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In this interview with Marriage coach Maggie Reyes, we discuss what to do when it feels like you are handling all the household responsibilities. We discuss how to talk to your spouse about sharing the family load, why it all seems to fall to you in the first place, and debunk the patriarchal idea that women are better equipped to manage the house.
Topics in this episode:
How to deal with the cultural norm that women are more equipped to manage the house
The difference between physical and mental responsibilities
The usefulness in believing your spouse is capable in handling more
The importance in letting your spouse fail
How do we not become resentful of our spouse
Dozens of useful questions to help you determine what responsibilities you want and don’t want to do
Show Notes:
Learn more about Maggie’s work and the Marriage MBA group coaching program at https://maggiereyes.com/group
Check out Maggie’s podcast, The Marriage Life Coach Podcast - https://maggiereyes.com/podcast/
Looking for personalized support in creating a happy working mom life? Schedule a free breakthrough call at www.rebeccaolsoncoaching.com/book
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Transcription
Intro
Welcome to the ambitious and balanced working mom podcast, the place for women who want to balance their ambitious career goals with their life as a mom. If you’re looking to feel more confident, decisive, and productive at both work and home then this is the place for you. I’m your host Rebecca Olson, let’s get to it!
I have such a treat for you in this podcast. I interviewed Maggie Reyes, who is a marriage coach. And together we talk about inequitable households, and what to do about them. Because we as women - particularly as ambitious women often feel like the household duties, not just the tasks, but the mental load of managing our house and everything that goes along with that, we as ambitious women feel like we often do too much that our spouses or partners don't contribute in the way that we would like them to. As ambitious women, we tend to get resentful, we feel guilty and frustrated, and we don't know how to get our spouse to do the things that we need them to do so that we stop feeling so overwhelmed, and anxious and exhausted all the time.
Well, in this interview with Maggie, we address this from the female perspective. We address this from the perspective that we can never change our husbands. And if that's the case, if we can never really force them to do anything, we can't make them do more in our house. If that's true, what are our options? How do we try to create a more equitable house or a household that we enjoy being in that we feel that we are not doing absolutely everything in and that the responsibilities are shared in some way? What are our options? If it can never be our partner, our spouse doing something since we're never in control of that? We break down several strategies including how do you initiate conversations with your spouse? How do you change your expectations of what's possible? How do you let them fail so that they can learn and grow? And ultimately, we just debunk this patriarchal idea that women are better equipped to manage the household. Because it's simply not true. You're ready. Let's get to it.
Rebecca: Maggie Reyes, I am so excited that you are here with me in this podcast. I just recommended your MBA to somebody actually, I just sent her an email with your program because you're fabulous and I would only ever send somebody to you at this moment because you are all things marriage-related. And I love it.
Maggie: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Thank you for having these deep conversations about what it means to be a woman and a professional and a wife and other things in life. I think we have to have so many of these conversations. We're recreating what it is to be a woman in the 21st century, I'm here for all of it.
Rebecca: Oh my gosh, I love it. And there's no doubt that you are here for all of it and all of your energy, and all of your goodness, and all of your great coaching and I think what I gravitate a lot towards you as a marriage coach, is that you coach the female side of the relationship, right? So, it's not needing the other person to do anything in order for you to have the marriage that you want and for you to have a life that you want. That's really your specialty that I love because so many of the women I work with, they don't want to be waiting on anyone else and they don't want to be waiting on their circumstances. They don't want to be waiting on their spouse, they don't want to be waiting on their boss. They're ambitious women that want to go out and have the life that they want. And it feels like there's this thing in the way for them to get it. And so on this podcast what we're talking about is how their partner feels like the thing that is in the way. The reason I reached out to have this conversation was because so often I have to coach women in equitable marriages where they feel like they are absolutely doing everything for the family and they don't know what to do about that. They come to me and they're like: “well, why do I have to plan everything? And why do I have to be the one that spearheads everything?” I think there's just so much rich content in here and obviously, I coach on this too, but I couldn't think of anybody better than to have you on the podcast to talk about that. So thanks for being here.
The world we live in and internalized patriarchy.
Maggie: I think we're gonna have a really rich conversation about it. And I think we live in a world that is unequal. If we look at the pay gap, if we look at all these different things that you're coaching on all the time, there are some circumstances that are factual with regards to how the world we currently live in is set up. And there are some mindsets that I call, internalized patriarchy. It's the cultural narratives we receive, whether it's growing up from family and friends, examples that we have around us, they are coming externally to us, and then we internalize them and then they become ours and then we perpetuate them. And so what's great about a podcast like this, in a conversation like this, is we're just inviting everyone who's listening to say, if you're doing things you don't want to be doing, this is the perfect moment to question that. Knowing that we were all doing the best we could with what we had when we made those original decisions in the first place.
Rebecca: Yes, right.
Maggie: Both ourselves and our partners have grown up in modern industrialized nations. Wherever you're listening to this, you've grown up in a patriarchal culture with certain mindsets that we've inherited. Now we get to decide moving forward how we want to handle that, what we want to do, what we want to keep, what we want to change, all with loving compassion for ourselves and our partners, right? We just want to come at it from this place of, ‘this isn't working, what do we really want next?’, So that's just where I start talking about it. And then I know Rebecca has some very specific questions she wants to talk about. So let's dig in wherever.
Rebecca: I love that. I love that you want to start there and that you brought that up to start because it's so true in all sorts of facets of life - not just in marriage, but also we talk a lot about it when it comes to parenting because we inherit, if you will, how our parents parented us and we either repel against it and we rebel as much as possible, or it just naturally becomes who we are and we parent that way, and then we get frustrated. And so the idea that wherever you're at in your marriage and the roles that you play in your marriage, however, you've gotten to this point, it doesn't necessarily matter. It is a conglomerate of culture and history and your family traditions and what you grew up with, and what you saw and your beliefs and all these things. It's a conglomerate of all of that. We don't have to judge it on how you're here. And I love that we're coming at it from that place of safety. We don't need to go backward at all. It's just like, ‘hey, we're here, and we notice that in the family you play a role that you don't want to play or in the way that you're playing it now, and what do we want to talk about that? And let's move forward to talk about what that means.’ So I love it and thank you for bringing that up as a starting place.
One of the things I think would be a really helpful place to start is talking about, and I think this is a great next conversation, which is that we have these ideas that women are just better at managing the family - that seems to be a belief that we hold, that women can seemingly handle the multitasking role of planning their family, and strategizing, and so forth. And again it's one of these beliefs that probably most people have never really questioned before. But I'm curious as you talk to women, do you believe that there's a role that a female is more designed to be in than a male?
Maggie: Honestly, I don't.
Rebecca: Okay, yeah. Tell me about that. I'm not sure if I have an opinion about this, actually. So I'm just curious what you think about it.
Maggie: I think that we all have different skills and abilities and what is cultivated, strengthens. So if we cultivate that part of ourselves like a muscle we're working out of course, it's going to be stronger and if we never work out that muscle, of course it's going to be weaker, but it doesn't mean that muscle isn't there to be strengthened. And in my own marriage, for example, my husband is the cook, he's the chef. I am the sassy assistant. Often the comic relief.
Rebecca: I just had a great image of you and Chad. And you being the comic relief during prep time. I love it.
What is a belief?
Maggie: Yeah. So, let's just see, those roles are not inherent. We grow up with models. We follow ideas. We Have internalized narratives that we adopt. And then what is a belief? Let's go to the simplest thing, a belief is just the thought we thought over and over again, right? And it can feel really true. And if you're married right now you're listening to this and you're frustrated about something in the relationship, you can say no, I am better at this. And that may be true that in this moment you have exercised that muscle way more than your partner has. But it doesn't mean you're inherently better at it than your partner, it just means you've exercised that muscle.
Rebecca: You’ve just practiced it more ultimately.
Maggie: It's kind of like nurture and nature, right? The eternal debate, is it nurture or nature? It's both probably, and it's a little bit of ‘Oh, now I've exercised this muscle so much, it feels so comfortable and familiar. I like the way I do things. I don't want to give up control on those things because I like how I do them.’ So one of the challenges I have sometimes that comes up is: ‘I want to release the reins on some of these things, but I don't want to have my partner do it, because they will do it completely differently.’ There's this moment where we have to take responsibility and just decide what we want? Do we prefer to have the discomfort of letting go of what the barbecue is gonna look like on Sunday? Or do we prefer to have it exactly how we want it to be and then do all the work that entails?
Rebecca: Yeah, I love that. Because you're bringing up the difference between - like, I coach a lot of my clients on what part of this is you and the way you're approaching this? And what part of this is factual here? And oftentimes it does come down to, ‘well, I do like it in a very specific way.’ Okay, so that's a little bit of you and you're not even giving them the opportunity to take over any duties because you want it a certain way. If you want something to be different, that might be one of the things that has to be released in the end.
Choosing your discomfort.
Maggie: Yeah. And I'll give you an example. One of my clients was doing everything all the time. And this is something I coach on - over-functioning. Never letting your partner fail at anything because it might hurt the kids feelings, or it might be inconvenient, or it might be inconvenient to you. And then they never evolved that muscle, right? We were always picking it up on their behalf. So the idea of letting something go can also feel very scary. And so we're sometimes reluctant to do that. One of my clients, her homework was to give up a meal night, and her husband was now in charge of that night and they decided to call it wacky Wednesday. - Listen, anytime you're making changes in your life, if you can add playfulness I highly recommend that. So she was very healthy and she prepared foods in a very specific, very healthy way and he's like, let's do taco night, let's have pizza. All of these different things. And in the beginning, it was very difficult to release the reins of that one night. Over time, she was able to look forward to that night and enjoy that night and contribute ideas to some of the things that he could do. And over time, I just want to say like the discomfort was real, right? And we don't want to minimize that. And we don't want to make light of that. It's like oh no, it can be massively uncomfortable. And it's really this idea of choosing your discomfort. You can have the discomfort of overworking, feeling overburdened and burning out. Or you can have the discomfort of delegating, reimagining how some things are done, renegotiating how some things are done. You're gonna have discomfort either way, there's always a discomfort that brings you closer to what you want. And there's always a discomfort that brings you farther away, you get to pick which one.
Rebecca: I love that story. I have a similar client story but it was with the family and it adds this other dynamic of it's not just my health and his health with what he's choosing to cook. It's my kids too and I want to instill healthy habits in my children. And so it creates this whole other layer of discomfort to it when the decisions go beyond just us, and can impact our kids. And so my client experienced something very similar. And yeah, I had to get to that point of how to get over the hump of discomfort which took some time.
Maggie: I would propose to you that this idea that adding kids as a layer of discomfort can be both true and just another perspective we have at the same time. Like what if it's the same amount of discomfort, and what if it just requires us to be more intentional about how we think about things? I want to tread very carefully and lovingly because I don't have kids. So I don't have a point of reference for that. But I've coached so many women that do have kids that this is what I want to offer you. Maybe if you take my wacky Wednesday example, the kids are going to have tacos on a Wednesday and you'd rather that they have, I don't know, green beans or something. Then maybe we take the opportunity to teach kids how to plan if they're going to have a treat. On Wednesday, what are they having for lunch? What are they having for breakfast? What if we use that opportunity - like we live in a world where tacos exist and they're delicious and we love them. How do we teach our kids to manage their relationship with their tacos? And that could be for anything that we want to insert in the place of tacos. It's like, oh, instead of removing that as an option, and overprotecting them and not showing them how to deal with making choices, right? It takes more work on the front end, sometimes on our part to say, Where do I land on this? What are my thoughts? How do I want to handle it? That's a little bit more work on the front end. But then on the back end, it's less work overtime because you did that thoughtfulness on the front end? What are your thoughts? Because, as I mentioned, I don't have kids. So what are your thoughts about that?
Rebecca: Well, I think you're totally right that as we talk about making changes and having our spouses take things over and do things differently, there's an opportunity to teach in that moment and to help our kids learn that two people operate differently and that's okay and that we can manage that.
And I love that Maggie would challenge me to believe that having kids for sure, feels like this next-level discomfort. I would say it magnifies things though, like it brings up all sorts of circumstances in our life. You lose your job, then it is a spotlight all of a sudden on all sorts of other things going on, right? Or somebody dies in your life - I'm going to the extreme right, but it highlights things that you didn't see that were already there. And kids are another one that tends to magnify things, right. And so in this case, it magnifies your beliefs about how families should operate and what the role should be, and who's responsible for what and a lot of things that you probably never really thought of before. But they were all under the surface and affecting the marriage already.
Maggie: I think it's important to clarify this, it's not that kids or jobs or family situations aren't additional stressors in our lives for sure they can be, it's that treating them as if they are this bigger mountain to climb is usually not helpful, it usually stops us from climbing the mountain at all. So I want to really honor the fact that some things are really challenging, and some situations are harder objectively than others totally. But when we give any kind of sweeping label to something that moves us out of being solution-focused and out of moving forward, that's the part that's really not helpful. And in that part, we just want to say, Okay, what if this is a stressor that I also have to deal with, just like any other stressor, and now what do I want to do about it? I hope that's more clear.
Mental and physical responsibilities.
Rebecca: For sure. Versus saying, like, ‘Oh my gosh, nobody else deals with this. And this is so hard, and I have my circumstances, my husband is even home five nights a week..’ and you can get on this rant and it feels so much more difficult of a mountain to climb as you frame it that way. This comes down to usefulness ultimately, right? It’s not super useful to think about your situation in an extreme way, thinking you're alone in this or that it's something bigger than you - even if it is objectively, it's just a not useful place to be, verses to just notice factually the circumstances on where you're at and then ultimately deciding ‘Hey, what am I going to do about that?’
There are two parts of responsibilities that women tend to bring up. There are the physical ones, and the cleaning of the house, and who's gonna go grocery shopping and who's gonna make the lunches for the kids. And then there are the mental ones, like who is planning and thinking ahead of time to plan for the vacation and make sure everybody has their passports so that they can get somewhere, or who is planning for next month's lunch calendar and thinking ahead about what their kid is going to take for lunch or if they will have lunch there. And thinking we have a swim class, we should definitely pack that bag so it's ready to go because you're gonna need it in your car. Who's taking on the mental weight of responsibility? So there's this mental weight, and there's this physical weight of responsibility that tends to be talked about.
The physical ones for a lot of people can tend to be managed on some level, for example, we could split duties. It's easier to say, ‘I'm just gonna let him cook for a couple of days and I can deal with that.’, But the idea that is out there is that women are the ones that tend to think about things way ahead of time, and they have to remind their spouse. If we want them to take on any responsibility, we have to remind them to do it. And then that feels weighty to us. You know, it's, it's interesting.
Ourselves and our partners have internalized patriarchal mindsets.
Maggie: Yeah, that happens a lot. There are all these articles and schools of thought around the mental load that women carry. Women are carrying the mental load, we don't want to ignore that. Right, we are doing it. But the question is why? And do we want to carry the same one? And what is there to renegotiate? And what is there to reimagine? And what do we want the things that we carry to be? Where are we at choice with those things that we are carrying? And that is often the times when I know people come to you and people come to me for help very specifically figuring that out. It's not clear-cut very often. And it's both simple and hard at the same time. Because as we have internalized patriarchal mindsets, so do our partners. And I want to acknowledge first, I'm a woman married to a man and Rebecca is a woman married to a man. So there's sort of an unconscious heteronormativity about our conversation where we talk about women married men, but these negotiations happen. Because all of us, both women and men, no matter what gender you're married to, have internalized patriarchal ideas - you should be in charge of this, and I should be in charge of that and this is how it should flow - no matter what kind of relationship you're in.
So let's just say, okay, we're in this situation, we're carrying the mental load, and it's not working. The first place I would invite anyone that's going through this to go is, how do you want it to be? Where would satisfaction lie? What does success look like? What do you never want to think about again? So let's say your kids play soccer or something, and you're like, I never want to think about the shoes and the uniform, I just never want to think about that again - Okay, then what does that look like? And here's the place where we get creative and we have to think about it and there is no right or wrong solution. There is no one way it's what works for you and your family. For some people, your partner may be able to take over. Say: ‘Listen, I never want to deal with that again. However, you figure it out. I don't care. I'm just never buying more of those shoes. I'm never standing in line to do the thing. I'm not doing registration. I'm not doing it.’
Rebecca: And the partner sometimes goes ‘yeah, okay. I got it.’ Like in the best-case scenario, your partner goes, ‘yeah, I got that one, don't worry about it.’
Maggie: And if that's not the case, if your partner says, ‘well, I don't want to do it either.’ Then we decide, reimagine and renegotiate. What is the solution? Guess what, our kid loves soccer. How do we solve this? Do you want to do it? Do I want to do it? How do we acknowledge that maybe neither of us wants to do this thing? What is an equitable distribution of duties? What feels good to you?
Rebecca: Yeah, I love this. And what came up to me because, what I think happens for a lot of us is that we have that conversation and somehow we get to the conclusion that your partner is going to take on soccer, and everything related to soccer from here on out. There is a period of time where that transfer happens. And it doesn't mean you're going to stop thinking about soccer if you were the one that was always thinking about soccer. You're still going to think about it. And there's going to be a period of time where they aren't practiced in it and so they're gonna forget sometimes because they're not in the practice of it. And so when they forget - because that's bound to happen on some level, we go ‘well, they clearly can't do it and so I have to do it.’ And then you pick it back up again. Then there's this belief that they can't really do this. And so now I have to do it again and we take it back.
Experiencing the consequences of our actions is a vital part of growth.
Maggie: So let's pause there for a second because thinking about over-functioning - whenever we do not let our partners experience the consequences of their actions or non-actions we are depriving them of the opportunity to work out that muscle, whatever that muscle is, right? ANd to figure it out for themselves, we're taking away their resourcefulness. So I identify as a feminist, I think many of the people who listened to your podcast would identify similarly. We want equality and the power of women, not more than anyone else, just equal to anyone else, right? And so if we lean into what equal power means, it means I don't deprive you of your agency. And in a very real way, when I'm over-functioning, thinking I'm being helpful to you, and to maybe the kid - the poor kid, the innocent child who just wants to play soccer, right? Depriving you of your agency, right? I'm not actually helping. Now, somebody's gonna listen to this and say lady, what are you talking about and depriving them of their agency? What the heck is that, right? But I really invite you to sit with the idea that experiencing the consequences of our actions is a vital part of growth. If we look into the research around psychology and stress, a little bit of stress is needed in life for us to do all the things that we do. For a flower to grow for nature to function...When we push up against something is how that muscle ends up growing and getting stronger. So when we swoop in anything that requires the feeling of swooping. You can just stop doing that right now. You just say, my life coaches, Rebecca and Maggie told me to stop swooping. So if you missed the game…
Rebecca: Yeah, and maybe your kid misses the game, or is late to the game because your partner has to go back and get the soccer things that they forgot at the house, and now there's a consequence of a relationship between the partner and the kid who's really upset. But you better believe that partner is probably not going to be missing soccer again.
Taking on all responsibilities as if it’s yours.
Maggie: And this is something that also comes up all the time. And it's very, very simple. And I ask everyone to think about this. What is mine and what is yours? It is very common in an intimate relationship to have very nebulous lines between what is mine is what is yours, and when we're type A driven women who like to get things done, everything becomes mine. Think about it in our teams at work, and when we volunteer, whether that’s at school, or doing something with other people - this isn't just something that happens in our marriages, everything becomes mine. If you're in that situation, this is the opportunity, let today be the turning point where you just start asking yourself over and over again, Wait, is that mine? No, that's this other person's. Is that mine? No, oh, this is mine. And there will be things that are currently yours that don't belong to you give them back!
Rebecca: Right! Give them back. So good, I love that. And I love the idea that failure is uncomfortable for us. Obviously, as humans, it's meant to be uncomfortable on some level. That's what is building resiliency, it's building lessons, it's building strength, it's building all this stuff. So we know failure is good and whatnot, but it's very uncomfortable. And it's very uncomfortable to watch someone you love fail - maybe even more...watching our partner fail at something. And then in this case, because we're talking about giving them space to fail, as you sort out a new more equitable household, is to not make it personal. It does not mean something went wrong, and it does not mean that this isn't going to work. It’s about not taking failure and then extrapolate a big meaning out of it. Versus, well of course there was going to be this grace period of failure, or not even a grace period, but sort of this season.
Maggie: Yes to all of that. And if you imagine walking into a gym, and you've never lifted a weight before, and you try to start at 50lbs, and you can't, no one would judge you for that. We would have no thoughts about it, we'd say ‘hey, come over here, let's start with the 10lbs’, right? If you imagine what we're talking about today as emotional weight that we need to learn to carry then we can say, this person is just gonna have to start wherever they are. And by the way, the assumption that they're gonna forget - which might be accurate for some people. Let's remove that too. This person could be forgetful, they have to figure out how to remember things, right? They have a job, they obviously were wise enough to marry you, they figured out how to show up that day. Let's give their resourcefulness back to them and say, ‘oh, you're going to be in charge of this thing, do you need my help to figure it out, I'm here, I've done it for five years, so if you want any tips, I'm happy to give them. What I do is I put reminders on my phone, that really helps me because there's so many meetings and things I have to do…’ whatever the case may be, right? But let's assume the resourcefulness of our partners. And that kind of sounds like ‘what do you mean? I know he’s forgetful, or I know she's forgetful..’, whatever the thing is, right? And by the way, literally, my husband says his phone is his second brain. Like, literally, I'm married to a man who genuinely is forgetful. But I don't solve that for him. He writes things on his phone. And when I want him to remember something, I'll ask him, ‘Hey, I'm gonna send you an appointment.’...Actually, this is happening this weekend, as we record this - but once a month, I meet my girlfriend's and we do something together. And I like him to be updated so he knows I'm going to be away and not available to do things together. So I sent him a calendar invite, so now he doesn't have to remember which weekend I'm going out with my friends or what's going on. It's just on his calendar. Right? So I can help him in that way, but I don't take it over.
Our thoughts about our spouses dictate how we respond to them.
Rebecca: And if you forget, you don't point it back to you as doing something wrong, or pointing it back to him and labeling him as being forgetful or not resourceful, or whatever it is. I love this idea of stripping labels, I wrote that down because it feels like our thoughts about our spouse dictate a lot of how we respond to our spouse. And so in this case, like really believing that he is resourceful and believing that he can do it in the first place, is likely one of the very core pieces of learning this transition and being able to take things off your plate and give them away.
Maggie: And let's think about this, there was an article a few years back about, I think elementary school teachers - we'd have to look it up. But the gist of the article was that the kids in the class performed according to the teacher’s expectations. So when the teachers expected the kids to get good grades and learn the material and really just integrate everything, the kids did. And when the teachers had very low expectations for the kids and just expected them not to understand and not to pass the test, they didn't. So let's extrapolate for a sec, right? This was en masse with hundreds of teachers. Let's imagine this in the micro at home, when we expect someone to figure things out, are they more likely or less likely to figure it out? Let’s test it! We don't know, so let's see. We end this sort of duality around lowering our expectations and raising our expectations at the same time, like not needing our partners to be any particular way. But holding with compassion and love that they could rise to the occasion and what could that be like? And not deciding ahead of time that they won't.
Believing in our partner’s abilities like we do our kids.
Rebecca: Yeah, you know what this is reminding me of, it’s reminding me of the season that happens with kids when we know that they're capable of doing something. For example, my four year old right now is totally capable of putting on his shoes, he's been able to put on his shoes for a while now. And when I asked him to do it, I got a very low percentage chance that he's going to do it. For lots of reasons he chooses to not put on his shoes right now, but I don't make that mean that he can't put on his shoes, I still believe that he could put on his shoes regardless of if he does it every single time that I asked him to do it. When we start to believe certain things about our kids, we give so much grace to them because we think that their kids and that they're just learning and so we get less frustrated. I get less frustrated at my four year old when he doesn't put his shoes on because It's like, he's only four. And I assume sometimes he's not gonna put on his shoes, and I'm okay with that. I don't get frustrated at that. And I don't make that mean anything about him as a kid. Like, oh my god, he can't even put on shoes, where is he going to go in life. There's this natural grace that we give to our kids that we don't give to our partners. But I feel like there's something that we can relate to if we think about the genuine belief that we have in our children, we can take that same belief and pass that on to our partners - assuming we want to. Of course, this entire podcast is talking about Yes, we believe we want to get to that point. And we believe that the partner we're with is capable. And it's possible. And well, here's the big thing, you have to believe that they're capable and possible, and you have to do the work to combat all of those thoughts that have probably been percolating in your brain for quite some time, which is that he isn't capable, and it is impossible, which is why you have to take it all on and that story, that narrative really is not useful, and it has to change at the core.
Maggie: Yeah. And I think, you know, let's say you're in a marriage, you have kids, there's a lot of things in your life that are going well. But there are a few things that aren't, we wanted to zoom out and have that perspective of like you married your partner for a reason in the first place. They have qualities that are kind and generous and good and things that you enjoy in that human. And they're also not going to react the same way that you will to different challenges and adventures that you're going to have in your lifetime together. And what we want to do is we want to say all of it is okay, we just had to figure out how to get you in a situation where you're not burnt out, overwhelmed and resentful. Like, I know Rebecca’s goal is to help you move out of that. And my goal is to help you move out of that right, and in different ways. And it's like, okay, one of the ways is to say, What do I need to stop doing? What do I never want to touch again? What do I need to reimagine and renegotiate? And really, that part of our work doesn't even involve our partners. It's like, what does success look like to me? What would feel nourishing? Oh, I want to have Saturday mornings to just be creative and do whatever. Okay, how do I set up my life to create that thing that I want? And then one of the things we were talking about that I just want to loop back to is, you don't want to do it? Maybe the partner doesn't want to do it? Does it need to be done at all? Is a question I ask all the time. We set up our lives in such a way. It's like, wait, does this actually need to be done? How often? Sometimes it's the frequency, oh, we do need to do this, but we only need to do it once a month. Okay. And then if it doesn't need to be done, and neither of us wants to do it, and I'm not available for it, like, let's just say, I'm just not available for that anymore. Okay. What needs to happen? Are we hiring a college kid? Are we changing from I don't know, carpet to hardwood floors? What needs to happen, so we never have to deal with it, whatever that thing may be, that will also require some creativity and that's why I use the word reimagined. Let’s make it a completely clean slate and start fresh. And one of the things that I see happen very often and Rebecca, I'm curious whether you see this too, is you know, I've been married for 14 years over 14 years.
Rebecca: Me too! July 2007.
Maggie: Mine was in May. I love it, spring and summer weddings. Okay. Still, we made these decisions maybe 14 years ago. And Rebecca is in my case, we did actually make some decisions 14 years ago. And then we never revisited again. And maybe we've had career changes, promotions, new jobs, new kids, new house, whatever, all of these different things have evolved. And we're still doing something that we agreed to in 2007. And it doesn't work now. So sometimes it's not even about whether your partner will or won't, or what they are refusing to do. It's like, wait, we made this agreement back when things were different. So another thing I really want to invite everyone who's listening to do is, if there's something that's not working, just check-in, how long ago did I make that decision? What are all the things that have changed since then? And what do I want that decision to be now? And then how do I approach that as a team with my partner. One thing I don't want to lose sight of is - I teach this communication framework, it's called soul centered communication. And one of the pieces of it, the L in the soul is being loving towards myself and the other person. And everything we're talking about today, I invite you to think about it through the lens of, if I was being loving towards myself and the other person, how would I approach it? It's really that equality that we talk about in feminism or that equality that we're looking for is: I am not above or below that other person. They are not above or below me. Their interests and desires and passions are equally as important as my interest, desires, and passions. So how do we solve it, if that's the case?
Believing we are equal with our partners.
Rebecca: So good. I love that you keep bringing it back to this equitable place. Beliefs that we are equals and that it's not that either one of us is better or worse, maybe one is more practiced than the other, but we don't want to label that as being better or worse, or more gifted or not, or whatever it may be like, we don't want to label any of that. And to just believe at this very neutral level or equal neutral level that we're both on the same playing field, we both have the same level of ability to get things done. As we talk about this, I keep thinking about my relationship with my husband, and there are a lot of things that I do in our family, and there's a lot of things that he does, and this week I went away, and everything got done!
Maggie: And what didn't get done didn't matter.
Rebecca: Yes, and we talked about it. I love when I come home and we talk and I’m like, tell me about what you felt like you did really well over the last week as a parent, as a father, in managing things. And I love hearing some of the things he has to say. But I remember some of those first times leaving him by himself and both of us just being like, okay, we are going to assume that both of us are just gonna figure it out! And we both had this assumption that we can work it out. And now, my oldest is almost 7 and my husband said, once I got back from this recent trip, that he remembers when I went on the first trip, and he was like, I’m so glad you’re home! Kind of pulling his hair out, because he had never done it before! He was learning things, and now, 7 years later, he’s like yeah, it was great. There were 0 issues, we managed it and they loved it. So I can see his growth, I can see my growth, I can see their relationship dynamic change over time. I know that every working mom has this experience. You may be so stressed and anxious to be leaving your kids with your partner, to manage life and I bet you got back and everyone was alive! For sure they can figure it out. We have to believe they can.
So I like to systemize things, that’s how my brain works. There are 3 things that we have already covered. The goal here is to give some tools and practices to help working moms relieve the pressure they feel to always be the one to hold the responsibilities. So far 3 major things have stood out to me, starting with questioning your foundational beliefs about why you as the female are the one holding all the responsibilities and allowing yourself to say whatever I believed about this is probably not true. And number 2, what are your thoughts about your spouse taking some of those things over and starting to clue into, do you believe he can do it? And if you don't, that's probably a really big starting place for you to start building up a different set of beliefs about him and his ability to do that. So it’s like the thoughts about you and then the thoughts about him and his ability.
Knowing where each other's skills lay.
Maggie: And also, let’s pause there for a second. It may not be that your spouse takes over. There may be some things that you can say, this is a thing that I will be in charge of forever. When you do this evaluation for yourself, there may be things where you say, that is mine. Then it becomes a choice and not some unconscious burden we didn't realize we took on and then you can relate to it differently. The other thing, is this invites you to say, okay, this is the thing that matters to me the most, what are the things that I need to eliminate so I have the space, mental, emotional and actual time on my calendar to really give this thing the attention that I want to give it. So even if you keep some things, you’re still in a different relationship around the rest of the stuff and how you organize it. Also, it may not be your spouse. It may be you outsource it to someone who is equipped to handle whatever that thing is. It may be you stop doing it, or you find a different way to get that thing done. Or to give you a simple example - as I mentioned my spouse is the chef in the family, and he wasn’t feeling well the other day, and so I said I can warm things! Let’s make the expectations clear. I have a unique set of skills, I can warm things in the microwave, I can door dash, and I can make a variety of breakfast foods for dinner, any time that is still delicious. I lowered the expectations. This is what I can do, and here is what is available to you as an option. So it’s not like I’m giving something up and now my spouse is in charge. We often enter into some of these ideas like, let me hand over these things to this person, who is even less equipped to handle these things than I am and that's not the goal either. It is A - does it need to get done? Does it need to get done by me? How can we get it done so we can work as a family? It's a bigger picture idea than if I hand it over to you and that’s how it's got to be.
Rebecca: Right. And you went there, that was the 3rd point. You have the thoughts about you and you have the thoughts about your spouse and their ability. And then you have, it starts with evaluation and the circumstances. What are the responsibilities out there? Do we need to let them go? Do we need to outsource? You start there.
I love some of your questions, which I really want to highlight - What do you really want to do? What do you hate doing? What do you feel you are gifted at? What do you think they are gifted at, and would fit naturally in their skill-set? Naturally opening up questions about these various responsibilities as humans and partners and parents, and get it all out there and start evaluating it. My guess is some of these things will come naturally once you get it out there, and it will be very clear. For sure, I am the cook in the family, because I love to cook! Not because I’m a woman. A couple of years ago, my husband said ‘I just feel like this is too much for you.’ and so he took over one night. And now he’s taken over 3 nights, and it’s super helpful. But it came out of a very natural place and we collaborated in figuring those things out.
What is the highest investment of my time?
Maggie: That’s great, 100% yes. I love that. And I love your example of cooking, because here's what it bought up for me - and I know a lot of the listeners of this podcast are professional women faced with professional decisions all the time, which is, what is the opportunity cost of making this decision? What am I giving up to have this? So let’s say, you love cooking but it takes you 3 hours. So you are giving up those 3 hours to have the joy of cooking, but really giving up those 3 hours at the ages that your kids are at isn’t the best use of your time, even though you love cooking! So it’s like, Oh, what does this opportunity cost? I will give you a wacky example, I used to scrapbook. I did it on paper and then digitally. I still love that. And having an online business I would use Canva for my graphics. It is 0 useful for my business to spend time on Canva, even though I love it. Once in a while, I will go and make something, just because it’s fun and I will acknowledge that it’s just for fun, it’s not actually a high investment of my time. Always a great question is - What is the highest investment of my time?
Rebecca: You’ve offered some real gems. I hope everyone is writing this down. There are some great evaluative questions here.
Looking at the bigger picture goal.
Maggie: I am literally in love with questions. There is this saying which is like, ‘the quality of your life rises to the quality of the questions you ask yourself.’ - So I'm all about the questions, I’m glad there are some juicy good ones in this podcast. So, what is the highest investment of my time? Even though I love to do this thing, I might need to let go of something I enjoy for a bigger picture goal around my family, my career, my kids - whatever it may be. And that trade-off, which is the trade-off I am willing to make, is part of that evaluation moment that we do, where we say, I’m not willing to make that trade-off, or I am.
Rebecca: Yes, for sure. I think for example the cleanliness of our house. So for a lot of type A women, we like our clean and clutter-free houses and for sure, adding kids into your home, it becomes exponentially harder to keep your house the way you want it to be kept. I have gone through a process myself, evaluating and deciding that the cleanliness of my house is not as important - even though I love it and may have clung to it before, it is not as important as having quality time with my kids and playing a game with them. This room I’m in now looks particularly good, but if you were to walk through to my dining room, every chair and every blanket in the house has been made into a massive fort. And my daughter has brought all her toys and trinkets into her fort. And the other room has trains out, and it’s been out for a whole week. It is so hard to walk through for me, but everytime I go, this isn't worth taking the time to clean up, for lots of reasons. One being it will be back out again right away and two, they took so much time playing in that fort and with those trains, that it has given me the time and space I needed to rest and rejuvenate, with them being totally occupied without them being on a screen. I just know that the trade-off is worth it. And my husband and I agreed. But last night we looked at eachother and agreed that it was time to pick up the house, and we agreed when we were going to do it, okay, Friday night, before movie night. We will make the whole family come together to clean it up. And for the last 2 days my brain kept on offering to me, Gosh this is a problem, it’s something that needs to get done. But then I decided nope, this is something we are going to clean up together, and it’s a collaboration. My husband and I evaluated and we decided and I feel better! And now I can manage my brain.
Maggie: What I love about that example is - because I don’t have kids. I think everything you told me is the most amazing miracle and so awesome. There is a fairy fort and then there are trains, like that was the dream! You’re living the dream - and by the way I just want to mention, I don’t have kids by choice, I am not suffering in any way, I know that is a very delicate thing so I just wanted to mention that. So when you were describing it, it’s like oh my gosh, those are memories they will keep forever! How awesome is that?
Rebecca: Every once and while she invites me in and I can look around it. It’s a very beautiful fort and so creative. For sure I would trade-off the clutter and mess in my house, which is a responsibility that is really high for me, and I would trade it all off for these moments, hands down. And that is only because I have consciously thought about it.
Deciding with intentionality.
Maggie: Yeah and that’s what we are inviting everyone to do. There is no right or wrong answer. Everything we talked about there will be unique situations where some of the things we said will apply and some of them won’t. But the idea is that you go to it with intentionality and decide what works for you.
Rebecca: Ok, so, we have a little bit of a framework to help people. But I am curious though about what you would say to women who feel like they have requested, they have asked, they feel like they have tried to invite in but still can’t get their spouse to take on x,y,z ? And how to handle that resistance or whatever may be coming up for them in their marriage and how to push through that when it does feel like the door of communication is not opening and change isn't happening.
Maggie: This is a multilayered thing. So we will discuss this in simplicity with some points to start at, but this is really why Rebecca has a program - what’s the name of your program?
Rebecca: The Ambitious & Balanced Working Moms Collective.
Maggie: This is why we have programs because this is something that will require more than what we can share in the podcast.
Rebecca: And your program, Maggie?
Request vs demands.
Maggie: My program is called The Marriage MBA and it’s the relationship skills they don’t teach you in school.
So here’s the place to start. First of all, for everyone to know, anytime we have a mother relationship with a partner, that’s poison. Anytime we are in some form where we could have a mother’ish feeling...that needs to stop immediately. And think about what I was saying - you’re not above or below, you’re equal. So when you are a mom and have kids, you are their guardian and you have a position of power over that human and it’s appropriate and it’s a perfect thing. This is poison in a marriage and if you are experiencing it you need to join Rebecca’s program, listen to my podcast, you know, do the things. So that’s the first thing.
The second thing is, we say ‘I tried, I’m done.’ Ok, I don’t know, I’m not there, I've not seen what you’ve done but many times that I see with my clients is - how we said it wasn’t the best way. And how do we know it wasn’t the best way? Because it didn't work. So one of the things I teach is super simple, it’s called request vs demands. And when we make a request, at the end of the request there is no emotional price to pay if the answer is no. At the end of a demand, there is an emotional price to pay. I’m pouty, I may give you a face, I may be quiet, I might start being aggressive either passively or actively. So when I’ve tried and done all these things - ask yourself in what way did I evaluate? Did I come with a request from my highest, and best and most loving self, and if I did, ok we are at peace with that. But if I didn’t we need to check. Not from a place of blaming or saying it was wrong. We are just saying it wasn’t effective and we need to find a better way. So that is something we need to troubleshoot. And the next thing is the assumption that your spouse should do it. Which is sometimes, I’ve asked and requested and they are not good at that either. What is the actual real goal? Rebecca and I spend a lot of time with our clients solving the problem. If the problem is you not doing it, the answer is not for your spouse to do it, the answer is I’m not doing it anymore, let’s figure it out. Check in on that. Let’s say we came in with our highest and best self and it is something our spouse can do but they don’t want to. Then we take our brain to a place of, ‘I have married a human who does not want to do this thing, it is just not their cup of tea.’ So for example, we order homechef, one of those meal preparation services and I thought this will be my chance to get familiar with the kitchen and who knows, maybe I have some cooking gene I didn’t know I had. As it turns out, I did a bunch of things in the kitchen and I collaborated a little, but it turns out that it is not my thing, I will never have an interest in, we will never die of hunger, because I can warm things. But we have arrived at the idea that I am physically capable of doing things in the kitchen, I just don't want to. So it’s up to my husband to say, can I accept that I married a human who has no interest in cooking? Does she have other virtues that are trade-offs I am willing to make? And then how can we solve the problem that we are still eating everyday? So it’s not like the thing goes away, but how can we figure it out so it works for us.
Rebecca: I love that there is a focus on us always, and being very honest about how to approach it. Was I coming from a place of love and belief in them? There is always that check in. And also it always circles back to, I still want to be in this marriage, which means I need to accept that the person I married doesn't want to do x,y and z. Or doesn't want to develop that skill. So instead of focusing our intention on the lack, we look at all the things our partner does bring into the marriage and the family.
Maggie: I’ll tell you this - because I obviously help people make their marriages stronger on a regular basis and a lot of my clients go on to have brand new chapters in their relationships and it’s amazing, but some of my clients get divorced. And I want to mention that. If you’re in this stage and you’re really overwhelmed and burnt out, and you don’t know which way this is going to go - everything we have talked about today will help you be very clear on what your partner is available for and what your partner is not available for. And then you can decide. Do I want this? And the way I look at it is, what’s the best relationship I can have for this human? Let's have that first and then, do I want that one? And when you do that, what I have found with clients where it was really best not to stay together...I remember one who was like, ‘If I hadn't have done this work, I would have just been treading water and accepting excuses and things that didn't align with my values as supposed to saying, this is what I want, do you want that?’.
Rebecca: Yes for sure. I love that. And of course, the thing of divorce isn't something that comes up lightly, ever. And I know whenever this comes up for my clients it is (usually) this moment of whoa, I don’t want to go there at all, but I’m acting as if there is no other option here, my behavior and thoughts are as if I am limiting that. So oftentimes when this subject comes up, we back up and evaluate and see now that isn't what I want, but I can see why my brain was offering me that and taken it to that extreme - because that’s what our brains like to do.
Maggie: Yes and sometimes even asking the questions. As coaches, we can be very blunt and I will say, is this the thing you want to divorce that person over? And my clients will always say no, it’s never this ‘thing’. And even that clarity is really useful. Because then, in that case, how do we make it work? What do you need to get your needs met? And how do we approach it from a more constructive way? Because if that is off the table for now, then let's see what else can be on that table.
Conclusion
Rebecca: Maggie, I feel like this can go on and on, but I feel like we are at that point. This has been so much fun connecting with you on this subject. There is no one better to talk about our marriages with than Maggie Reyes. Tell me a bit more about your program and where our listeners can find it.
Maggie: The marriage MBA is a 6 month mentoring and coaching program. I teach relationship skills and then I coach you where you get stuck in implementing them - that is the shortest way to describe it. You can go to maggiereyes.com/group to find the whole overview of the whole approach that I take. And I have a podcast called The Marriage Life Coach Podcast where every week I talk about marriage in a way that I don’t think anyone talks about marriage, in a way that is very grounding and loving towards you and your partner. To allow you both to have a thriving relationship. So I encourage you to subscribe and check it out.
Thank you so much for having this conversation, I think the more we have these conversations the happier we can become. And to me, when a woman takes authority over her relationship, that’s the ultimate freedom - to say, I want this to go a different way, so here’s what I’m going to do about it. It’s so powerful, so thank you!
