I am so excited to share this week’s conversation with you. I had the joy and honor of being a guest on the Money, Manifestation, and Business podcast with my friend, former life coaching client, and brilliant coach Jamie Berman.

We had a deep conversation about navigating money and manifestation in your relationships. And when I say manifestation, it’s really just about managing different values and approaches, no matter what you’re talking about with your partner.

(A quick note before we dive in: I primarily work with women married to men, and so much of what I teach is about the patriarchal mindsets we ALL carry — regardless of gender — because we’ve all been swimming in that water our whole lives. If you’re in a same-sex relationship, the psychology here is remarkably similar. Stress responses don’t discriminate, and neither does the conditioning that shapes how we talk about money. Come on in — this is for you too.)

Why I’m Sharing This Episode

I wanted to share this interview with you because I recently heard from someone named Amanda who listened to this episode.

With her permission, I’m sharing her story: She sent it to her fiancé and he listened to it and took notes. They both had a really important and powerful conversation about money afterwards.

She said that listening to this conversation changed not only how they talk about money but how they approach harder conversations in general — and honestly, that’s exactly what this work is all about.

I hope you find this conversation useful and fun and get a lot out of it, just like Amanda did.

Our Entire Life Happens Inside of a Conversation

One of the first things I said to Jamie is this: Our entire life happens inside of a conversation.

Our entire life. Every single thing. Our relationships, our work, our money, our dreams — all of it happens inside of conversations we’re having.

When you take the perspective that everything in your life happens inside of a conversation, getting really good at conversations becomes a really good idea.

Even in money and manifestation — what is our conversation about money, to money, with money? What is our conversation about manifestation or creation? Where are we at in that?

The Soul-Centered Communication Framework

Based on this understanding, I developed a framework called Soul-Centered Communication.

Connected conversations have three elements:

• You’re connected to yourself — to your inner power, to your resourcefulness, to your magnificence.
• You’re connected to the other person — in your positive regard about them. You’re connected to the highest and best part of them.
• You’re connected to the purpose of the conversation — why we’re here today.

Any problem we have in life, if we look back, there’s some disconnection in our conversations.

The Soul-Centered Communication framework gives us a way to stay connected. Here’s what SOUL stands for:

S — Solution-Focused. Keep your eye on what you want, not on the problem. What do I want in this conversation? What is the goal? What does resolution look like?

O — Open-Hearted. Open-minded, open to new ideas. Not attached to being right or having it look a specific way.

U — Uncomplicated. One thing. One thing only. And then the next thing. How can I make what I’m working on uncomplicated so I can actually move forward?

L — Loving. Am I loving and respecting myself equally as the other person? (This one, my friend, is the one most of us skip.) Many of my clients prioritize everyone and everything else — leaving themselves either for last or not even on the list. The most basic version of the “L” is simply: Am I including myself?

Stress Cycles: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Appease

Here’s what happens when we’re not having soul-centered conversations: We’re in stress cycles.

Fight, flight, freeze, appease — we’re activated in some way. When we’re activated, we don’t have access to our best resourcefulness, our best creativity, or all the things that make us who we are.

If you’re triggered around money — or if you’re coming at the conversation already triggered — that’s what we want to address first. The first step to minimizing the impact that stress cycles have on our relationships is simply recognizing that they’re happening.

How to Recognize the Four Stress Cycles:

Fight: Raised voices, aggressive language, defensiveness.

Flight: Checking out, picking up the phone, leaving the room — physically or mentally.

Freeze: The brain goes blank. You know the answer but you can’t access it. Just having the awareness that “Oh, I’m in freeze” is so powerful.

Appease: Saying yes to things you’d rather say no to, just to make the conversation stop.

The Example That Illuminates Everything

Here’s how appease shows up in intimate relationships — and why it matters so much for money conversations specifically.

Let’s say the faucet is broken and you ask your partner to fix it. He has zero interest in fixing it — this is genuinely the last thing he wants to do. And yet he says: “Yeah, I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

You can feel it. He hasn’t thought about it. He hasn’t looked at his schedule. Nothing has actually been decided.

He’s in appease mode. He’s saying yes to make the conversation stop.

Here’s the liberatory part: In that moment, he is not lying to you. He 100 percent believes himself. He thinks he’s going to fix the faucet. What he’s actually doing is having a stress response — often a completely unconscious one.

When you can see it that way — when you can recognize “oh, he’s in appease mode” instead of “he doesn’t care about me” — it opens up a whole new level of connection. You can recognize their cycles and work with them. You can decide: Should we keep talking? Should we step away? Should we reschedule?

This is especially important in money conversations, where stress cycles get activated fast and appease can masquerade as agreement for a very long time.

Cultivating Psychological Safety

So how do we create conversations where we’re less likely to be in stress cycles?

We cultivate psychological safety.

I used to work in HR, and psychological safety was a concept we talked about a lot. Google did some fascinating research on what made their most effective teams most effective — and what they found was that the teams with the highest psychological safety were the most productive. Everything went better.

Now imagine that in a marriage. In a money conversation.

How do we make it safe to talk about money?

One thing that helps: being mindful of the words we choose.

The words we use create and inspire feelings and results.

You could say: “We have a problem.”

Or you could say: “We have an opportunity.”

Do you feel the difference? The words we choose create the container for the conversation — and that container matters enormously when the topic is something as charged as money.

Truth with a Capital T

Here’s something I always think about: Truth with a capital T is going to be the same.

Soul-Centered Communication. Manifestation. These are all pointing toward the same thing: Creating connection. Creating clarity. Creating what we want in our lives.

And it all happens inside of a conversation.

Listen to the Full Episode

This conversation with my friend, former life coaching client, and brilliant coach Jamie Berman is one I keep coming back to — we went deep on the full Soul-Centered Communication framework, all four stress cycles, psychological safety, and how the words we choose create the container for every conversation we have. Jamie is the kind of person who makes every conversation richer, and this one is no exception.

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Connect with Jamie Berman

Follow her on Instagram: @jamieberman_

Listen to Jamie’s Podcast – The Money, Manifestation & Business Podcast: https://jamieberman.com/podcast/

Visit her website: https://jamieberman.com/

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Join the Growth Gap Workshop (FREE)

If you’re navigating any kind of relationship challenge and want support, I invite you to join my free Growth Gap Workshop. I teach you how to bridge the gap when you and your husband are growing at different speeds—and these principles apply to all aspects of your relationship.

Get access to the workshop for free here

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Work With Me Privately

If you’re a woman in a marriage that’s safe but stuck, mostly good but not nourishing, private coaching might be perfect for you. I work with women who have already decided to stay and want to close the gap between where their marriage is and where they know it can be.

Learn more about private coaching here.

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About Maggie Reyes

Maggie Reyes is a Master Certified Life Coach and feminist marriage coach for high-achieving women who want to strengthen marriages that feel stuck but not broken. She is the host of The Marriage Life Coach Podcast, ranked in the top 2% globally, where she teaches high-achieving women the practical relationship skills they were never taught in school.

Through individual marriage coaching for women, Maggie helps clients improve communication, reconnect emotionally, and create real change in their relationships — even if their partner isn’t interested in couples therapy or coaching. She is the author of the bestselling Questions for Couples Journal and creator of the Soul-Centered Communication framework.

Maggie’s work is rooted in feminist values. While she primarily works with women married to men — navigating the patriarchal programming (and deprogramming) that shapes those relationships — she has also supported women in same-sex marriages. The same kinds of communication patterns, emotional disconnection, conflict loops, and repair skills apply regardless of gender. Her work is inclusive of diverse identities and experiences.

Marriage coaching for women who want to feel connected, not just committed

If you love your husband but feel disconnected, stuck in the same arguments, or exhausted from carrying the emotional load of the relationship, you’re not alone — and your side of the table is where your power lives.

Maggie specializes in individual marriage coaching for high-achieving women who want to feel loved, respected, and deeply connected again. Whether you’re looking for communication tools, emotional clarity, or a new way forward in your marriage, you’ll find support here.

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💛 A gentle note: The frameworks I share here are designed for relationships that feel stuck but fundamentally safe. If something in your relationship feels like more than “stuck” — if you’re experiencing patterns that feel frightening, controlling, or that you can’t quite name — I gently encourage you to speak with a therapist or mental health professional who can offer the specific support you deserve. You don’t have to navigate that alone.

✨ A note on individual experiences: Every relationship exists within a unique context — and that context matters. Your experience with this work is shaped not just by your willingness, but by your circumstances, your support system, your safety, your history, and the very real weight of cultural conditioning, systemic pressures, and everything else you’re navigating right now (financial stress, family expectations, workplace dynamics, health — all of it). Results vary because humans vary, and humans exist within systems. What I offer are tools, frameworks, and guidance. What you bring is your whole, complex, beautiful self. That combination looks different for everyone — and that’s not a flaw in the work or in you. It’s just reality, honored.

✨ This blog post was created in collaboration with my team and my AI writing partner, Claude. I bring the ideas, the heart, and the years of coaching experience — Claude helps me get it all organized into actual sentences with punctuation and everything. 😄 It really does take a village.

With so much love, Maggie