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Maggie Reyes:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, I have a friend, a colleague, an icon who’s going to join us. His name is Alexander James, and I tried to think about how I would describe him to all of you.
I hope that some of you know him already, and those that don’t know him, you’re going to just love him by the end of this episode, I know, and I tried to look for words to describe him, and I looked at his Instagram profile and he talks about intimacy, embodiment, and soul alignment.
And so, I just decided that his title for our episode is Alexandra James is an icon of intimacy, embodiment, and soul alignment, and the only way I can introduce him to all of you is that he’s a Coach, but he’s so much more than a Coach, and he’s my friend, but he’s so much more than my friend.
Alexander James:
Oh, Maggie. I just have to say you are the bane of my existence and the object of all my desires.
Maggie Reyes:
No, you didn’t. Okay, he found a Bridgerton quote just for me.
Alexander James:
Yes, Maggie’s been introducing me to Bridgerton. Now, it’s in my algorithm, Maggie. I’m on the meme train and I see all their little things.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it.
Alexander James:
There you go. That was for you. Thank you. Wow, what an intro. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here, Maggie. For anybody who’s listening, I had Maggie on my podcast which is The Subconscious Coaching Podcast, and we had so much fun, and so, I’m so excited for round two. I’m already wanting to have you back on my podcast because there’s just so much we could talk about.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it. Yes, I’m ready to go back. You’re here now. It’s just, this is how it’s going to be now, and we will link to our episode on your podcast on the show notes. So, I think everyone will have a blast listening to that. I talk a little bit over there about so many different things.
Alexander James:
Yeah, we got into some fun jams.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Okay. So, today the reason I invited you on, besides the fact that I adore you, is you asked me a question that blew my mind, and I love really powerful questions. I teach powerful questions on the podcast. Episode two of this podcast is power questions.
It’s like we have to start with questions always, and you asked me what am I committed to, and it was like, I had all this confusion in my mind. I was trying to make a decision about something, and I had been working through it for two or three weeks, and you just asked me one question that cut through everything else, and I was so clear.
The moment you asked me that question, I was like, “Oh, I know exactly what I’m committed to. Now everything else is obvious.” And so, after that incredible moment, the birds chirped, the violins played, the harpers harped, and I was like, “You have to come on the show and we have to talk about this.”
Alexander James:
Yeah. Man, of course, because when we’re talking about relationships and we’re talking about a relationship specifically where we’ve made a commitment, the theme of commitment comes up over and over again in small ways and large ways.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. And so, Alexander is currently branding business sort of Coach, guide, healer, mystic, icon and those realms, but he used to be a relationship Coach. Is that right?
Alexander James:
Yes, that’s correct. Yeah, and I was a relationship Coach for gay men. So, if I can Coach gay men into happy, whole, healed relationships, I can Coach anybody after that.
Maggie Reyes:
Right?
Alexander James:
That’s all I have to say. It’s like, all right.
Maggie Reyes:
We want to hear.
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
What was the biggest thing, okay, this is kind of a little bit, we’re just going to go with whatever our inspiration leads us, but what was the biggest issue that you saw when you were Coaching gay men? What was their biggest block to having a thriving relationship?
Alexander James:
Shame.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. So, it’s the same for everybody.
Alexander James:
Yeah, it’s the same for everybody. It just takes a different flavor because there’s so much internalized misogyny in gay men that then gets turned on themselves for their own aspects of themselves, and straight men too, any aspect of themselves that’s feminine or not masculine enough.
But I would say also in gay culture at large, that collective shame or the collective trauma creates this culture that is hypercritical and hyper-perfectionistic, and there’s so much of gay culture is actually just a response to the deep shame response.
So, it’s like, I’m going to have the perfect six-figure job, and I have to live in the perfect neighborhood, and all my china plates have to be perfect, and the cool ones, and from the coolest places, and I have to be going to the right vacation place, and I have to have the eight-pack.
It can’t be a six-pack. It has to be an eight-pack. It’s so much overcompensation and trying to earn love that is a response to living and growing up in a world where you have basically been indoctrinated with this idea that you are less than.
Maggie Reyes:
What’s so interesting to me is everything you described, everything you described is the journey of so many of my clients as Type A women, driven to perform, to have the right job, the right house, the right degree, to the right car that you drive, all of these things.
Because we live in a society where we’re devalued, where being us isn’t, quote, unquote, “enough,” and then we go for all these external things. And then we show up in our life one day and we’re like, “Well, I have all the things that I thought were supposed to make me happy, and this isn’t really what I thought it was going to be, and now I’m married to someone that I kind of sort of like, but we don’t actually get along that well, and now what.”
Alexander James:
Yeah. I thought of this morning actually as I was eating breakfast, but it was like so much of, you say this thing constantly that I love which is that things don’t have to be perfect in order to be awesome.
Maggie Reyes:
Yep.
Alexander James:
And I was Coaching somebody in their business recently and they were talking about all this comparing that they were doing to everybody else in business, and oh, but this person writes better copy, and this person has been doing it longer, and this person has more clients, and all those other things.
And I just asked her, I was like, “Is that how you feel in your relationship with your husband?” She was like, “Oh no.” I was like, “Because there’s people who are smarter and maybe have a, quote, unquote, ‘better body’ or make more money or whatever it is. But there’s something in that relationship that’s different and it’s the connection to you.” Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Alexander James:
And so, what I was thinking about this morning was if you want to see yourself, and that’s where connection really begins is by knowing who you are. Right? Or no, sorry, if you want to be yourself, you have to see yourself, and if you want to see yourself first, you have to free yourself.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh, so good.
Alexander James:
And so, it’s so much of this journey into intimacy is about freeing ourself from the shame that we have internalized because that is what is operating all of our relationships subconsciously, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, underneath. And it’s so interesting because I always talk about how we need to cultivate self-awareness for the purpose of self-authority.
Alexander James:
Oh, hold on. Let’s talk about that. Let’s have that conversation.
Maggie Reyes:
So I mean, it’s sort of talked about in a lot of different Coaching realms, but I think that old-fashioned psychology, original psychology was awareness for awareness sake. This is a broad strokes kind of thing, but it was-
Alexander James:
Yeah, it’s a little almost indulgent.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, it was the thing that kind of annoyed me that I’m kind of like, “Well, what’s the point of all this knowledge?” Okay, I could remember when I was teased when I was 12 years old because I had big, curly hair, and it was frizzy, and I’m in Miami, and I was a nerd, and I was really smart, and people would tease me.
Okay. And now what? And so, that was my frustration, my personal frustrations. I’m not saying all psychology, but there was this old-fashioned thread that was like, “Let’s have all this awareness.”
I always joke around with my husband because he’s an engineer which is applied science, for scientists, and I am a Life Coach, it’s applied science in the psychology realm, and I’m like, “Oh, we’re both just applied scientists. What do we do with that awareness?”
Alexander James:
Yes. Well, because that’s the thing is that awareness doesn’t create change. Right? It’s the precursor, but you have a new awareness, you have a new awareness. It’s awareness plus action is what creates a new result.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. Awareness plus action is what creates a new result. Let’s all just break that down today, and I think when we think about what we’re committed to, in order to really understand what we’re being committed to, how our commitments are showing up in our life, what they look like, what’s happening, we have to start looking at the results we’ve created because it will tell us immediately what we’re committed to.
Right? I always love the question. We did an episode with Tamara Lee who’s a money Coach, and she said, “Well, look at your bank account. That’ll show you what you’re committed to, whatever you spend money on.” One of my clients, later she signed up for The Marriage MBA, she’s like, “I heard her say that,” and she was like, “When have I spent any money on my marriage?” She had spent zero.
Alexander James:
Yeah. You throw a big party, you got a big rock, and then you stop spending money on it. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Sometimes I think about things that inspire me, and sometimes I think about things that rile me up and both of those things can propel you into action. So, for everyone listening, things can inspire you and get you motivated, and things that rile you up can get you motivated.
And I remember very clearly when I was getting married, and just imagine, I love romance novels. I’m all about it. I’m like, “Let’s have an amazing wedding.” Totally, we had Christmas ornaments for our favor for the wedding, like feel it, and he said truth and love, and some other word I don’t remember, but it was like we had this really beautiful thing about our values.
We’re on the thing. So, all about it. But also I was like, “Why are there articles about 47 ways to fold the napkin? And where are the articles about what to do when you freak out?”
Alexander James:
Yes. Oh my god.
Maggie Reyes:
And it really rankled me and the origin of my business was somebody needs to talk about those things.
Alexander James:
Right.
Maggie Reyes:
And the way I saw it back then was if you’re in dire straits, there’s counseling and therapy, but you don’t really associate that with thriving, with if you’re not in dire straits but you’re just mildly annoyed, but you have a low-grade annoyance that doesn’t go away.
Alexander James:
Right. So, it’s chronic. And I always talk about if you deal with the small things while they’re small things, they don’t become big things.
Maggie Reyes:
This is one of my favorite things you teach. I love that you said it on the podcast.
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. We need to spend a minute on this. If you deal with the small things while they are small things, they never become big things. Alexander James, quote him.
Alexander James:
Yeah, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. To make this analogy, it’s so much easier to deal with something when it’s stage one versus stage four.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. Yes. No matter what it is, yes.
Alexander James:
No matter what it is. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Alexander James:
Obviously, the analogy there is cancer, but it’s like if you catch it early, it is just so much less time, so much less pain, so much less stress on your relationship which is stress in your physical body, stress on your nervous system.
That impacts every single area of your life. Right? I think the statistic that I’ve seen everywhere is like 70% of people’s reported happiness comes from the quality and depth of intimacy in their relationships.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh yes. Mm-hmm. There’s a longitudinal study from Harvard.
Alexander James:
I knew you’d know it. I knew you would. Yes, give it to us. Go Maggie.
Maggie Reyes:
That is basically the longest study ever conducted over, I don’t know, something like 80 years where at the end of life, it didn’t matter what car you drove, what house you had, the stuff you did, your accomplishment. It’s like the quality of your relationships, and in very specific ways.
So, it’s not necessarily that you were married or not married. It’s that you felt you had someone in your life that had your back, and there’s some part of that, which somebody can look up if you’re interested in the detail, but there’s some part of that it’s like if you are married, there’s other research that it’s like a thriving relationship is good for you, but a toxic relationship is bad for you. Right?
So, when you’re experiencing a lot of stress because you’re married, all the effects of stress are creating disease in the body, and if you’re experiencing thriving, connection, loving, joy, laughter, then you’re creating health in your body. There’s a very deep mind, body, soul connection there.
But before we even go into that tension, I want to go back to how the little things are so important because it’s something that comes up in so many ways, and what you said about if you treat the things when they’re little, they don’t become big.
So, as much as I love Bridgerton, I also love Oprah. I also talk about Oprah all the time on the podcast, and one of the things that Oprah says… If you guys can see Alexander’s face, he’s like, “To the surprise of no one.”
Alexander James:
Exactly. Well, I just want to quote her now. I want to go, “Let’s have that conversation.”
Maggie Reyes:
Let’s do it.
Alexander James:
Right?
Maggie Reyes:
So, she says, “Get it on the whisper.”
Alexander James:
Ooh.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Alexander James:
Yeah, let’s get it on the whisper. Okay.
Maggie Reyes:
She’s like, “Your life will talk to you. Your life will start talking to you.” This is all Oprah. This is what she says. She says, “Your life will talk to you. It’ll talk to you in whispers, and it’ll keep talking until you listen and it’ll get louder and louder, and things will go wrong, things will happen until a brick wall just falls on top of you, and it feels like everything is falling apart.” She’s like, “The best advice I could ever give all of you is get it on the whisper.”
Alexander James:
Yes. That’s so good.
Maggie Reyes:
Which is this, it’s like the little things, when you treat them when they’re little never have to become the big things. Now, here’s the duality, paradox. You tell me what this is because this is something I talk about all the time.
And it’s also about little things and big things, but from a different place on the prism which is so often because we’re socialized, as in my case, we’re socialized as women, our contributions to so many parts of life are discounted, and we have this outsized notion of what progress looks like or what success looks like, and we think about the Oscar moments.
So, especially in marriage Coaching, we think about those moments where we’re so connected and everything is amazing. Right? There’s an experience of a deficiency if we’re not having the Oscar moment. Something is wrong.
So, what I tell my clients is this. We look at the Oscar moments, and we forget that the Oscars are made at 5:00 AM, at rehearsal, running your lines in your sweats in a hot alley somewhere, probably in Atlanta, since everything is from Georgia these days. Right? The way you get there is going to a hundred auditions, not getting any roles until you get the one role and then you have to break. So, those moments, the good morning that you greet your partner with, the kindness that you do something with, the welcome when you get back home, those little moments, so back to the big and little, they got to be, are what create the big moments.
Alexander James:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
What are your thoughts?
Alexander James:
So, I’m all about ambiance, and so, everywhere I’m going, every restaurant I go to, I’m always sitting and I’m like, “What is the ambiance?” Because I truly do believe that 90% of what you pay for when you go to a restaurant is the ambiance. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Alexander James:
At the end of the day, the ingredients can’t be that expensive, and yes, there’s chef and other things, but really, it’s the ambiance. The reason why we go on romantic dinners, the reason why those become the Oscar moments is because the ambiance is set up in the restaurant for you to just melt into each other, and I think we can create an ambiance in our relationship that allows for that same thing to happen.
We can create with those little things, that little post-it note in the lunch box, or one of my favorite things to do is when I’m with someone, with a partner, it’s like I love to just take a towel when they’re in the shower and put it in the dryer and then pull it out and give it to them so they just have this hot, warm… You know what I mean?
It’s like those little touches are really what separate the good or the three star from the five star. It’s those little touches. And so, you can’t overestimate the power of creating an ambiance where you just can’t help but to fall in love with each other.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes, this is a hundred percent. So, I teach a concept called the Five Star Marriage. We’ll link to that in the show notes too. But this is the whole idea that, and when you go to any luxury experience, like a five-star hotel, that experience is engineered. It doesn’t just happen.
A thriving relationship is engineered. It doesn’t just happen. We do it on purpose intentionally, and at first, it seems like you’re turning a huge ship around. It seems clunky and wobbly and heavy and odd, and then it just becomes your new normal. Right? I think that it becomes who you are. It becomes how you live.
If you notice, even Alexander and I, we’re very good friends, we love each other a lot, and it doesn’t take a lot of effort to do that because it’s our new normal, but we will immediately, like in the intro, he had a quote for me and I had a description for him.
We do these little things that are showing loving connection that take zero energy. We do them with delight. Right? For anyone who’s listening where that isn’t your new normal, where that isn’t your normal, what I want you to know is it becomes your normal and then it gets easier. What are your thoughts?
Alexander James:
Well, it’s just so funny because I had that idea on the podcast, mostly because I just wanted to see your delight of when I delivered that line, and then I forgot to do it on my podcast, and then when you invited me on yours, I was like, “Yes, this is the moment I’m going to get to do it.” Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Alexander James:
But I think that love is… I love that you talk about it being engineered because love is both a science and an art, and we are all lovers, and we’re all built and meant to create love in the world, and each of us is an artist in the way that we love one another.
Each of us has a unique way that we were built to express love. One of the beautiful things is that as you… Like any artist, you’re going to have to learn how to draw a straight line, and then learn how to draw a circle, and then you have to learn how to do perspective and you have to learn how to do shading.
Right? There’s these things that are the engineering parts of art, when I was in art school that you have to learn how to do before you can start really getting to express your vision into the world and express your deepest, authentic, most true identity as a lover, not just of a person, but of all people and of life.
And so, I think the most beautiful thing about what you teach is you teach people those fundamental skills and then you take them to that next level in your work, Maggie, and they get to actually experience the truth of who they are.
They get to experience what it feels like to have love flowing through you, and that’s one of the most beautiful, pure ways to experience love is letting it come into you from above and then expressing it through your soul out into the world, and what a beautiful canvas a relationship like a marriage is to get to experience your own heart.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh, experience your own heart. Yes, that’s it. It’s who you want to be in the world. You do things in your relationship because of who you want to be in the world, for your experience of your own heart.
I love that so much, and I love this analogy also from a Coaching perspective, as a person who Coaches and teaches other people, where when I Coach people or teach something, it’s not for the purpose of anyone becoming more like me.
It’s for the person to become more of themselves, and this analogy, it’s like I teach you some of these relationship skills, some simple things like pausing and breathing and tracking what’s going on inside, very simple things so that you come up with what is loving for you. Right? Not what would be loving for me, but would be loving for you and your partner.
Alexander James:
Yes. Well, because love is so much fun. It’s so much fun to love and to get to express love and to just be love out in the world. It’s the best feeling, and so often so much of what keeps us from doing that is all of the little stuff that’s piled up along the way.
All those resentments, all the things that happened to us when we were younger, all of the things that we learned or saw modeled for us that weren’t healthy, that trigger our nervous systems, or put us into fight or flight, or whatever it is that take us out of the space of being the authentic, expressed creators and painting life with love. And so, it’s just so cool.
What I love about your work and what has always resonated so deeply with me is it really just feels like this is your way of loving the world is through your work. This is your expression of love to the world, and I know that it started in your own work in your relationship.
As we’re talking about marriage, or as we’re talking about relationships, know that that’s the start point, and once the love grows there and you find your authentic identity as a lover, that love and that purpose expands into your work.
It expands into how you raise your children. It expands into everything that you do and it infuses your life with the feeling of aliveness, with the feeling of feeling your beating heart and the energy that resides within you be expressed into the world.
I’m getting all riled up because that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to experience our own love and experience ourselves as creators and lovers in this planet and the time we have. I feel like so many of us just never have the opportunity to fully experience ourselves in that way, and it’s such a liberating experience.
Maggie Reyes:
It’s so amazing to find the part of you that’s hardest to love and love that part of you.
Alexander James:
Maggie, I wrote this this morning on my Instagram. I have to open it up because I never remember what I write. I just get these little blips. I don’t remember where I heard this or what’s it’s an amalgamation of. It is this-
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, ready.
Alexander James:
… healing is not becoming the best version of yourself. Healing is allowing the, quote, unquote, worst version of yourself to be loved.
Maggie Reyes:
See, this is why Alexander and I are friends.
Alexander James:
Boom. Connected. We’re connected. On the same wavelength.
Maggie Reyes:
This is how we go.
Alexander James:
Yeah. We’re always on the same thoughts at the same time. We’re like, same realization.
Maggie Reyes:
Same. It’s insane. Okay. Read it again. I need to hear it again. I need everybody to hear it again and I need to hear it again because I think it’s so good.
Alexander James:
Healing is not becoming the best version of yourself. Healing is allowing the worst version of yourself to be loved.
Maggie Reyes:
Healing is allowing the worst version of yourself to be loved.
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
And for me, what comes up a lot is not only the, quote, unquote, worst version, but also the tender, scared, fearful version.
Alexander James:
Yeah, super sensitive, super raw, super…
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, that part of me.
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
It’s like that part of me I think is the most afraid part. It’s the part of me that’s sort of strong and righteous and whatever, she’s there and it’s good to love her, but the part that I think I would be most afraid of showing and sharing and being, it’s like, oh, this part that feels really tiny.
I’m talking to Alexander and I’m even contracting as I’m saying it which is interesting. It’s like that part. Can we love that part? And what I see happens so much with partnerships is we see that part in our partners, and if we cannot generate any compassion for that part of ourselves, we judge the heck out of that part in our partners. So, self-loathing becomes loathing loathing.
Alexander James:
100%. Yeah, That’s the whole theory of projection. Right? It’s like, whatever. Here’s what I would say, if you spot it, you got it.
Maggie Reyes:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, both on the awesome side.
Alexander James:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
Right? And on the not so awesome side.
Alexander James:
And the not so awesome side. So, if you see something in someone else and you’re like, “Oh, I can’t be with that,” that’s always going to be your… That’s your relationship to that thing. Right? If someone’s needy and you can’t be with that neediness, that’s your relationship to neediness.
So, the neediness that’s in you because we all have all of it. Right? We’ve all been kind and we’ve all been cruel. We’ve all been generous and we’ve all been selfish. Everybody has everything. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. Ooh, everybody has everything.
Alexander James:
Everybody has everything.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that. Yeah.
Alexander James:
We’re just in different proportions or whatever, but we all got all of it, and the work of integrating and being able to love holistically is being with the totality and the all, and sometimes it takes a sacred mirror that is your partner to come in and really have you see it because you be like, “Oh, I’m not needy. No, I’m never needy. I don’t have that da, da, da, da.”
Right? But it’s because of that relationship you have with neediness that you’ve spent your whole life building a life where you don’t need anybody, where you’ve built a whole personality around defending yourself and not opening yourself up to those needy parts of you. Right?
You’ve spent your whole life creating an entire subconscious schema and paradigm and structure that allows you to not have to ever be with that part of yourself so much so that you can disown it, and you can be like, “Oh yeah, I’m not needy. I don’t have that thing,” when in reality you do, and it’s just starving for love.
It’s just starving for love, and it’s so hard to be with that piece of yourself when you’ve spent your whole life building walls around it so you don’t have to be with it or see it or be in touch with it, and then of course you’re going to get placed with a partner who has it on full display and you’re just writhing in agony because it’s so repulsive to you, and it’s always a call to go within.
Maggie Reyes:
I love that you said it’s always a call to go within because I think one of the things I like to do on the show is really have nuance where it’s a call to go within, it doesn’t mean every behavior is acceptable. It doesn’t mean everything is all right. So, there could be something that repulses you that just repulses you and you’re out.
Alexander James:
Totally.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s it. Right? And there could be something that is a call to go within to notice why we’re having that reaction. What is that about? Where is our growth in that? And I always talk about, because I talk to a lot of people in situations where they’re not sure where their relationship is going, they kind of want to stay in it and they think it could work and they think it’d be amazing, and then sometimes they’re like, “Well, but I don’t know.”
The way that I think about it is sometimes your greatest growth is to stay and make something work, and sometimes your greatest growth is to say, “This is enough,” and to make a new choice. The only way you really know is by experimenting and cleaning up your side of the table, doing the inquiry of is this something I don’t want because I’ve processed my neediness, I allow it, I love it, and now I want something different, or is this something I don’t want because I’m denying part of who I am.
Alexander James:
Yes. Do you know how I teach this, or used to teach this and I still teach it. Right? I teach it as the difference between judgment and discernment.
Maggie Reyes:
Tell us everything.
Alexander James:
Okay. So, so often for us to have access to our own no, especially if you’ve been socialized as a woman, especially if you grew up in a family with a lot of people pleasing, especially if you grew up in a very authoritarian, religious community where no wasn’t really an acceptable answer and there’s just the way you have to do things, if you grow up without a lot of access to no, the way you are able to access your no is through justification.
Right? You have to be very justified in why you’re saying no to the request, to the person that you’re on a date with, or whatever it is. And the way that many of us find that justification is through judgment. Again, this is all subconscious, but we have to say, “Something’s wrong with you and that’s why I’m saying no.”
Right? Something has to be wrong with you. Something has to be unlovable about you. Something as in the dating field, and so, it turns into judgment where it could be, and I did mostly dating because the gay men that I worked with, it was like they were three months and then they were out. Right?
It’s like they couldn’t get past the three-month mark. There was some block around the intimacy that just, they couldn’t get any closer than that. So, in the dating field, you can be on a date with somebody and they can be a total nerd and you can be a total hiker, outdoor, surfer, jock, and you can be sitting with them, and they can be telling you about Star Wars and Princess Leia and all of this stuff.
In that moment, you can discern you’re going to want to dress up in cosplay on the weekends and go to these conventions and I’m going to want to be out surfing, and nothing’s wrong with you for wanting what you want, and nothing’s wrong with me for wanting what I want.
We just both want different things, and I can discern that without you having to be less than me, without you having to be wrong for who you are or where you’re at even in your growth because you might also meet some people who are very unhealed on your dating journey and who do bring up a level of neediness that’s not conducive to what you’re up to creating in your life and in your relationships, and in those moments we have the opportunity to still access our no but through discernment, loving discernment, as opposed to judgment.
The reason that I really drill this into my clients is because it will change your whole experience of relationship and especially dating around rejection because if you can say no to somebody without having to judge them, without having to make them wrong or make yourself wrong, because so often it’s like, well, one of us has to be wrong.
If this isn’t working out, then one of us has to be wrong. So, it’s either you or it’s me. When you’re able to access your no and your discernment and you’re able to bless that person out to get what they want and give them that time to go find somebody that they want to be with, and you’re able to give yourself that as well, when you hear no, you begin to learn how to receive it as a gift and you no longer take it as though something’s wrong with me because that’s not the place that you’re giving your nos from anymore.
And so, your whole subconscious relationship to no changes and you start receiving nos in the dating process. Of course, there might be some disappointment, but ultimately, you receive it as a gift.
Maggie Reyes:
I love this perspective through the lens of dating because when you’re married, you’re just dating the same person for years, and there will be lots of yeses and lots of nos.
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Hundreds of them, thousands probably over time. And so, this idea of I could like something and my partner doesn’t have to like it, especially in my culture, I don’t know all the cultures, but in Latin culture, one of the mindset is you have to be attached at the hip. You have to do everything together, and the fuel, because there’s so much Catholicism, the fuel that runs our world is guilt and obligation. Guilt and obligation, it’s how you get things done.
Alexander James:
Oh Maggie.
Maggie Reyes:
So, my husband and I are very not about guilt and obligation, and he says I am the unstoppable force and he’s the immovable wall. But we have very open conversations, many of which I’ve shared on the podcast in different ways around one of the litmuses that we use is what’s like a must have and a nice to have. It would be nice if I wanted to dress and cosplay, but it’s not necessary. Right? It would be nice if we wanted to-
Alexander James:
If you wanted to go camping.
Maggie Reyes:
… wanted to go camping, but it’s not necessary. My husband grew up with camping, and when I met my husband, he’s like, “So, do you want to go camping?” and I said no. Alexander loves camping too. So, I don’t know. I think I need to introduce the two of you.
Alexander James:
Yeah. Maybe we can go camping. I’ve been sending Maggie all these really fancy five-star glamping spots, and I’m like, “Look, it can be luxurious. They have electricity. This one has a hot tub.” she’s just like, “Nope, I need four walls. I need four walls and a roof.”
Maggie Reyes:
I need AC. Maybe it’s because I’m from Florida where I’m like, “But what about the air conditioning? We need to discuss.” I might have trauma.
Alexander James:
Totally.
Maggie Reyes:
Heat trauma.
Alexander James:
Heat trauma. Totally.
Maggie Reyes:
Anyway. So, I love this idea of looking at this through the lens of dating about how you receive a no, how you give a no, what your thought process is behind a no because one of the things that happens on the other side, the thing that I Coach on all the time is when we’re making a request but it’s really a demand.
Alexander James:
How do you know? How do you know if you’re making a request, but it’s really a demand?
Maggie Reyes:
At the end of a request, there’s no emotional price to pay for the other person if the answer’s no. At the end of a demand, there’s either an eye roll, a little shoulder shimmy, a little maybe I’m not making dinner tonight. There’s some kind of emotional price to pay at the end of a demand always.
Alexander James:
Gotcha.
Maggie Reyes:
You can immediately know. And most of us, what’s kind of fun is I’ll teach this to my clients and it’s happened a couple times now where they’ll come back, they’ll be like, “Oh, my brother-in-law just made a demand, or my cousin just made a demand.”
The moment you have awareness around it, now you start seeing it everywhere. You’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to be that person,” because once you receive it, you’re like, “Oh, that’s what I sound like. I don’t want that.”
Alexander James:
Yeah, and to receive it and to have to say no to a demand, that’s when you start to experience maybe a little bit of guilt and obligation because that’s the energy that the person’s bringing the request to you with.
Maggie Reyes:
And so, for me, it’s like so much of my work is just be the change you want to see in the world. Right? It’s like, well, you’re going to stop making demands. We’re going to start making requests. We’re going to model what that looks like for our partners. We’re going to do things differently.
We’re going to just be the change we want to see. And then what often happens because of systems theory is when one element of a system changes, the other elements respond to that change, and most of us aren’t married to jerks. Most of us are married to good people having bad days.
Alexander James:
I love that.
Maggie Reyes:
Some of us are married to jerks.
Alexander James:
Some of us are married to jerks, yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
And then we need to know, so we go through this process and we find out for sure.
Alexander James:
Totally. Totally.
Maggie Reyes:
That’s how we figure it out.
Alexander James:
Well, and it’s so interesting. I don’t know. For some reason, I’m being drawn to go back to the conversation we were having about the longevity conversation and the happiness conversation, and I had this thought where I was reading recently that trauma has much less to do with the actual thing that happened and so much more to do with the level of connection that we experienced throughout.
And in the aftermath of that event so that trauma outcomes are very much dependent on the level of support that you have in your life, the level of people you can talk to about what’s going on. The level of emotional connectedness and support that you have around that event is actually much more indicative of the level of trauma that your nervous system will be embedded with than the actual event itself.
Maggie Reyes:
That is so fascinating, and I’m going to take it in two wildly different directions. The first one is just noticing my own life. If we looked at the circumstances of my life, through the facts and the details, so many of my friends have told me, “You really could have gone either way, Maggie. You could have been this bitter bitch, really.”
And I’ve had a family of friends throughout my life that have always supported me and it’s like, oh, okay. It tracks. It’s like the actual circumstances could have gone in a lot of directions, but because of that emotional support in different ways, it didn’t.
But I used to work in customer service. So, I worked in a law firm for 10 years. I was the training director. I had started as the receptionist and worked my way up, and I trained lawyers, which is herding cats if you want to know what it’s like, but I love them. One of my best friends is a lawyer from that time.
And I used to be the person… This is before I was a life Coach. I think this will make everybody chuckle a little. I used to be the person at the firm that when somebody had a problem, when a client was blowing steam from their ears, you could see the red coming from every angle, I would be the person they would talk to. No matter whether it was related to anything that I was involved in or not, they’d be like, “Oh, Maggie?”
Alexander James:
You were the fire department.
Maggie Reyes:
I was the fire department. So, I would talk to the person and I would just listen, and I had a lot of empathy because we were a business firm, we did the transactional things, and so, when somebody was coming to us and they were upset, something was really a problem in their business that was happening where they needed a document in order to proceed with a deal or get something done.
So, I had so much empathy for whatever was happening, and I would just calm them down and figure it out and walk them through and tell them, “This is what we can do, this is what we can do, this is what’s happening next,” all of those things, and it’s what you mentioned about what happened after the traumatic event.
Alexander James:
Yes.
Maggie Reyes:
And so many times I’d have people where there was a customer service issue, something went wrong, legitimately something was not right, and we would talk, and then they’d end up spending more money with the firm.
They were canceling, but no, instead they placed a bigger order for whatever it is that they were doing, and it was so often because number one, I just listened, and I listened with an open heart and an open mind to what they were presenting.
If I think about it now as a Coach, I would probably think I held space for them. I was a compassionate receiver of the thing that they were going through, and then I genuinely cared about them getting the thing they needed. That’s the thing. I genuinely, I met you today, but I really want you to have your thing.
Alexander James:
Yeah. People can feel that. People can feel when you love them. I worked in high end luxury retail. I think that’s why we also got along because you and I both worked in luxury hospitality. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Alexander James:
Well, I would have people coming in from all over the world, Dubai or from Seoul, Korea, or wherever to get the thing that they wanted to get. Right? They’d come to America, they were here, they were in my store.
They’re like, “I saw this online. I want it.” And of course, we’re out of it, and they’re people who are very used to getting what they want, and they have a lot of money, and they’re used to people saying yes to them.
Maggie Reyes:
All the time.
Alexander James:
All the time. No matter what.
Maggie Reyes:
Yes. We worked with the same people. Yes.
Alexander James:
Yes, of course. And it was so interesting because I had a bunch of different coworkers, and this is New York City, so we’re all from all over the place, and the store that I worked in, you had to speak at least two languages to work there, if not three because it was a tourist destination.
So, we had Brazilians. We had people from Japan. So, you have all different kinds of people in the store working there too to attend to the different groups of clients, the Japanese tourists, or the people from Guatemala, or whatever.
So, it was so interesting watching my coworkers work with people and especially the ones who maybe just didn’t have the finesse of whatever it was because they would just be like, “Oh, I’m so sorry, we’re out,” or they’d say, “We sold out three days ago,” and then I’d watch the situation escalate, and they’d be like, “Well, how are you going to get it for me?” and da, da, da, da, da.
And then they would come to me, somebody would come to me, and I’d be like, “Oh my god. Okay. You know what? I haven’t seen any for a couple days because they sold out, but I’m going to go in the back and I’m going to look for you, and I’m going to call three other stores, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you get it because I know you’re here on vacation. I know you want this.”
Right? And I knew we didn’t have it, so I’d just go in the back and I just sit around, and I knew none of the other stores had it either. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. Pause. Pause because this is really important, everybody. So, I used to work a lot on the phone when I was at the law firm, and I would say, “Let me look into that,” and I just put the person on hold. It was the same thing.
Alexander James:
Yeah, you know.
Maggie Reyes:
I knew the answer, but if I just told them the answer, it was really out of love, and I think that’s the difference. We did something that was so… I would just be like, “Let me see,” and I would just put them on hold, and I would be like, “Have I seen yet? Let me see,” and then I’d come back.
Alexander James:
Totally.
Maggie Reyes:
And it was genuinely because I tried it both ways. I tried just telling them and it was like they didn’t trust that I had gone to see. So, I’m like, “Well, okay. Let’s go to see and let’s go back.” So, continue.
Alexander James:
Totally. Okay.
Maggie Reyes:
You go to the back.
Alexander James:
I’m glad I have the only one. Yeah, so I’d just go to the back, kick up my feet for a couple minutes because I knew. Right? They were the sixth person that day who had come in asking for that same thing. I’d already called the stores already, whatever.
But it’s just that feeling of this person really cares, and I did care, and I did want them to feel cared for, even though I knew that they weren’t going to get it, but I wanted them to at least have the experience of feeling like somebody really cares and is on my side.
And I think that’s the difference is when you shift, and it’s this person and me and we’re on the same team confronting the problem versus it’s them versus me as the problem, as the person who’s not going to look or they don’t feel like I’m on their side, then I become the opposition. I think that can happen in our relationships too. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
A hundred percent.
Alexander James:
Sometimes there’s moments where we need to have those, let me see, go check in the back moments with our partners, just to show them that we care, even if we know it ain’t going to be so. You ain’t going to go camping. Right? Even if you know.
Maggie Reyes:
I could be convinced on the camping thing. But yeah, what I want to say about that is I literally have a podcast episode, it’s called Advanced Emotional Weight Loss, and one of the things I teach there is no pretending because I cannot tell you how many of my clients will come and tell me, “I feel this, that, and the other about my partner, but I haven’t told them so they don’t know.” I’m like, “They know.”
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
And so, with pretending of any kind, what I always say is either you find the place in your heart where it’s true, so if it meant so much to Alexander, if it’s his 40th birthday and he’s going glamping, and it’s a very special thing, I find the place in my heart where I freaking want to be in the hot sun. I want to be there. It’s not a sacrifice. It’s not an obligation. It’s not any of that. It’s like that’s where I want to be. People have this on recording for when the time comes.
Alexander James:
Yes, I’m saving it.
Maggie Reyes:
But you find the plays in your heart where it’s true, or you speak from your highest truth.
Alexander James:
Right.
Maggie Reyes:
Not your lowest fears or your deepest anger. No, no, no. From your highest truth. So, if there’s no place in your heart where it’s true, then you from a place of compassionate love for yourself and the other person address it that way, but pretending never, ever gets it done.
Alexander James:
Totally. And so, it’s also that moment of if I hadn’t have actually checked before earlier in the day, if I didn’t actually know if we had it in the back, that would be different. Right?
And so, where in your relationship can you actually go and show up and be like, “Okay, you know what? Alexander wants to do this glamping thing. Let me see all of the options. Let me just see if there’s a place right next to the glamping spot that’s actually a cabin. Let me see if I can bring the things that I need. Let me see if I can figure out an air conditioning. Let me at least try, and in that way, express my love and my desire to be there with him.” Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, yeah.
Alexander James:
And that in and of itself can be the gift and the healing and makes the other person receiving the no know that behind the no there’s actually a lot of love and intention, and it’s not just a I don’t want to be with you. It’s a no. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. And something we have to talk about while we’re talking about saying no, that is so… It sounds so simple, but it’s so profound, and you said it in such a beautiful way is you wrote a post where you said, “If you tell me yes and you don’t mean it, if you pretend,” which is what we’ve been talking about, “if you tell me yes and you don’t mean it, then I can’t trust your yes and I can’t trust your no either.”
Alexander James:
Right.
Maggie Reyes:
And trust is what the whole world is built on very literally. When we build a bridge, when we go over it, we have to know it’s not going to fall. When we make measurements, we have to know this is how it’s going to be. Trust and love are the undercurrent upon which all things are created. So, when we erode trust, we’re destroying the connection in the relationship.
Alexander James:
Totally. And it starts with ourselves. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah, yeah.
Alexander James:
Some people don’t have, again, because of this people-pleasing thing we’ve been talking about, or the ways in which they weren’t even… I think so many people that come to work with me, especially women, do not know what consent actually feels like in their body.
They’re not tuned in to, “Oh, I actually consent to this or not.” They’re so in their heads because they’ve been taught to be, and they have very strategically from patriarchy not been taught how to access even their own feeling of yes and no and what that feels like in their body which makes them so much easier to co-opt and be like, “Oh no, you want to do this thing, or you want to serve this, or you want to fit this role in society, or you want…” Because they don’t have access to even feeling what they do want and what they don’t want. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yep. Yeah.
Alexander James:
I think most people don’t do it from a malicious place. Right? They’re doing it based on how they’ve been conditioned. They’re doing it based on believing that closeness is the pinnacle of relationship. Right? Most people in relationship think that closeness in the relationship is actually the final achievement, the pièce de résistance.
That’s how you know you have an amazing relationship. It’s because you’re just so close. And the model of relationship that I work with actually posits that closeness is the second phase in a relationship and there’s a third phase beyond it. Right?
We have to build similarity. We have to build coherence in the relationship. We have to see all the ways in which we’re aligned for the relationship to come together and congeal, and so, there is a process of closeness building. But if the relationship is only built on closeness, of only being the same as the other person, of only liking the things they like, of only-
Maggie Reyes:
Sameness, yeah. Sameness.
Alexander James:
The sameness of only agreeing, then that relationship is a house of cards, and any no can blow the closeness down at any point in time. So, then there’s a second phase or third phase of relationship that is intimacy, and intimacy is where we are willing to rock the boat with our truth and with who we really are.
And with what’s most honest for us in the moment, and we are willing to temporarily perhaps have connection break a little bit, but build the trust that it can be rebuilt and that it can come back together, and that our relationship can weather the storm of a no, or I don’t want to go camping, or I’d actually disagree with that opinion about what’s happening politically right now, whatever it is.
And when you start adding intimacy into your relationship, you start sharing the pieces of yourself, or embodying, or just allowing yourself to be honest about the pieces of yourself that you’re not so sure your partner might agree with or love or adore or whatever, be wildly, enthusiastically infatuated with, you pour concrete into the foundation of your relationship.
And it’s no longer that house of cards because now you know even when we disagree, we still love each other, and we still maintain this level of intimacy. And so, you trade closeness for intimacy, and intimacy is actually knowing who someone is and getting to be loved for who you are and getting to love the other person for who you are, and that is one of the biggest gifts and achievements that we can create with our relationships.
Maggie Reyes:
I love so much the image of pouring concrete into the foundation of the relationship because it’s so strong and steady and can withstand hurricanes and all that, and it’s so interesting because you and I come at the same thing from such wildly different angles, and yet we’re teaching the exact same thing because what I call the same idea is the opposite which is I call it relationship elasticity. So, if you imagine a rubber band, it can bend, it can sway, it can move, it’s elastic.
Alexander James:
Oh, I love that.
Maggie Reyes:
And so, when something happens, it’s not this brittle thing that’s torn apart, it just bends, and that’s how you have a breakdown that leads to a breakthrough. It’s how you have fights that are productive because you get closer at the end of a fight, instead of farther away.
Alexander James:
Yes, and that is what intimacy does is it’s like… I wish people could see me because I want to describe it with my hands, but it’s like closeness is like the branches of the trees reaching out, and then intimacy is like the roots growing together.
It’s a connection that happens on a deeper level and on a deeper plane than just like, oh you like punk music, I like punk music. You like Rocky Horror Picture Show. I like Rocky Horror Picture Show. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, same, same, same, same, same. Right?
Those things do create an environment where we can be close and we can enjoy life together and experience things, but when you start getting into the work of intimacy and showing up how you really are and speaking your truth, it’s like the foundation of your relationship, the roots start to grow together and towards each other, and there’s just so much more depth and flavor and texture to the relationship.
Maggie Reyes:
And I’ll say this, that what I see in long-term relationships… So, I’ve been married 15 years. We dated for a year before. So, I’ve been with my husband in 16 years… is we grow and evolve, and the things that brought us together that were similar evolve over time. So, if the only thing we’re basing it on is that we both love X thing, that is when we run into issues.
Alexander James:
Because you can’t change. You can’t evolve. You can’t self-actualize.
Maggie Reyes:
Exactly.
Alexander James:
If that’s what your relationship is based on.
Maggie Reyes:
If it’s what it’s based on. So, if we think about this idea of, I’m processing it in my brain as sameness, whenever you say that, I think sameness, sameness is not necessary for intimacy.
Alexander James:
Yeah. And actually, I think in many ways it can be an impediment.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Yeah. So, it’s like we can have some places where we overlap and have similar interests and that’s great and that’s awesome, but it’s not required in order to have a thriving, amazing relationship, and so many of us go through the world with these ideas that because we’re so different, we can’t love each other, because we’re so different, it’s in the way, as opposed to because we’re so different, we had to experience the richness and the liveness and beauty and passion and joy of someone totally different than us.
I love that we teach the exact same thing, and you teach it as concrete and I teach it as elastic, and the principle, the underlying principle is the same, just, and I’m pointing this out for everyone to see how sameness is not necessary for intimacy, and how you can find places to agree when you’re on complete opposite sides of something.
Alexander James:
Totally. Well, and here’s the distinction that I want to add and the nuance because I know you love nuance, Maggie and I could probably not be more different on the outset of the… You look at her Instagram, you look at my Instagram, and you’re like, “These people are little soul friends? What?” Right? You would never get it in a million years. But I think where we lack, quote, unquote, sameness, the reason why our connection is so deep is because our values are the same.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh my gosh. That is exactly-
Alexander James:
Or is that what you’re thinking?
Maggie Reyes:
We have the same values. Yes, go. You go.
Alexander James:
Even if the way we express our values is different, the way my authenticity and my truth shows up online looks radically different. If you want to have a peak at it, it’s a little crazy on my Instagram, it’s @thesubconsciousbrand, and people have two reactions when they go on my Instagram.
They either think it’s the coolest, most amazing, wildly trippy thing they’ve ever seen, or they’re like, “Who let that out of the zoo?” And I love both of those reactions. Right? But if you’re on this podcast, you already know Maggie, you’ve already seen her, but we have such similar values, and we are so true to expressing them through the lens and the filter of divinity that is our authentic expression, and I think we see that in one another, and I think that has generated so much intimacy in the lack of, you know, Maggie, won’t go camping with me, but we can still be friends.
Maggie Reyes:
As I mentioned, I’m open to influence on this matter. So, this is something actually-
Alexander James:
We’re working on it. Help me, people. Help me, everybody.
Maggie Reyes:
Message me.
Alexander James:
Everybody here, message Maggie the most beautiful glamping spots ever. This is our goal now as listeners of Maggie’s podcast is to get her camping.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Preferably glamping, everybody. I have limits, but one of the things they teach a lot, so I have to say it here, is when you’re in a relationship with someone, whether it’s a friend, whether it’s a family member, whether it’s your partner, one of the things that helps relationships thrive is the concept of being open to influence.
Where it doesn’t mean you’re going to do everything they say, I’m not going to jump in a camper tomorrow, but you’re open to listening to what the person is offering you with an open heart, and taking that into consideration when you make any decision about the thing.
So, you don’t need to agree on everything. You don’t need to be the same on everything. You don’t need any of those things. You just need to be open genuinely. Now, sometimes we let things get in the way of that openness, and then that’s the work that you work with Life Coaches and people like us to work through within the way of that. But I am open to influence on this matter.
Alexander James:
See, and here’s the thing, being open to influence is the other side of the coin of what we were talking about earlier. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Alexander James:
So, there’s one person who… It’s the other side of the let me check on that. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes, yes.
Alexander James:
It’s the you know I’m willing to be in intimacy with you because I am open. I’m not going to close down to the idea. Right? I’m going to be open to influence. That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it, but it means I’m open to listening and being in connection, and even if we don’t end up doing the thing, at least we get to be in connection around if we’re going to do it or not, as opposed to it just being a brick wall. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Yes.
Alexander James:
And those are actually my favorite moments in relationships.
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Right?
Alexander James:
I love the banter.
Maggie Reyes:
Tell us why.
Alexander James:
Okay. And so, this was the thing that happens. So, I was dating this guy and he was like a yes-ma’am to put it lightly. It was like anything I wanted to do, he wanted to do it. Any opinion I had, he agreed with it. Any restaurant, I was like, “Ooh, I feel like Mexican,” he’s like, “Oh yeah, Mexican sounds great.” I started catching on and then I started kind of falling the ball to him every once in a while and being like, “Yeah, so what do you want to eat tonight?” Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah.
Alexander James:
It was mind-blowing, Maggie. He was a master. He didn’t even realize he was doing it, but he’d be like, “Ah, hmm, well, how hungry are you?” And I’d be like, “Oh, I’m very hungry.” He’d like, “Ooh, it sounds like you want something really filling, yeah.” And he’s like, “Well, what sounds really filling to you?”
And he would turn it back around always, and it would always be my decision, and it started freaking me out and I was like, “What’s going on here?” And I realized, “I think he’s afraid of breaking closeness. I think he’s afraid if he has an opinion,” of course, subconsciously, “he’s afraid if he has a strong opinion or has a strong whatever that it’s going to break our closeness,” when in reality, I wanted to get to know him.
I wanted to know what he likes to eat. I wanted to please him and know his desires and co-create desire together. And for me, intimacy, there’s so much intimacy in the process of bargaining of like, “Where do you want to go for dinner?”
“Ooh, I want Mexican. Where do you want to go?” “Ooh, I want ramen.” “Ooh, ramen sounds awful to me.” “Oh, they have little fish tacos. You could get that.” “Ooh, well, maybe, but what if you came to the Mexican and we just did da, da, da, dah, and we went for sushi after?”
Being in that creative process of fulfilling both of our desires for me is so fun, and there’s that sway, and like you say, there’s the influence and the opening to be influenced, and it’s like a dance that you do with your partner that if you get really good at it and you have fun with it and you’re lighthearted about it and you’re not taking anything too seriously.
I feel like I always end up making my partners laugh whenever we’re in that because I’m such a little salesman and I’ll do a little five-step presentation on why we should go to this restaurant, and they just laugh. Right? But I didn’t get to have any of that with him because he was just always like, “Yeah, whatever you want, we’ll go.”
Maggie Reyes:
Yeah. Okay. So, is what’s coming up for me that I think is so resonant for every single person listening to this podcast. First of all, everything you said, yes, and I have a lot of clients where they make all the decisions, and it becomes a source of resentfulness and sometimes anger and frustration.
This is so we teach the same thing in different words situation. What I tell them is often at times our partners, it’s not that they’re not trying, it’s not that they’ve stopped caring, it’s that they’re scared to death to do something wrong so they do nothing, and if we’ve been very vocal about being disappointed or not satisfied with other efforts they have made in the past, they already know how that’s going to go or they think they know, and so, then they stop engaging.
This idea is they’re terrified of breaking the closeness is exactly the same idea. I say they walk around the world thinking, “I’m so glad she looked at me twice. I’m just glad, hey, I made it here. I don’t want to mess that up.” Now, if you’re genuinely married to a jerk, there could be other things happening, but for most of the people that I end up working with, the dynamic is really they actually do care, they’re just terrified.
Alexander James:
Yes. Well, okay, this goes to something that you shared on your Facebook recently, maybe not even that recently, a couple months ago, that blew my lid. I was like, “Ah,” because I started seeing everywhere and it’s very rare, everybody, that for me, a Relationship Coach for a long time, working with many people at a very high level, find a relationship teaching that blows my lid.
And so, that is Maggie Reyes. So, if you have found the podcast, but you’re not following Maggie on social media, get your booty over there. But it was this post that you had done about overfunctioning and underfunctioning in relationships, and how I’m an overfunctioner I think in my relationships, in many of them, and specifically in my relationship with my sister, I saw so clearly this dynamic because she and I run a business together, and I, for so long, the person who is for your Type A women who are making all decisions at work and then coming home and making all the decisions about what’s for dinner and where we’re going to go on vacation and all that stuff, it feels like responsibility, and so, we get into this thought pattern of my partner isn’t taking any responsibility in the relationship. It’s all on me. I have to make sure that everything goes well and everything’s okay, and that they’re taken care of.
And the thing that you said in your post, and I don’t remember the exact words, but the concept is that the overfunctioning actually is what creates the underfunctioning. It wasn’t until that moment, until then I was like, “Oh, my sister,” I had all these stories like, “Oh, she’s just not holding her end of our bargain, or she’s more interested in other things, or she doesn’t care, she’s not committed, or she’s lazy or whatever,” whatever the thought du jour was that was not helping us in our relationship.
It very clearly laid out how overfunctioning really lays the foundations to erode the self-confidence of the other partner, and over time, it becomes a dynamic that gets held in place by the overfunctioner, and the overfunctioner is the one who needs to step back and release the reins and surrender a little bit and add more trust into the relationship before the underfunctioner has the ability to even come in and add anything because there’s just not space for them to.
Every time you overfunction, you reinforce whatever beliefs they have about themselves that are just like, “Well, I’m just glad she looked at me twice, and I’m just glad that I’m here, and I’m just lucky, and I’ll just hands off.” So, that really, and I’ll tell you, I applied what I learned in that post, and I did a little more research on it too, and our business is completely transformed, Maggie.
Maggie Reyes:
Tell me more. What is one thing that you applied?
Alexander James:
So, I very much so had this fear of her not doing things on time and feeling like she doesn’t put things in her calendar, or that she’s not… The way that her process works for getting projects done is different from mine, and there’s not really a paper trail that you could follow or a whatever. So, I never know where we’re at in terms of stuff, and that freaked me out.
So, what I did for my own need for control was I would just ride her constantly, and every day I’d be like, “Okay, so when are you going to have that done by?” And then I’d put it in my calendar when she was supposed to have it done by, and then I’d email her and I’d text her or call her and I’d be like, “Okay, is it done? Did you do it? Did you get it done?”
And sometimes it’d be yes, but most of the times it was like, “Well, no, because this other thing came up, so I’m going to do it tomorrow,” and da, da, da, and then that just reinforced it to me. I’m like, “I can’t trust you. You can’t do things on a timeline,” da, da, da, da, da. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Mm-hmm.
Alexander James:
And so, the thing that I did was I just said, “I’m going to trust that she’s going to get it done, and that if she doesn’t, she’s going to take care of all of the consequences of not getting it done on time and do it on her own timeline,” and I step back.
Things just get done now. She’s fully engaged in the process. She’s the one asking me for help, like, “Hey, we got to get this done on this timeline. Can you jump in? Can you help me because I’m not there?” And now we’re working together in this brilliant way, and it’s amazing because we’re going through so much in our business right now, and I know we’d be in a totally different place and I’d be in a totally different place emotionally if it weren’t for that Coaching.
Maggie Reyes:
I love this example because it’s something that we talk about a lot from a lot of different angles in my work with my clients, and sometimes it’s letting the reins go, allowing the person to do it however they would do it, knowing it’ll be different than how you would do it, and the discomfort of that is something we talk about quite a lot.
Alexander James:
Yeah.
Maggie Reyes:
Quite a bit because that’s what being uncomfortable-
Alexander James:
Because if you’re Type A, like you and me, we’re kind of controlling, and we kind of have a specific way that we like things done.
Maggie Reyes:
And I have to say the thing you’re referencing reminds me, I talk about it in a bunch of different ways, but I really want to honor a psychologist I really admire. Her name is Alexandra Solomon, and she talks about that too, about overfunctioning and underfunctioning, and I think it’s just, we all look at things from different angles.
We teach it in different ways, and when we realize we have a role to play, the relationship isn’t happening, it’s a dance, we’re dancing, we’re swaying, we’re ebbing, we’re flowing, and two people are involved. It’s like, wait, if I pull back then what happens? We give the person the opportunity to rise to the occasion, information we always want to know, or we find out they never will, information we also want to know.
With your sister, it’s such a beautiful example because that’s what tends to happen in a lot of cases that I personally have knowledge of which is the person does rise to the occasion, and all we had to do was make a tweak for ourselves. But that isn’t always the case, and I always want to just call that out loud and say it too.
Alexander James:
Yes, totally. Totally.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. Before we wrap up today, I have one last question which is something that really goes with the theme of what we’re talking about also in relationships, but for any project or anything we’re working on.
This is a question from The Questions for Couple’s Journal. I always like to ask a question, and sometimes, I wrote these questions and I’m like, “Damn, that’s a good question. I forgot I said that,” but I really like this one. How do you know when it’s time to try harder to achieve a goal versus when it’s time to focus on a new one?
Alexander James:
How do you know when it’s time to try harder to achieve a goal versus when it’s time to focus on a new one? For me, there are certain things in my life that I am committed to, and when I think about achieving my goals, I always think of it in terms of a commitment. Right? Most of us-
Maggie Reyes:
The theme we started with, yeah.
Alexander James:
Right. Most of us create a goal, and then we create a commitment to help us achieve that goal, and that’s really, in my mind, people get all hung up about commitments and promises and changing your mind and all that stuff.
It’s so loaded with all of this kind of verbiage around integrity and all of those things. But for me, a commitment serves a clear purpose and the purpose is to help me get from point A to point B. That’s why I use a commitment, from point A to point B.
And so, I think a lot of people struggle to let go of a commitment they’ve made before just because, well, I said I was going to do this thing or I said I was going to be committed to doing this thing for X amount of time, and even if things change, even if they no longer want to get to that goal or that place, they’re like, “Well, I have to stay committed to this commitment that I made. I can’t revoke what I said.” And so, what happens in that frame is the commitment stops serving the purpose. Let’s say your goal changes. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Yes.
Alexander James:
Let’s say you started moving in a direction and you’re like, “I think I really want this,” and then you realize that as you get closer to it and as you work towards it, you’re like, “That’s actually not what’s going to fulfill my soul. That’s not what I want.”
Well, if you just stay committed to the commitment that you made because you made it, then your commitment is actually serving to take you out of alignment, and it’s actually taking you somewhere you don’t want to go, and there’s no point in going where you don’t want to go just because you said you were going to go there. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
Okay, pause there. There’s no point in going a place you did not want to go to in the first place, just because you said in 1987 that it might be a good idea to check that thing out.
Alexander James:
Totally. And so, we have to be in a co-creative and responsive relationship to life, and what I mean when I say that is we’re constantly getting new information and making better decisions from the information that we have received.
That is why we begin any process is just simply to get more information and get us closer to what it is we think we want, but you don’t want to be beholden to who you were to determine who you’re going to become and not have any space for the becoming in the middle. Right?
Maggie Reyes:
And you made a commitment based on who you were and what you wanted five years ago, 10 years ago, five months ago, five minutes ago, and if that changed, if the desire changed, then now it’s time to make a new commitment.
And the way it shows up for me so many times is as I’m Coaching people, you get married, you buy a house, you have kids, I don’t have kids, but people have these milestones, you get promoted, you start a business, different things happen. Right?
Suddenly, you decided how things were going to work at home when none of those things were true, when you lived in an apartment, had no kids, had a different job, didn’t have a business. Well, none of those things were true.
You said, “We wash the dishes on Thursdays at 6:00,” and now, nobody’s available on Thursdays at 6:00 anymore, and now we’re all mad because the dishes aren’t getting washed on Thursdays at 6:00. So, it’s like one of the things we talk about so much in the Coaching that I do is just like, “Hey, does this still work for me?” Just that question. Does this still work for us?
Alexander James:
So powerful.
Maggie Reyes:
Just, is this still working? What do we need to tweak? What would work better now? It’s that simple, but also that complicated sometimes because we have to slow down, know this, pay attention, recommit, assess all these things that we have to do.
Alexander James:
Totally. And we have to be engaged. It requires us to be intimate in our lives, and to be responsive and tapped in and tuned in to our lives. And so, I think the biggest theme here that I just want to leave people with is when you’re moving commitments or realigning your commitment structures to help you get to where you really want to go, the biggest thing that you can come back to is that you can trust yourself. I feel like so many people trust their commitments more than they trust themselves.
Maggie Reyes:
Oh yes.
Alexander James:
And so, they find their safety or their security, and well, I made this commitment and I’m sticking to it so I know everything’s going to be all right, meanwhile the writing’s on the wall, things aren’t working, the dishes aren’t getting done, everything’s falling apart.
There’s no responsiveness. There’s no aliveness. There’s no intimacy in their own lives. And so, rather than using your ability to fulfill a… Just to stay with and stick with a commitment to build trust in yourself, build that trust into yourself that you are going to get where you want to go.
You are committed to yourself and your own self-actualization and creating what it is that is truly fulfilling for you, and have that be your goal, and your commitments lead you towards your fulfillment, and you can trust yourself to be in that process and to constantly be refining it.
So, I would say it’s a fulfillment thing. Right? You know it’s time to focus on a new goal when you’ve gotten to a place where you’ve realized, “Oh, I’m not moving towards fulfillment, and so either the way that I’m doing this, the way I’m living out this commitment is not working or the thing that I’ve committed to is no longer what brings me deep fulfillment,” and letting your fulfillment be a guide for your commitments.
Maggie Reyes:
Letting your fulfillment be a guide for your commitments is what it’s all about, and that is the perfect note to end the episode on. Thank you for being with us. Tell everybody how they can find you.
Alexander James:
All righty. So, I party daily on Instagram. My stories are wild. It’s crazy. I talk about all my psychedelic journeys. I’m constantly channeling things from other dimensions and dressing up. It’s just, you never know what you’re going to get.
So, if you want to head on over there today and join me with my little fiesta that I got going on, it is @thesubconsciousbrand. That is my Instagram and that’s the place I hang out the most. You can also catch some of the dribbles that come over that get automatically transferred over to Facebook, but Instagram is really where the party is.
And if you are listening to this podcast, I think it is so fun to know who’s at my party from where. So, if you find yourself on my page, just send me a little DM, tell me that you found me through Maggie. If you’re a friend or a fan of Maggie’s, then I’m a fan of yours, and we can just plot how we’re going to get Maggie to go camping together. So, I would love that.
Maggie Reyes:
I love it so much. And I would love to hear your favorite takeaway from the podcast. Tag us both, @thesubconsciousbrand, @themaggiereyes. Tell us your favorite part. We want to hear it. We’d love celebrating and enjoying and remembering what we talked about together.
Alexander James:
Totally, and you and I both, we say things on a Thursday and then by Saturday, we’re like, “I said that? What?”
Maggie Reyes:
No, that sounds really good. Yeah, that sounds like something I would say.
Alexander James:
Oh wow, who said that? Yeah, oh.
Maggie Reyes:
Okay. Thank you, Alexander. Bye, everyone.