're just married to good people, having bad days. But a small percentage of you
are married to jerks, and this is how we find out. That's so good. So it's really,
it's one of my favorite feelings that I recommend to people, which, you know,
obviously, I'm sort of a stress and anxiety coach. So I'm always trying to give
people tools how to manage their stress and anxiety, because most of my clients are
high functioning professionals with busy lives and they're stressed out by them, and
one of the things I talk about all the time and other coaches do as well is the
notion of curiosity, reducing stress and anxiety. And that's a good example of that,
which is being a data collector, not an investigative journalist, right? Not looking
for evidence to prove that they're bad people, but just staying curious.
Like, curious. I'm going to try this experiment and staying on the side of hopeful
that either I'll feel better or he'll feel better or she'll feel better or will
feel better.
And I like that curiosity is such a buoyant emotion.
And so it sounds like when you're collecting data, it's, again, not looking for
evidence to put them on trial is why they're a bad partner, right?
But if I do this, maybe there will be something good out of it. And if not,
I'll just stay curious and observe it neutrally. I love curiosity. It's also one of
my favorites. And I take it even one step further. You do this not for your
partner's reaction, but for who you want to be in the world. I love that. You do
this because you want to be loving or kind or generous or forgiving or however you
want to be. And then the data you collect is who do they want to be in the
world? How do they react in the face of your kindness? Do they react with
appreciation? Do they react with annoyance or anger? And I have had clients where
the person's really cleaned up their side of the table, approached it with kindness,
with generosity, with forgiveness. And the person for whatever reason was not able to
receive that or reciprocate. And I always land on that data you want to have.
Now you get to decide from the cleanest place possible. Do I want a relationship
where it looks like this? What is it that I want? What would satisfy me and
sometimes people aren't, it's not for taught. It's not a perfect exchange of
kindnesses, right? Sometimes I express my kindness one way and you express it another
way, but the way you express it is fine for me. It doesn't have to be the same
as me. I just enjoy the way you do it, right? That's part of that being in
curiosity and seeing what does satisfy 5B. Do you talk about love language? I mean,
I know there's a famous book on it, but do you talk about the love languages in
your coaching? I think I don't unless a client brings it up, but I do want to
talk about it now because I have cautionary tales for everybody to listen to. Okay,
I'd love to hear. So here's the thing, the five of the languages currently is the
most sold relationship book on the entire planet, millions and millions of millions.
Yes. And it has a usefulness. It has a place.
What I have seen a lot in my coaching practice. So remember, people that come to
me are struggling for some reason in the relationship. So when people are struggling,
something that happens a lot amongst people who are struggling is they find out
their love language or their partners. And then they realize they're not good at
speaking it or they're not good at executing it, and then they create a death
sentence for themselves and the relationship. And that is the cautionary tale that I
want everyone to know that the love languages are a tool for awareness. I love
receiving compliments. Great to know. That doesn't mean that if your partner is bad
at compliments, you have to drop them like a hot potato.
So what do you do? How does that work? how can it be possible? What if we have
opposite love languages? What if I'm just terrible? Gifts is one of the love
languages. What if I'm terrible at picking out gifts? And that's what my partner
wants. What the heck do we do with that? So what I tell people is do not ignore
the ways they are showing you affection just because you have a preferred way of
receiving affection. And I use myself as my own lab example,
because I do love words of affirmation. I do too. And my husband loves doing acts
of service. So my husband will go to the grocery store so I can record a podcast.
He will, you know, stop and buy milk on the way home, even if it's out of his
way to do it so that we have milk for the next day. He will do things that make
my life easier in so many ways, But it will never occur to him to like walk into
my office and say you look stunningly beautiful today And you're also brilliant and
I'm so proud of you like this is not a spontaneous thing. That's ever gonna just
happen, but I Do not feel like I'm missing anything in my relationship Even though
that's not my love language every time he does something kind or generous for me.
Now, it's a joke we have, but now I say, I receive that like a sonnet. We have a
good laugh. And then he'll do something else. I'm like, oh, that's a double album
of my favorite artist. That's like 20 songs right there. Songs of love right there.
And so every time he's doing something, I receive it. And I don't experience that
as if anything is missing. I love that. That's settling. I'm not upset about it.
Right. I genuinely feel filled up because you recognize that his love language and I
think there's also a differentiation. There's the love language of how you show love
and how you like to receive it and it's not necessarily the same thing. Correct.
Right. So there's one about tacos and coffee like. Oh, so funny. Yeah. It's really
funny and I don't have it at my fingertips with something like, you know, "I like
to be held like a warm cup of coffee. I like to be served my cup of coffee." I
sort of like that. But so we don't always show our love language in the way we
like to receive it and vice versa. So it's not a linear thing. But he clearly has
a love language, which is these acts of service. So he is showing you in the ways,
at least that he likes to show you, and you choose to receive it. So you get
filled up by the fact that you know that's his level language of at least giving,
which is really beautiful. It's really beautiful. So talk to me a little bit about
how often, because there's a word that's been bouncing around a lot in psychology
and in coaching, probably more than I've ever heard in the last two years, which is
this notion of narcissism. And I know it's a loaded word. So I'm not asking you to
dissect it from a psychological standpoint. That's not our jobs. But I would love to
know, because I see it a lot in the few clients that I've had where their marriage
is an issue that they come to coaching for as part of their other issues. And a
lot of people will talk about narcissism. I'm married to a narcissist or I think my
husband might be a narcissist or my ex -husband is a narcissist or wife or whatever.
How do you deal with that when maybe there's a clear diagnosis?
Maybe there isn't. Maybe it's opinion. Maybe it isn't. Maybe it's hyperbole. Maybe it
isn't.
They're starting to strive for this five -star marriage. They're showing up. They're
identifying their own love language and how
their partners, perceive love, give love, and maybe there is an element or accusation
of narcissism. How do you deal with that when you're only dealing with one side of
the couple? I actually dealt with that today, so it's a very fresh in the night.
Oh, I love it. Yeah. Here's how I look at anything like that, whether it's
narcissism, depression, anxiety, all these different things that make us human. We all
have these different things and a fundamental question that I ask is what is the
best marriage you can have with this person and do you want that? A met fundamental
question applies no matter whether there's a diagnosis or not, whatever the
experiences are not, it's just how do I clean up my side of the table, go first,
decide the type of relationship I want to have, see how this person responds, and
then depending on what is their ability or capability to respond, right? So let's
use this narcissism example. Think there's a difference, which we don't have to get
into the detail right now, but just for everyone listening, there's a difference
between like a clinically diagnosed narcissistic person, which is a percentage of
society that is relatively small compared to everyone that's telling you that they
have a narcissist in their life. Exactly. But we all have some elements of self
-centeredness that are more developed or less developed. And so unless it's a clinical
diagnosis, some of those elements of self -centeredness that would also overlap with
some of the behaviors of narcissism, some of those, I think the difference when it's
clinical versus not clinical is that it can be changed. They can evolve. They can
be slightly adjusted with behavior modification and things like that.
So it just depends. My answer used to be the same in HR. People would ask me
these complex questions. I'm like, it depends on a case -by -case basis. One person
would be married to a narcissist and the perfect answer for her is to get a
divorce. And another person might be married to a narcissist and the perfect answer
for him is to stay together and just have really clear boundaries about what's okay
and not okay in different situations. And nobody's right or wrong in that scenario.
So what I would say to someone who's having a situation like that where someone
told them or they think it might be or whatever is to go back to the fundamental
question. Have I arrived at the best version of my relationship yet, yes or no?
What would it take to do that, whether it's listening to this podcast, Working with
you, doing a marriage program, what would it take to get my marriage to the place
where I could say, I think this is the best version of it? And then I could ask
myself, okay, we've gotten to the place where we've worked through a bunch of
things. This is really the best version. Do I want that?
That makes sense. So again, not throwing out terms unless there's a clinical
diagnosis. And even if there is a clinical diagnosis, doesn't mean throughout the
baby with the bathwater. And every case is individual. And so it's case by case
basis. And I want to say this because another thing I see come up a lot is this
happens sometimes if there's a diagnosis of some kind, sometimes at the breach of
trust, like infidelity. That was my next subject. We'll talk about that in depth
after this, but I want to say this to someone listening to us right now needs to
hear this and I want you to hear this from me. There is no shame in loving
another human. There is no shame in forgiving something that society tells you is
unforgivable. What I see more often than not is that our society encourages you to
be in only situations where you feel fully empowered and feel good, which I'm 100 %
for. I'm literally a feminist coach, I'm all about empowering women to have the
lives they want. But what I coach on a lot is the shame of saying, well, this
happened, but I want to forgive this person or this happened, and I want to stay
with this person. And the judgment of the person thinking that there somehow
shouldn't make that choice. So it's like, if you're physically safe,
if you are not in imminent danger and the person has done something that has deeply
hurt you that could even be something traumatic that you would take therapy or
counseling and you want to work through it, it's okay to want that. I just want to
be a person on earth that says that it's okay to want that and it's also okay to
not want that if you come to the conclusion later that it's something you want to
change. That's what I wanted to say about that part. So this is, again, I'm giving
you no softballs here. I'm giving you like major fastballs,
curveballs, sorry if it's just too huge for this few minutes that we're getting
together. But I want to talk about infidelity. And I want to talk about it in the
context that somebody comes to your program, their partner has been unfaithful. It's
different if they've been unfaithful because then again, they're cleaning up their
side of the street. They're taking ownership. I want to overcome this. That's
different. But when somebody's been unfaithful, that's something beyond your control.
You can't control what people do. The partner either maybe has remorse,
maybe doesn't, maybe it's continuing, maybe it isn't, what have you. Where do you
begin with somebody who has had betrayal in their life and is still in their
relationship, still wants it to work, but has so many feelings of inadequacy,
betrayal, hurt, fear, jealousy, paranoia, all the things that come with any time
you're betrayed, whether it's romantically or otherwise. Where do you start with that
individual? I think we start at wherever feels accessible to that person and for
each person that's gonna be different. Sometimes there's so much heightened emotion
that it feels too big to tackle some of the things that do need to be tackled at
some point. I'm a big fan of doing the simplest thing first, the place where you
could start first. Very often they need to work on obviously trusting their partner
again, creating connection and cultivating the friendship again. but they also need to
work on trusting themselves again, because there's a lot of shame of how did I not
see the signs? How did I not figure it out? I thought everything was fine. So,
very often, we refocus on trusting yourself that even if they were to breach the
trust again, you can handle it. How do we know you can handle it? Because you have
resilience, because you have persistence. So, there's always an element of self -trust
that we work on cultivating and harnessing and making bigger and stronger. And then
whatever the simplest path forward is, very often something that comes up is what
can I ask for or if I need to be comforted, just permission to ask for whatever
you need to ask for. So some people want to have your passwords. Some people want
to be able to see your phone. Some people want to cultivate that trust, right? To
recreate that trust. They have things that they find comforting. And for everybody,
it's a little bit different what they find comforting. And my role, I think, is
they're called just to say permission to want what you want. Just-- I love that.
Whatever that looks like. I love that. And if the partner doesn't want to give
that, then that's data. Data you want to have. It's like, why don't they want to
give it? What is the issue? What's going on? And there are people who land on
different parts of the spectrum of what is privacy and what should we share and
what should we not share and have their own, even if they're completely innocent at
this point, and they're not really, they do want to rebuild the relationship, but
they have other family history or cultural narratives around what they feel safe to
share. Then you just want to unpack that and see where you land and where can you
meet in the middle and what can you do together? So it's nuanced. I would say
there is no clear cut. Every single person should do X, Y or Z. The only thing
that I'm always saying, everything is up to you. It's everything is what works for
you. But the one thing we know is if you cannot cultivate a friendship with your
partner, you're never going to get to thriving. So if I think about thriving like
the five star marriage, right? If you're in a motel situation where you're arguing
every day or you're disconnected completely, don't even speak to each other anymore,
can we get you to like a three star with a hot breakfast? Which is going to be
at least better than where you were before. Yes, we can. But if there's no
intention or desire to think of that person, I call it your sexy bestie, to have
sexy bestie energy with that person. We know that you're not going to get to
thriving, but some people, they're very happy with a hot breakfast. I love those
hotels.
And for many reasons that when I say, what's the best marriage you could have with
this person? And is this what you want? They're like, oh, if I could go from that
one to that three, golden, I don't even forget about that other stuff. I don't even
need that. So I also want to be a voice in the world that says that it's not all
rainbows and sunshine and whatever, it's what works for you. Well, and I love that
reminder because that's something I coach on for anxiety and stress, which is it's
not black or white. There really is no pun intended, but there really is 50 shades
of gray. And that's not settling. That's correct. That's just thinking different,
like things have to be perfect. And I think for a lot of people who are
overachievers, high functioning, you know, doers in the world. Perfection does,
I talk about it a lot on this podcast, perfection gets in the way in a lot of
different forms. It's not all just work driven. There's perfection in my relationships
and perfection in, you know, the way things look and control. And I think letting
go of what is perfect and connecting to what works or the individual is really a
very empowering notion and liberating. 100%. My husband,
who's an engineer, very often says, and it's a quote, it's a famous quote. I don't
know who said it originally, but my husband says it to me on a regular basis, is
that the perfect is the enemy of the possible. Yeah. And it's like, wait, but what
is possible here? What can we do here? And focusing on that instead of focusing on
what some fictitious version of perfect nobody's relationship is perfect. Right.
That does not exist. Right. One thing I want to add just on the breaches of trust
because there's I once coached someone who her husband had a whole business from
her. So it was like a financial breach of trust, but it was completely like a
whole part of his life that she knew nothing about. So This can come in all kinds
of shapes and forms and things. I love continuing education as Jackie knows about me
because we talk about that behind the scenes. And I did a training with Esther
Parrell who's a very renowned relationship psychologist. I adore her. I adore
listening to her. Love her work. So she did a training on helping her clients
overcome infidelity and one of the most impactful things that she said that really
has influenced how I think about this and coach on it and just my world view on
it is, in our culture, we take infidelity and make that the reason a relationship
works or doesn't work. We take one data point. It's like taking one data point and
then she said, "But really, our relationships are more like an ecosystem and there's
the house you live in, where your kids go to school, your group of friends, the
different social circles that you're in as a result of being in your relationship.
There's all of these other data points. - Yeah. - And she said, don't make decisions
based on one data point. She said it differently, but that was the gist of what
she was saying. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's like, okay, maybe we need to work through
some pieces around this particular thing. And this is why I say there's no shame if
you want to stay in your relationship because I've coached people where they're like,
I want my kid to graduate this high school, I'm not gonna shake up my entire life
for the next two years 'cause I want, my kid is thriving right now. There's no
shame in that. You get to want what you want, whatever that looks like. That's the
part I want to say. - So there's so many different elements to a long -term marriage
or even a short -term relationship. And it's got so many stages. stages, whether you
have kids or animals, whether you have wealth or not, whether you run a business
together or don't, whether you have religious differences, family background
differences, all the things. There's so many components. It's interesting. I imagine
coaching people on marriage because you're coaching individuals on marriage. It is
very much like your HR background where people come in with numerous issues,
complaints, fears, concerns, frustrations, and you're really troubleshooting from so
many different angles, psychologically and societally and even from familial patterns
and expectations and things like that. So there is no linear roadmap to just do
this and it's a perfect marriage. Just do this. It's a perfect relationship. There
is no perfect. And one of the things I say is nothing in your life has to be
perfect to be awesome. Like we can get it to awesome while being wildly imperfect.
Yeah. And there are certain pillars of things.
Cultivating friendship is one of them. Communicating clearly is another questioning
your thoughts and mindsets about how you're approaching situations is another. There
are certain things that will help you make it more likely that your relationship
will thrive. So there are certain things and we know one of the things I'd love to
quote is the Gottman Institute. They've done research over 40 years of people who
are thriving in the relationships, people who are not thriving and then they create
intentions based on this research that they've done. So we do know that cultivating
a friendship very important. We do know knowing each other's interior world, which is
part of that, absolutely makes it infinitely more likely. You're like stacking fate
in your favor, right? By doing some of these things. But is there one linear path
to these things? It's gonna look different for everybody. So if you were to,
as we kind of wind down this huge, we went from such macro subjects to I would
love for the audience to just have like a couple little key takeaways before they
leave today. If you were to give some very basic principal advice to somebody who's
struggling in a relationship that there's either an inequity of responsibilities or an
inequity of appreciation or maybe there's been infidelity, any of those things that
create an imbalance of power in the relationship. And you talked about, which I
love, you have to work on your own empowerment first. Yes,
you have to show gratitude, connection, communication, friendship, appreciation, those
are all incredibly valuable. But talk about the self -care piece. Talk about the
piece that starts with just the individual and how someone would go to repair their
own sense of self when they have felt either hurt or betrayed or disconnected,
not even hurt, but just disconnected from their partner. What would be your Starting
points because by the way, I love when you said I like things that are easy. I
always say take the easy steps first I have taken that advice so many times from
you in all the years We've known each other and the times we've gotten on the
phone and talked about Problem -solving just in yeah our businesses or whatever and
you're always like What's the easiest thing do the easiest thing and that advice
resonates with me so deeply and I share that advice with my clients all The It
will be the easy steps for somebody who's starting from a little bit of ground zero
again in trying to rebuild a relationship. You could take this in so many
directions. Like, so I'm just going to name what came to mind for me in this
moment, but I want everybody to know this is not the only thing you can do. This
is just one thing you can do. Love it. And here's where I would start is I would
just check in and how are you feeling right now? Have you eaten? Have you slept?
Have you rested? I'm sure these are things you talk about all the time dealing with
anxiety. I talk a lot in my work about stress cycle awareness.
And by stress cycle, I mean fight, flight, freeze, appease. Like right now as you're
listening to this podcast, you are probably lax listening to us 'cause we're
delightful. But if you think about when you finish listening to us and you go back
to work or you go back home, are you in a fight response? Do you feel heightened?
Are you in a freeze response? Do you feel like you wanna shut down and get under
the covers? Just having awareness of where you are will help you then see,
of course, I'm exhausted. I haven't slept in three nights because I've been crying
over the thing that just happened or whatever. And giving yourself grace for whatever
state you might be in once you ask yourself that question. I think there's this
disconnect. I think we live in this microwave society where you put something in the
microwave and 90 seconds later it's done. And this only applies to microwaves.
It does not apply to humans, right? And we also don't work 24 /7. We have to rest
and recharge and then go. And I think there's this disconnect like, okay, when I
feel like crap, my job is to not do anything. My job is to go take a nap.
Here's what happens a lot. A lot of the work that I do in coaching isn't linear.
It isn't. And then you're going to feel better. No, you're going to go take a nap
and then you'll be able to process thoughts. And then you'll be able to see what
question you need to ask yourself. And then you can ask it and then you can see
the answer. And five steps later, you will feel better, but there's no use in
trying to figure that out now if what you need is a nap or a meal or to go hug
a friend or look at the ocean or hug a tree or whatever that is. So the shortened
version of that is self -soothe first, comfort and kindness first,
and then go face whatever dragon you need to slay. I love that and it's great
advice for anything, right? Whether you're having a difficult relationship, whether
you're having difficulty at work, whether you're not feeling well, whether you've been
given bad news or your family's overwhelming. Self -soothe in hopefully a healthy,
productive way, right? Yes. Yeah. Self -soothe doesn't mean like indulge in the worst
habits ever. Like self -soothe this literally, can I come back to calm, centered,
groundedness, right? What would help me do that? So one piece of cake is fine, the
whole cake, maybe not fine, not fine. Right. So literally, so through this, how can
I come back? You know, if we think a little of a little baby crying, right? How
do we hold and love and comfort that baby so that they can come back to just
grounded center? Well, it's an interesting thing because having a baby, there is a
checklist for what you do when a baby's crying, which is you check their diaper to
see if it's dirty. Yeah. You look at the clock or you see if they're hungry. Yeah.
Or you calm them down or they're either hot or cold and then you calm them down
because they might need a nap. Like those are the checklists. And then after you're
done with like basic care. Yes. Then you have to figure out what's wrong. Like if
this, this is it. So good basic care, then we figure out what's wrong. And so many
of us skip the basic care part, right? We don't, we don't check the diaper and get
them something to eat and give them an app. Right. Which is what we need to do
for ourselves. Yeah. Metaphorically metaphorically, that's so helpful.
So self soothing in a constructive way, giving yourself grace and pause.
I have that on another podcast with another coach who talks about self -compassion,
that big component of where to start when you're having a rough time.
Agreed. Yeah. This has been so amazing, and I am sure that my listeners are going
to be like, "Oh my god, I want to talk to Maggie." So how do people get in touch
with you, and what do you have to offer people who may be struggling in their
relationships, not even marriage, but just relationships. Well, one thing I hear a
lot is you work with me on your relationship and then all of your other
relationships get better. Like that's a refrain that's just very, very common. So the
best thing to do is my website is magireas .com. So it's m -a -g -g -i -e -r -e -y -e
-s .com. You can go there. You can get on my email list. You can see whatever I'm
up to whenever you hear this. I always think about like, we're recording it now,
but five years from now, So you could absolutely go there. I like Instagram.
I am the Magy Reyes on Instagram. You can find me there. I also host a podcast.
It's called the Marriage Life Coach podcast. And I, like you, like to cover deep,
like today, there are no soft balls today. I like to cover deep topics in depth in
a very simple and approachable way, just like we did today. So if you're going
through something right now and you want some comfort and support in your ear as
you figure it out, my podcast is free. I love for people to use it, listen to it.
I always say, listen with intent to apply. I love that. I love that. And I've
listened to dozens of your episodes and they are just chock full of amazing golden
nuggets for relationship advice and just how to be a better human.
Because everybody in our classes that we've taken together always refers to Maggie as
sunshine. She is just a ray of sunshine, which is interesting because her last name
is Reyes. But she is a ray of sunshine. And she brings that sunshine to everything
she does, both in her teaching, in her coaching, and her friendship. And I love
having you as my friend and colleague in this business. And I thank you so much
for sharing your time with us today. And I look forward to talking to you soon. It
was a pleasure and an honor. And by everyone, thanks for spending some time with us
today. Thank you again, Maggie. And I adore you. And I will see you soon. Thank
you for listening to this episode of The Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you're
enjoying these episodes, please subscribe or follow this podcast so you can always be
in the know when the next episode drops. If you would like to learn more about
working with me as a coach, you can connect with me through my website at
jackiedecrinis.com. That's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N -I -S .com.