Maggie Reyes:
Hello everyone, welcome to the 100th episode of The Marriage Life Coach Podcast. I am so delighted and so excited because one of my favorite humans is on the show today and we’re turning the tables. She is going to interview me about all the things.
And you know her, she’s been on a previous episode of the podcast, her name is Emily Feairs. She is truly powerful, fierce, loving, and kind, all the beautiful things that you just would want to celebrate the 100th episode of this podcast.
She was a member of The Marriage MBA, she is an avid listener show as well, uses the tools that we talk about here. And when I was thinking about what would be fun to do for the 100th episode I just thought I can’t have all of you on the show at one time, but Emily’s representing every single person listening now. So welcome Emily, and before we dive in tell everyone a little bit what you do and who you are.
Emily Feairs:
Well first of all that was like the nicest intro ever, and I’m so excited to be here as a proud alumni of The Marriage MBA. And yeah, I just think what you do is so important, especially to women like me who are A Type perfectionists or recovering perfectionist, however you want to say it.
But people who are high up in the world and can’t seem to figure out their marriage. They want it to be good, they know it has the ingredients to be good, and that it’s just not coming out. So I’m so honored to be here and to be talking about this incredibly important thing.
I work with women just like me, who are struggling to have leadership and their role in the world, the things that they do in the world, the magic and the value that they create in the world feel as effortless as they want it to feel.
I help women organize all the messy, amazing, awesome thoughts in their head and make it into a real life doable plan so that they can finally feel on top of their shit, because that is at the end of the day all we ever want to feel is like we can actually get things done. So that’s me, and that’s who I work with, and that’s why I’m so excited to be here.
Maggie Reyes:
Love it so, so much. So I am committed to being an open book, and if there’s a question that Emily asks I will do my best to answer. And if there’s a question that you have in your heart that you’d love for me to answer to celebrate this 100th episode, just come over to Instagram and find me @TheMaggieReyes and ask a question and we’ll answer as many as we can. So Emily, shoot.
Emily Feairs:
Yes, okay. First I want to know how and why did you become a Marriage Life Coach? I mean you often reflect back to us your relationship and the ways in which it’s grown into what it is, but how did you get here?
Maggie Reyes:
I love this question. And Emily and I were thinking about doing the show together and I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever talked about in depth and even my own fears about it, so I’m going to share a little bit about that.
So most of the, not most but many, of the people who are sort of in the relationship space very often have some kind of turnaround story. Like everything was awful and this is what I did to make it better. And I do not have that story, I have loved being married the whole time.
And it doesn’t mean we don’t have ups and downs and it doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements or things we have to resolve and work through, but I really never had like a huge marriage crisis that I turned around in some of the ways that we sort of see popularized.
And for a long time I let that hold me back actually in my mission. For a long time I thought, well I only know how to do it thriving, that’s all I know. And how could I teach that if I haven’t been through all of the different things? And I really had to do a deep inquiry in myself around that.
And my Business Coach Stacey Boehman, who’s a brilliant woman, asked me one question as we often do as Coach, we’ll ask one person like one question and then we’re done with that thing forever, that often happens.
So we have a common mentor, the founder of The Life Coach School where I trained, and she said, well Brooke, who’s the founder of that school, has never had a problem with money and she teaches people how to make money all the time. Do you have a problem with that?
And I was like, no, I love it that she’s always had money and then she teaches people how to think about money the way she thinks about money.
And in that moment of realization of, oh, I can just teach people to think about marriage the way I think about marriage, and that is valuable and useful for a lot of people, that really helped me just really anchor in that it doesn’t matter what my experience is, what matters is I have something to offer that can be valuable. So that’s one thing, that’s just sort of my limiting belief around it.
How it happened is also a fascinating story, which is when I met my husband, I was working in human resources at the time in the cruise industry. I had what sounded to my friends like a very sexy job. I would travel all over the world and I’d hire people to come and work on the ships.
And there are many parts of it that were sexy and fun and exciting, and there were many parts of it like so many of us have that it’s just like schlepping at 3:00am to a flight, to do a thing, that kind of stuff. And when I met my husband what I found was I felt this incredible sense of rightness.
And for many of you listening, you might have felt it with your partner, you might have felt it when you had kids if you had kids, you might feel it in your job, or when you’re in a state of flow if you’re engaging in a creative activity.
It’s like this incredible sense of, I’m in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing with the right person. I feel it even now with Emily, like there’s nothing else on earth I’d rather be doing in this moment than just spending some time with her and with all of you. It’s this sense of rightness.
I hope you feel it when you listen to the podcast, that would be amazing. But I had that feeling very intensely with my husband and what it did was it was kind of the light and the shadow. It was awesome to experience it, and then it brought to light all the places in my life that were not that.
Emily Feairs:
Oh, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
And I went on a quest to see okay, my work is something I’m good at, it’s something I’m effective at, I could do it for the rest of my life and be just fine, but it doesn’t feel the way this feels. What else could there be in the world for me?
And I did aptitude tests, I did quizzes, I went to workshops, I did all kinds of things, I just really went on this sort of self inquiry quest. And through a series of serendipitous events at one point was in a workshop with my very first Coach I ever worked with, her name was Christine Kane, and I love her still very much, she really helped me change my life at a pivotal moment of my life.
And she asked another magical question which was, what is one thing you could talk about forever and never get tired of talking about it? And at the time I had just gotten married, I had been very much part of the wedding industrial complex, which I have to say I embraced it but I also, I was like in it but also observing it at the same time.
I was like, why do we have this sort of pageantry around weddings? What about the actual marriage, where is the stuff for that? And I had a lot of fears, I got married relatively older. I was already, I want to say 32 or something like that when I got married.
And there was nothing around, what if nothing terrible has happened, you just don’t want to mess it up? That was the category that I was in. It’s like nothing awful had occurred but I’m like, I want this thing to go well.
And I found that there was endless amounts of resources to coordinate your napkins with your dresses and your flowers, all that stuff. Which I think is fun and beautiful and I had two congo lines at my wedding and it was all great, we’re all about that.
And where’s the other part? So when I was sitting in this room with Christine and she said what could you talk about and never get tired of, I was like I could talk about this. And at the time, little did I know 100 episodes later apparently I got a lot to say.
Emily Feairs:
Really good. A lot of good stuff to say, not just a lot like volume but a lot of quality stuff. So what I love about what you said there was that there’s nothing out there for people who just don’t want to screw it up, right? It’s nothing has terribly gone off the rails but you just want it to be better.
And I also hear this in how you talked about, like you felt this with your husband of like, this is so right, this is so juicy, so amazing. And even just for you to be able to be like oh, maybe other areas of my life could be like that.
It’s sort of the inverse of what I experienced and when I think of maybe a lot of your listener experience of like work is, I’m killing it, I’m doing great. But this thing, or over here doesn’t feel as great and could it be, is there a possibility there? And it’s not so broken it’s unfixable but it could be better, and you don’t want to screw it up.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. I think we have, our emotional journeys are very similar even when the details of the journey are different. And even in the job that I had, and I ended up going to a different job and really loving it and having an amazing experience, what I found was at the end I could have done those jobs forever.
Like I found the place in myself where I could have continued down that path and made that work. And one of the sort of principles that I always teach is what is the best relationship you can have with this human and then do you want that?
And I certainly went through that in my different sort of careers, which is like oh, what is the best relationship I can have in this role with myself, and with the role, and with my colleagues, and all the different relationships that we have in a work setting?
And I was like oh okay, this is the best it can be and do I want that? And sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes the answer is no. And leaving that latitude and space that sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes the answer is no.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah. Yeah, and what I love about that too is even just I think we think that whatever muck we’re in, in that relationship, that is the best it’s going to be but that’s not actually true.
Maggie Reyes:
Right.
Emily Feairs:
And so really defining that there could be a best there and understanding what that looks like. And then you’re like okay, now how do we get there, is such just a great way of thinking about it instead of feeling like, what is the current experience I’m having of my relationship and do I want that? It’s like oh, if we could take it to this other place and it could be its best version do I want that?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. And usually what I find in myself and what I find in my clients and my community is we have limiting beliefs that are standing in the way between the best version of ourselves, the best relationship we can have, and what we want to do is explore those first before we make major life choices or things like that. And also we want to just be in this land where like, what if it could be amazing?
I love Oprah and I talk about Oprah all the time on the show and I give lots of Oprah examples, but one of my favorite things that I’ve ever seen Oprah say is she was doing a behind the scenes on her 25th year of her show, and one of the audio people didn’t catch some great moment she said something really funny and they asked her to re-record it.
And she sort of chuckled and said, no, no, we don’t go backwards here. She’s like, awesome happens all the time just keep recording, I’ll say something else. And she said it with such calm and such groundedness that you would expect from someone like Oprah, just all her quality.
And it’s just like, awesome happens all about the time around here, just keep recording. What if that could be possible for all of us in our most intimate relationships? What if awesome just happened all the time around here?
That doesn’t mean we don’t have setbacks. Sometimes the mic doesn’t record and things don’t happen and we have bloopers, but awesome does happen all the time around here. I love that.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah. And I love that because going back to the limited belief you have of like, well I didn’t have this big turnaround story, it’s the idea that you have a completely different perspective. You didn’t try and solve the problem from the level of the thinking that was creating the problem, you have a completely different perspective.
And it’s the same thing there, Oprah’s perspective on that audio is awesome happens all the time, whereas the audio person’s perspective was like that one thing had to be right. And then this next one thing had to be right. And then this next one thing has to be right.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. And my perspective in marriage is it can be awesome. As you know, many of my clients come to me and they’re like, I don’t know if it can be awesome. I’m like, I know it could be, let’s find out what that looks like for you, and then let’s see if that’s the flavor of awesome that inspires and delights you.
Emily Feairs:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Emily Feairs:
Which brings me to my next question, I want to know what are some of the really common thoughts or actions that you see happening for women who are in your program?
Maggie Reyes:
I think that at the core there’s probably one that has lots of different flavors and names and faces, but it’s something around my partner’s doing it wrong, the it varies.
Emily Feairs:
It’s wildly familiar.
Maggie Reyes:
The shock, right? It varies. So it could be it, our sexual connection, our intimacy. It could be it, how we open up to each other. It could be how we raise the kids. It could be how we plan our finances. The actual thing does have lots of different names and faces and scenarios, but it’s often like this person is doing it wrong, AKA not the way that I would do it.
And because of this we have all these problems. And what often happens is, you know as we talk about through things, is one of the things we work on I think the most is just this person is their own universe and they’re going to do things the way they do them in that universe.
And we need to see where do these universes collide and overlap and can they work together in harmony? And where will you never meet and can that be okay? If they never do it the way you’re going to do it, can we who are used to… Often in leadership positions we’re used to A, telling people what to do and people doing it exactly the way we say, we’re used to that so many of us. And then we’re used to the way that I like to do it works so why-
Emily Feairs:
Which makes so much sense. Why don’t you just do it the way that makes sense? Come on.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. So if I had to distill everything down to one like big thought error, it’s so interesting because as we look at it through the lens of the self-Coaching model, which is we have a thought the person is doing it wrong, and then we feel frustrated, annoyed.
Usually it’s not even, sometimes it’s a big anger but oftentimes many of my clients come to me with low grade persistent, chronic annoyance that is never resolved. If I had to describe it it would be like that. And then we do all these things in our actions, like we maybe don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, or don’t assume positive intent, or we then pick a fight, or we then escalate the thing, we do all these things and then the result is usually then we are doing it wrong.
Not from a place of blame and not from a place of, I want to be really careful when I talk about this, I want to be really intentional because this that I’m explaining now has nothing to do with blaming a victim or anything like that.
This is from a place of personal responsibility when we’re resourced enough in ourselves to say, actually I could change my approach and that could help a situation. There are situations when someone is doing something completely violating your values or whatever, safety or things like that where the answer to that is absolutely for you to walk away or to set really strong boundaries in the situation.
And I’ll tell you most of the people that I work with aren’t in that situation, they aren’t in those really sort of dire circumstances. They’re more like I do love my partner, my partner does have affection for me, we actually have a lot of things that are working.
There’s just a few pieces that are really challenging and don’t feel good at all. And I’d love to just hear any thoughts you have about how I explain that because I think it’s just so important to spend some time on that.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, yeah. Well that thought that you had of like, they’re doing something wrong. I think for me it showed up as they need to be different in order for this to work, they need to act differently, think differently, do all the things differently. And it does come from that root thought of like, what he was doing was inherently wrong and I believed my rightness in that.
And so I did experience, like my result then if we go back to the model was not only was I doing it wrong and that I wasn’t being the loving partner that I really wanted to be, because I was operating from the sense of like, well he’s messing the whole thing up, but I was also really experiencing my marriage through that lens of like, he’s doing it wrong and it’s all his fault.
And I have no ability to really change that either. That really felt to me like oh, now I’m powerless and hopeless. And that’s really sort of I think a big part of it. I think for a lot of women we try, like our reaction in work when something goes wrong is like, well we problem solve for it and we takes some action and we fix it.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Emily Feairs:
But it doesn’t work like that when it comes to our partners necessarily. Like we don’t just go in and problem solve for their psyche and be like here, I made this deck for you on exactly why you’re doing it all wrong. And if you could just take those points that I give you at the end and action plan out and give me your progress report, that would be really nice.
Maggie Reyes:
That would be so nice. And in you saying that it’s like if we think about hierarchies, at work when we’re in a leadership position there is an inherent hierarchy and people work for me and do things for me, and they do the things I want done the way I want them done.
There is an inherent hierarchy that when we’re at home with our partners, hopefully if we’re living in a feminist collaborative mindset in our relationship, then there is not a hierarchy in that way but yet we bring the expectations that we have from how we resolve things at work to the situations that happen at home, when really that idea of context really matters.
Like in this context it might be totally appropriate for me to tell my assistant I want it blue instead of red and go make it blue. Whereas if I’m going to tell my husband that it might be a very different conversation, and there’s nothing wrong with that, we just aren’t used to that.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s our brains, like it works over here so why wouldn’t it work over there? And really as you said, having context specific ways of being. And same with how, I love you say how we love is how we live, and it is.
It’s like you love your partner changes how you love yourself, changes how you love your kids, changes how you love your mother, changes so many of the loving relationships that you have in your life. And so really understanding that the thought, the root thoughts and how it shows up was so pivotal for me in just understanding how my brain wanted to do one thing was how I wanted to do everything.
And so if it wanted to just show up and tell everyone how they’re supposed to show up in order for me to be able to love them, in order for me to be able to do all these things, I mean that would be a conversation I’d have with my own brain.
That’s perfectionism 101 is like, you got to be this, this, and this in order to be lovable. And if I’m not those things I feel like crap. The same thing for my kids or my husband, unintentionally a lot of these thought areas of like, I’m frustrated unless you ABC.
Maggie Reyes:
And honestly, all of us go through different levels of that all the time with all kinds of things. And it’s just a matter of developing self-awareness. It’s like where am I handing my happiness over to somebody else’s actions or to somebody else’s decisions, and how can I take that back? I always think about the work that I do as empowering a woman to own her relationship, to not abdicate that authority over to her partner’s moods or whatever.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, absolutely.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, any of it. Yeah.
Emily Feairs:
So inside The Marriage MBA, I already know this, but there’s a veritable plethora of tools that you can use. And it’s your highest intention that we come and we take what we need when we need it and how we need it and engage with it. And then we are given a situation in which there’s no way in which we won’t get what we came for actually. If we just show up and we just engage, and that’s it.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s my goal, yeah.
Emily Feairs:
And one of the tools that I love that I think fits really well into this conversation is energy leaks. You’ve developed like a step by step assessment essentially of the ways in which we are leaking energy. And I know for me, it was mind blowingly awakening to just see it spoken about in that way and to understand it. Can you unpack it a little bit and tell us-
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, I’m so glad we’re talking about this. I actually don’t think I’ve even talked about it on the podcast, so I’m glad we’re talking about it today. So I actually, the process that I walk you through inside The Marriage MBA on energy leaks is something that I learned from one of my teachers, her name is Layla Martin.
And one of the things that I bring to The Marriage MBA, just as an overarching idea and then we’ll talk about energy league specifically, is I bring tools that I’ve created like soul centered communication and other tools that I have developed over time, the emotional weight loss tools, no complaining, no defending, but I also bring my favorite tools from my teachers.
And I think that in this era where we can just Google anything, one of the most valuable things that our teachers do for us is the curation of the stuff that actually works, and that actually matters, and that actually moves the needle.
And I’m a big believer in sort of offering different disciplines, different modalities, different ways, different keys to open different doors so that then you can decide oh, I love this door, or I love that door, or that’s the one I’m going to walk through
So this idea of energy leaks is basically there are places in our life where we make decisions or don’t make decisions, and as a result of these decisions we’ve made or not made we’re basically leaking our own energy. And what we do is we go through this questioning, this inquiry of, I don’t know something like 40 questions, to see where are those leaks and then we plug the leaks.
And when I learned this tool from Layla Martin, I have done it every time, I started it as a student and then I’ve done it every time I’ve taught it in The Marriage MBA. And every time I find different areas or different things, which I think is so fascinating. Because sometimes we’ll work on something, we’ll plug that leak, and then we’ll be like oh, this other thing I can give it attention now because this thing is no longer a factor.
And to give everyone sort of a sense, there’s a lot of things we couldn’t possibly do them all today, but there’s everything from, how do I eat? Am I career criticizing myself when I, like even to that level am I criticizing myself in my relationship with food?
There’s when do I speak up? Am I speaking up enough? Am I not? How sexually empowered do I feel? Do I feel empowered or not? So every sort of major area of our lives is touched upon in some way, and one of the ones that was particularly resonant in the cohort that we were in was taking up space. Just the idea of am I speaking up when I have something to say or am I staying quiet?
Emily Feairs:
Yeah. And what I really loved about that assessment was I think I realized that in our roles, in these executive roles you’re making decisions all day. And you feel like you can just really, you have the data to be able to go through them and make them.
And then when they get to matters of the heart or the home they feel so much more vulnerable and you don’t have such clear cut data, and making decisions just, we just leave a lot of those doors open. They’re like tabs open on our brain and they become exhausting. And I think we don’t even realize that we haven’t made a decision.
So even the decision to take up space, if you’re so used to doing it in the public eye, because I work with a lot of politicians, or at the executive table, or if you are an entrepreneur and you’re taking up space online.
And then going back into your life and into your marriage and your relationship and taking up space and seeing what it looks like there, I think is really common to be strong in one area of your life and then not have it show up in the other area, and not even seeing that that was an unmade decision that is sucking your life force out of you.
And just to see it for me was enough to be like, oh I don’t, okay, yep. Let’s just plug that up. But even just having how you walk us through having the tools to actually create that plug was really profound for me.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, I love that. And I think that one of the things in The Marriage MBA is you have the PDF, the process, you have that forever. You can now, like once a year or once a quarter or whatever calls to you, you can just do a check in with yourself.
And that’s one of my intentions as well is we’re in this process, we’re in this container and I cover a lot of ground and a lot of things. And then I always think about my students 10 years from now, I want to sort of prepare them for today but also for tomorrow.
And I think going through the process together and having compassion for each other, and seeing other members of the group challenged by different things, I think all of it is so useful for the present moment, whatever is on our plate now but also for just living in a new way moving forward.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, absolutely. And so that’s one of my favorite tools, what do you think is one of your favorite tools that you see really just blow our minds?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, I think that one of the most mind blowing tools has been the internalized patriarchy relationship inventory. That has been incredibly powerful for many, many Marriage MBA students just to take some time to notice some of the invisible ways that living in a colonialized, patriarchal society as most of us do, how it impacts how we are in our most intimate relationships. Like how the macro affects the micro.
And very often doing that inventory, it just brings up things that would never cross our mind unless you have your Life Coach asking you these questions. And so that has been one that has had a lot of sort of intensity around going through that process.
And I would say, I mean it’s very obviously very intentional the different things that I teach in there, so I sort of all love them all in different ways for different reasons. I also love teaching soul centered communication, which is one of my favorite tools ever, I’m very proud to have created it.
I have found it massively useful and all the different stories that people share about it have been incredible. There’s a podcast episode on it, we will link to it in the show notes. So this is the kind of tool where I just give you the overview on the podcast, you don’t even have to wait to join The Marriage MBA to start using it.
We do go deeper in it together when we workshop it together, and then we also go deeper in it as we are together using it over a month at a time and sort of troubleshooting things as they arise and stuff like that.
But that’s one of my favorites, but honestly I’m very, very proud of the curriculum overall because I think everything that we talk about, even the simplest classes. Like we’ll talk about power questions, which is another thing I have a podcast episode on, but we just go really deep sometimes into something really simple and it has just a profound effect on people.
Emily Feairs:
Yes, totally. Okay, I want to spend some time with each one of those. So the internalized patriarchy, boom did that hit at me. Because I think as a fellow Coach, as someone who worked in very progressive government who really championed and created progressive policies in the world, I considered myself really understanding feminism and thinking in my mind that I would clearly know if it was showing up into my relationships.
And to see the ways, as you say it’s internalized, we just accepted as the water that we swim in, not even seeing it as the water, was so fascinating. And it really empowered me more than anything to start, as you say, owning those parts of myself, owning those parts of my relationship.
And yeah, I definitely never would have thought that if someone was like, I’m going to do an inventory on your relationship and see where the patriarchy’s showing up, I’d be like girl, good luck, it’s not there. Oh my goodness, was I surprised just to see, and it’s so subtle, the little subtle ways. But again, they’re like energy leaks and they’re ways in which discontentment grows and sort of, they’re like little weeds in the marriage garden that just feel uncomfortable.
And you don’t really know why and you haven’t really understood it or unpacked it, but when you have the tools to be able to do that and the actual awareness of it, it just shifted so much for me to be able to see it and then be able to actually decide, well how do I want to engage? If this isn’t what I want then how do I want to engage? What would that look like? And how do I go about creating that for myself?
Maggie Reyes:
And I have to say, even in developing the tool it surprised me too. I grew up in the same ocean, I swim in the same ocean and I often will have things oh, this is influenced by that. And one of the things we talk about in The Marriage MBA that I don’t think there are a lot of spaces where we talk about this as women together is sometimes we’re frustrated, or we’re overwhelmed, or we’re overworked.
We talk about, there’s lots of articles now on the mental load or the emotional load that women carry. And it’s like wait, but why do we carry it? Wait, but how did we say yes to that? We blame ourselves for not having boundaries but it’s like no, we’re in a society that tells us not to have any. And then we get f
arustrated with ourselves because we haven’t said them and it’s like wait, first of all, compassion for all of it. Let’s just pause and just notice that we can have compassion while we unpack it and figure it out.
And it’s like all these messages that we are sort of unconsciously given in our modern society impact how we show up in things. And it’s almost like if there’s a third entity in your marriage, which is the social constructs that we grew up in, whatever they may be, whoever’s listening.
If you grew up, my family, my grandmother was Catholic and there’s all kinds of social constructs of what’s okay and not okay from a religious point of view. We have these different social constructs and then we’re like oh, why is this issue happening over here? Guess what, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. And I think that is really also part of the exploration that we do.
Emily Feairs:
Yes, totally. How did you even think to come up with that? I mean I know you were getting your advance certification, but what is the framework that you had in your brain or your understanding of marriage that allowed you to create that?
Maggie Reyes:
This is such a juicy question. So I completed an advanced certification in Feminist Coaching with a phenomenal Coach named Carlo Undial, whose work I highly recommend. And she just opened my eyes to so many things that I had experienced, but I had no context for. And once she explained the context I was like oh, of course this makes so much sense.
So that tool was actually our final project, it was our homework for that class was we had to create a tool incorporating some of the things we had learned through our training together. And when I sat down to think okay, what would be the most useful thing I could create for my clients? What is the thing that would help them the most? I actually combined two things.
So I have this idea that I talk about on episode one of the podcast, let’s bring that in, episode one is the relationship table and is that you need perspective and partnership and pleasure, you need those three things for a relationship to thrive. Like no matter what you can’t thrive without those three things.
And I’ve thought about it from every possible angle, whether it’s your relationship with your boss, with your kids, with your partner, no matter what, some perspective, some partnership, and some pleasure. If one of those things is missing it just doesn’t get to thriving.
So I thought about it through the lens of what I already teach and I thought oh, how does internalized patriarchy affect pleasure? When do we not ask for things we want, or postpone things that would be pleasurable and delightful for us, or not speak up about things that we would enjoy? Okay, pleasure.
Partnership, how does internalized patriarch affect partnership? What are the things we say yes to and no to and even how we construct the partnership, how does that work? Oh, how does it affect our perspective? If we grow up thinking, and I work with many women married to men, but this also happens in the same sex relationship.
I also have same sex clients where the internalized patriarchy is still inside their roles. It’s like if you’re in this role, I expect you to do this. And if you’re in that role, I expect you to do that. And it’s like oh, it affects all of these things that are the things that create thriving.
So that was one of those days I broke my own brain where I was just sort of thinking through and it was, I have to say it sounds fun. We’re on the podcast, we’re having a good time, some of this stuff is painful. I was like, I remember throwing away sheets of paper and writing a bunch of things and then erasing everything and starting fresh and like okay, hold on.
So some of it is like, it was painful to birth that thing. But that’s really the lens that I looked at it through is like what affects thriving and how then… It sounds like a complicated tool but it’s a very simple tool where we just ask some questions in each of those categories that then uncovers sort of where you land in each of those categories.
And so that’s one of the things that I also try to do both in The Marriage MBA and on the podcast is to take something that feels very complex and vast, and how can I make it simple and applicable for tomorrow? And even in the tool, I just thought inherently in the tool we’re just going to know the tools an imperfect tool.
I’ve already updated a couple times as I’ve taught it, I’ve added things here and there. And it’s just like, let’s know this is a vast topic and this is one way in. And I remember one of my clients, one of the cohorts said, well you didn’t mention this and this and this and this. I’m like, no, but I’m so glad that asking these questions brought those things up. That was the point, that was the point.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah. Which I think is such a great metaphor for just the work that women do with you in The Marriage MBA, is to be in a container in which you ask the questions that you never really could even fathom creating the answers that lead you to figuring out the next questions and the next set of answers. Just the illuminating of the path.
And that’s what I even love about your soul centered communication is you really have broken it down and you’ve done it from the again, that perspective of what does thriving look like and how I describe that versus okay, we’re in the problem and we’re going to figure out how to fix our way out of it.
As you wrote in an email recently about like, how do you unburn a pie? You can’t unburn a pie but you can take these same ingredient, mix them, and try something different and see what comes out. And so that’s what I love about your soul centered communication is that it’s a framework that works everywhere. I’ve even referenced it and had people like executives who were trying to figure out how to write an email about something that’s really heavy and serious and they’re pushing back on their board and I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is the solution here?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes, yes. What does resolution look like?
Emily Feairs:
Exactly, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Emily Feairs:
Are you being super up in your emotions about it and super tight or are you open and huggable right now? Yeah, how do you make this uncomplicated? Are you talking about the problem or are you talking about 18 other things because it’s really uncomfortable for you to talk about the problem?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Emily Feairs:
And then especially for women I think the L, like what is loving to you and them is so important because as women and executives, I think a lot of times we’re so willing to take on shit, that’s the internalized patriarchy, right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Emily Feairs:
Like I’ll just deal with it, it’s so much easier than having, be mansplained to you for the 18th time today. So asking that question of creating a solution that is loving to them and you is always the one that I find is a brain breaker for a lot of people. Like oh wait, I could consider myself in this and what I want?
Maggie Reyes:
What’s so fascinating is that I was truly an unconscious feminist at the point at which I created soul centered communication. I remember telling my husband I was signing up for this advanced certification in Feminist Coaching and I was like, but I’ve never really thought of myself as a feminist. And my husband like dead pan is like, have you met you? It was the best.
But when I created soul centered communication I was sort of not awakened to this, that of course I’ve had these values the whole time. And afterwards when I realized it’s baked in that non-hierarchical, that we are equal, that we all matter into, when I’m talking to someone am I being loving to them and including being loving to me? It’s actually profoundly feminist to say oh, this solution has to work for both of us. How do we move forward and let’s keep exploring until what does work for both of us.
Emily Feairs:
Yes, absolutely. So as a perfectionist and someone who’s been highly ambitious and high achieving, I think my tolerance level for my own personal pain is incredibly high. I am willing to take all the shit, it’s not a problem. You want me to work 24 hours a day, this is not a problem I can do it. It’s really easy for me to swallow down and I think that that’s a habit that I got into when I was very young, based on what made sense for my brain at the time and kept me safe.
So despite unpacking all of that I think it’s again, a really common pattern for a lot of women to only ever start addressing these things when it’s gotten way past the red zone, because we’re just so used to tolerating such high levels. And then it feels like it’s into the red zone and it’s like your pies burnt so what do you do?
How is it that you feel like The Marriage MBA really, that you’ve created the way in which you help women not problem solve from the hole that they’re in, but really hold this higher perspective of what thriving could look like and bridge that gap for them from like, we’re here and it’s way past and we’re in the red zone to-
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. I always try to take a multi-pronged approach so that every tool can sort of help you in different ways. I think from like day one, class one we talked about what’s your vision? What are your values? What matters to you? And everything we do after that is sort of feeding into what could that vision be?
Even if it feels far away right now, if you could have it the way you wanted it who would you be in your marriage? How would you show up as a wife or a partner or anything like that? And I think that again, it’s something that’s both kind complicated and simple at the same time. It’s like I try to simplify every piece in that process as best as I can, and then we do troubleshoot when things happen.
And one of the things that happens is very often if you haven’t been telling the truth a lot and you suddenly start telling your partner the truth on a regular basis, guess what, it’s not going to be delightful. They might get annoyed, you might get annoyed. And so it’s like those are the things we do troubleshoot as we go.
It’s like one of the pieces of guidance I probably give the most anytime I’m Coaching is okay, when you want to have a conversation with someone here’s a framework to follow, and don’t have that conversation until any answer is okay. Let’s work through where you are right now, let’s work through all of the things that are going on for you where you could receive any answer and not be completely knocked off your center.
So I try to be very proactive. And even with the way I think about triggers or emotional activations, We can minimize the front end and we can manage the back end. And I think that’s how I run the program overall is like, what are the things we can minimize, eliminate, take care of that we don’t even have to deal with those things anymore? Any of those things let’s address as best as we can. And then the stuff that’s left, how do we manage it when the shit hits the fan?
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, yeah. Which I love, it’s sort of like you’re giving the framework for where we’re going, like the map for where we’re going, and giving us a boost out of the hole at the same time.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. And I think there’s a balance for me as a teacher that some things are aspirational and some things are very practical. So I talk about The Five Star Marriage and I have an episode on that too, and we talk about five star thinking inside the program and what is five star? What is thriving? What is the best it can be?
Some of that is aspirational. Some of that is, you could also have a great marriage and a four star. If we think about the St. Regis Bora Bora, which is my ultimate five star location, and then we think about a lovely Hyatt that has a beautiful view and great room service and you just feel delighted, you can have a great four star experience.
And everybody’s sort of coming into things in different places, and if you’re coming from this sort of scratchy sheets, cold showers, motel marriage situation, even if we get to a three star which is like have a hot breakfast. So I think I try to mix that aspirational, what is the best you can possibly be, with and what’s going to happen on Tuesday?
Emily Feairs:
Right, yeah. And you do, just short answer you do, you do that very well.
Maggie Reyes:
Good, good.
Emily Feairs:
So something that intimidated me going in was this idea of a group program. I was like girl, that was my dirtiest laundry, I can’t believe I’m going to talk about it. I think as a perfectionist I had this idea that if something was wrong in my marriage, who am I? How could I possibly be a functioning human in the society? What do people think of me?
And so I’d love to hear about what it is that you think that women get out of being in a group program. You’ve talked about the feminist aspect of that and also just having these kinds of conversations in the company of other women. So I’d love to hear from you too as to why a group format and what do you love about it and what do you think your clients get out of it?
Maggie Reyes:
I think there’s several, I’m just going to tell you some off the top of my head now, and we can probably do just a whole episode on that someday. But one thing is because I Coach a lot of high achieving women there’s a lot of high achieving women in the room. And sometimes you look around and you’re like oh, she has that problem and she has that problem?
And I remember one of my clients saying, what I’m realizing is these are just normal people problems. Like the destigmatization of oh, this person’s also a massively high achiever and she also, they have dishes and laundry and things happened.
So just that, that idea I think that reduces loneliness, that reduces blame, that reduces our over judgment of ourselves. And we’re like oh, first let me just see, okay, this is just humanity being human, I can work through this. So that’s one.
The other thing I have found both as a client and as a teacher and a Coach is it’s very, very easy for me when I’m a client in a group situation to take on somebody’s Coaching because I am not emotionally activated by what’s being said.
So sometimes when I’m being Coached directly, sometimes very powerful Coaching can be confronting. Like it’s upsetting, it’s not delightful, I have uncovered something about myself that isn’t the best news I’ve ever gotten. And when it’s happening to me directly I have to overcome that emotional reaction to then receive whatever the Coaching is.
When you’re watching someone else get Coached you can see oh, I do that sometimes too. Oh, I might have a little bit of that too. But you’re not overcoming that emotional reaction and I think it lands in a different way. And I always say you in the group thank you for taking one for the team, because all of us go through this. And then everybody’s nodding. And I think that idea is also important that you receive it in a different way.
And then another thing is when we’re in a group and we see everybody else’s situations, I think it prepares us for things we haven’t even thought about. Like somebody might be struggling with communication, and somebody else with sexual issues, and somebody else with parenting it’s like oh, I haven’t even had a kid yet.
Good to know these are some of the things I need to talk about later. I think it gives you sort of food for thought beyond what would be in your normal day to day life. So those are just a few of the things that I think are really powerful. What’s one thing that was powerful for you that comes to mind?
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, so it wasn’t just being in the room of high achievers and having them normalize exactly what I was feeling, but it was also having them champion each other. Like you share all your shit so you get real intimate, real quick with a lot of faces on a screen.
And to have them say something on a Facebook post or in the group at the end be like, oh my God, Emily, thank you so much for sharing that, that hit home. Or girl, you got this. To know that they were all powerful, amazing, awesome women and they are rooting for you, just felt like you had an entire team at your back.
And it’s so much different than the feeling of isolation that you came into this with, which was I’m alone, I’m screwing it all up, everyone else knows how to do it and I don’t. Or my partner’s screwing it up and I’m screwed. Having that completely different, like the group format went from being a thing I had to overcome to being the win that was at my back really.
Maggie Reyes:
Love it.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
You did so good.
Emily Feairs:
Okay, now it’s time for you to answer a question from your own book. I have opened to a random page, and I think this is a great question because it helps us understand your perspective on a thriving marriage. And it’s, if you could look back at all the things you did yesterday how did you make sure your schedule matched your priorities? What would you do differently?
Maggie Reyes:
Oh my God, that’s such a good question. I love it so much. Specifically thinking about yesterday because yesterday my husband and I checked in at multiple times throughout the day of what was the plan? What are we doing? Who’s doing what where? How’s it happening? We do that a lot actually now thinking of about it, and that’s how we ensure that our schedule and our priorities match is we check in on minor things on a regular basis.
It doesn’t mean we don’t make plans without each other, it doesn’t mean we don’t explore things without each other, we just check in. And it’s like oh, I have a call with my sister. Oh okay, I’m going to go see my brother. Things like that and the okay, so we’re going to meet again at 7:00. Okay great, we’ll meet again then. Hey, do you want to eat something now?
That checking in, which I think a lot of us forget to do, I have forgotten to do it also, but we are definitely in the habit and do that very, very often is one of the most important ways that we ensure that our schedule and our priorities align.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, it sounds like, when you’re describing that it sounds like the perfect essence of partnership right there is just working together. And you also are getting your own pleasure by seeking up the things that you want to do. And you have the perspective of like, of course you can go do that and I can go do this and we can both meet together.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes, well said.
Emily Feairs:
Thank you so much for answering all my questions. Maggie, it has been fascinating understanding your side of this entire Coaching relationship and getting a peek into where The Marriage MBA came from, where marriage Coaching itself came from, and why you are a champion at it in the world, why you are the Oprah of Marriage Coaching.
Maggie Reyes:
Thank you so much. I received that as the highest compliment because if anyone listens to the podcast for any length of time, you will know all roads lead to Oprah.
Emily Feairs:
All roads lead to Oprah.
Maggie Reyes:
Thank you, Emily, for just being so open hearted always for these beautiful questions, for your presence and my life, for your presence in the life of every single listener of the podcast. Thank you so, so, so much. Please tell people where they can find you.
Emily Feairs:
You can go find me on Instagram @EmilyFeairs. It’s E-M-I-L-Y-F-E-A-I-R-S.
Maggie Reyes:
Love it.
Emily Feairs:
Yeah, find me there. Follow me along.
Maggie Reyes:
We will link to that in the show notes. Thanks everyone, bye.
Emily Feairs:
Thank you.