Moore Style - Embracing Personal Growth for a More Fulfilling Life with Maria Fuentes

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Have you ever been stuck in the same cycles or patterns and wondered if you would ever be able to change them? This can feel impossible but once we dive into our emotions, take ownership, and dedicate ourselves to change, our lives can be better than we imagined! Join us this week as Maria Fuentes, a self-mastery coach, shares how we can work past guilt and shame, why self-love is more than just a buzzword, and how taking ownership over our triggers, emotions, and boundaries can improve our relationships  Maria’s wisdom will open your eyes to the possibility of change and remind you that even if you feel like you cannot break a cycle, once you take ownership of your life and energy - amazing things can happen. In this week’s episode, we discuss: [02:00] About Maria Fuentes [04:00] Why Maria started her business [07:13] Being selective with your energy - leaky energy syndrome [15:46] Breaking up with hyper independence [17:42] Working past shame and guilt  [19:18] Uncovering unworthiness [21:09] Using EFT tapping  [25:35] What do women want out of a healthy relationship? [27:28] The importance of self-love in relationships [31:39] Gender roles and boundaries in relationships [34:51] Women are the gatekeepers of emotions [38:48] Taking ownership of our triggers [42:24] Self-realization and getting clear on what we want [45:09] Long-distance relationships [48:55] Maria’s favorite date   Connect with Maria: Website  Instagram Podcast Tap into your power- Dating Masterclass

Welcome to the Down and Dirty Podcast, the ultimate guide to modern midlife dating. I'm your host, Celeste Moore, and I'm here to help you navigate the challenges of today's dating world. Think of me as your female version of Hitch, but better. With over 16 years of experience as a certified image consultant and dating coach, I've got the inside scoop on what women want. In this podcast, we're diving deep into the world of healthy masculinity and modern dating. It's a fast-changing industry. And here, you'll find personal stories, expert insights, and candid conversations that will empower you to take control of your dating life. There's never been a better time to achieve your desired outcome, whether it's marriage,

finding a significant other, securing a life partner, or simply regaining your dating confidence. We're here with you twice a week to explore the viewpoints and challenges in today's dating arena that resonate with every man seeking dating success and love. So let's dive into today's episode. We've got an exciting discussion lined up for you. Get ready for the double D's of dating where dating dilemmas turn into dating triumph. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Down and Dirty Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Celeste Moore. Thanks again for jumping on here and listening to the show. It absolutely means the world to me and I'm forever grateful for all the amazing guests that I get to interview and continue to educate everyone

listening here. If you feel so inclined, please leave a review and a five-star rating never hurts. It really brings the show to the forefront and that in turn like helps everybody because they have content that can, where they can bring back these pieces of information to your relationship and who doesn't want to have a healthy, happy relationship. But before I jump into today's episode, I would love to introduce my guest today. I'm so excited to have her. Her name is Maria Fuentes and she is a self-mastery coach that specializes in helping individuals take ownership of their emotions, confidence, and relationship. So Maria, thank you so much for being on today's show. Well, thank you for having me, Gorgeous. I'm so excited to be here. Just to tell everybody a

little bit how we met, you know, a couple weeks ago. Some of you may know, some of you may not. I was just scrolling down Instagram and maybe it was like one in the morning and I see this like convention, this like thing that's happening in Dallas, which is only like a three-hour drive for me. And long story short, I said yes. And I didn't know anybody that was going. I just knew this was something for me to stretch myself, stretch my business. I don't know. It just felt like big, fucking scary, big stuff happening. But I knew that this was supposed to happen. And at the very end, at the very last day, Maria and I got a special invite to an extra small little get together of about 25 people or 35 people something like that out of 500 and we

sat next to each other and we just started having this conversation and you are the most amazing like I love your energy I don't know something just we really hit it off and then I find get to find out that you are like you're a relationship coach basically and I was like oh my gosh we have to talk and I'm saying I felt the unredeemed we were both kind of in that breakfast we're like what are we doing here? Why did we get selected? And talk about timing and just really when you ask for more from the universe, God, it really does give you more. And I think we both had that aha moment, like we're like shifting, you know, we're tapping into new energy here. And it was amazing. And I loved connecting with you. Yeah. Well, and then I was like, okay, you've got to

come on my show. We've got to talk about what you do and who you help. And I love what you teach, but do you predominantly teach women men age groups yes I would say mostly women and when I started this work I started my own personal journey like four years ago with my own therapy because I was in such a bad dark place and so I wasn't in a victimhood mentality so much of what would happen to me just felt like uncontrollable and like it was just happening life was just happening to me and I decided to make a shift and so when I got into this work I decided I want to help the woman that I needed back in those days in that time right because unless it was therapist I really didn't have anyone in my in my atmosphere that would help me kind of navigate those emotions

and the lack of confidence and the unhealthy relationships that I kept finding myself in whether they were romantic relationships or friendships so my goal is always to help women help women in that past version of who I was that I didn't have back then Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. I really feel that you can feel extra, extra lost if you don't have a support system. And like many of us live in different states or cities from family or from even good friends when we were in college, like everybody's kind of moved on from a specific area. And I don't know if that's the case for you, but it definitely was for me. So to have someone like you who not only is there for them, but has gone through these experiences so you really understand what they need. I think that's so powerful. hand-holding you know we need somebody outside of our immediate group like you said as we grow we transition we move when we want to shift into a new energy and a new person a new persona become that person that we can't stop thinking about right the higher version of ourselves sometimes

the people around us aren't along for the ride and so you can't have these conversations with people closest to you your best friends or your boyfriend or whoever and i think that's where coaches and mentors are so important because they're able to come in as an outsider and have that experience and kind of have the life that maybe you already want or see yourself having and they're able to guide you and kind of fast forward you to that i always tell people i'm like listen i've spent thousands of dollars on therapists hypnotherapists spiritual like guidance all this inner work and now i get to teach you just the short version of it the shortcuts right what i've learned through my own healing and through my own suffering as well

man telling me i think i mean that's probably what makes us amazing coaches there are a brain let me make this so you don't have to go you know let me help you so you don't have to go through this and experience this yeah that can be frustrating too because you can see something so clearly for someone and sometimes they just don't want to really hear it right you know they want your help like i'm not telling you like it's just some random person you're like folks you need some help but they actually come to you and there's you know maria like i need this but how do you kind of move past that like do you have a specific maybe some tools or some coaching that you can work through some of those like the client that obviously hired you wants your services but

is still like really really stuck in the fact that there's still that like block yeah I I try to prep everyone and talk to them and I make it very self-led to the extent of I'm only going to take you as far as you want to go right I can't push anyone have these breakthroughs if they're not ready and even though I feel like a lot of people I can't see their blind spots because it's so much easier to see it on somebody else's life right than it is your own I can't push them outside of their comfort zone unless they're willing and ready to go through it. So a lot of my coaching is done actually through programs. I don't do a lot of one-on-one coaching. And when I do, I try to make it as selective as possible because I really do want to work with just that

one individual that's ready to really transform their life to the next level. Whereas my programs, I feel like are more self-led and they're able to just hit pause, come back to another module, kind of work as they want. I actually had a program called Be Your Own Muse, and it was just designed to become your own source of inspiration so I like making my stuff more self-led because that's how I learned as well like I said I had to go through trial and error going to therapy going doing all these things that even though I had those therapists and all these people amazing people helping me it was my own let me sit down let me journal let me sit with my thoughts let me really dig in deep to who I am and what I want to become that that really transformed my

life because everything else was just tools like you were saying they're just I'm just another toolbox or another tool in the toolbox right so I will navigate people and help them as much as they're willing to but I'm very selective with my one-on-one coaching just because of that and the energy right we only have I say on Instagram all the time I only have so much energy to give right so I create these programs because I really want to give it my all so that whoever's meant to hear whoever's meant to take in that information and really transform their life they will and then the one-on-one coaching is even more of my energy that I feel like I have to be selective on who is able to obtain that and tap into and it's what I'm teach too I don't think it's not

just me I think we should all be very selective to who has our energy and who taps into our energy source yeah I love that you just said that because this is almost to the I don't know like two weeks ago this is something that hit me very hard and I was like oh my god I am putting too much energy into i have great clients but wanting to build that is not going to be conducive i mean one i give a lot of myself i i love what i do and i i mean like so much fun but i'm like how many people can i help and so that is just like beautiful and you know like you said everybody learns in a different way and at their own pace. And so giving that program to your clients really allows them to either really like, okay, I just need like, let me fast forward or let me take

three months or whatever. I don't know what they look like or how long the modules are, but no, I love that approach. And I think you hit the nail on the head with like, your time is very valuable, just like everybody else's. And how you spend that is really important to you yeah have you ever had those days where you're like i did nothing productive for my energies drained oh yeah right and so many of us do that and it's because we have i call it leaky energy syndrome right like we end up leaking our energy to all these things that don't matter and at the end of the day we're like wow i did nothing that filled my cup i did nothing that you know i didn't check anything off the list i didn't do anything that really

moved the needle but i'm so drained so then you go into the next day with that energy and I've learned that I have to protect my energy and I'm also a little introverted so even being at that event with you like the mornings where we had to network and get out of our like routine and stuff that really kind of threw me off you know yeah I was like oh no like my energy is gonna be gonna be all over the place now and I think it's and not everyone's like that I think some people are more extroverted and they do well with exerting their energy everywhere I think it's a very personal thing, but we should all self-mastery, right? That's why I always go back to us. So you have to become the master of yourself and understand yourself to a deeper level.

Yeah. That's so profound too. It's not just with, like you said, in relationships, it's in your work environments, meeting new friends, just the whole part of life. And the more that you have self-mastered or understanding those needs and wants and desires and things that fill your cup and things that drain your cup that's so huge to know that because I don't think a lot of people are self-aware enough to even know they just know oh my god like you said today was like so draining and I didn't do really anything right yeah totally and I think a lot of it's because we created this persona of who we think we should be and we're not living in our true authentic selves right so we're living either for society the people around us and if we really

look back and think of the things even that we enjoyed in childhood a lot of what I teach is emotions and we're taught to repress our emotions to not show our authentic selves to now show how we're feeling I mean starting from childhood right I studied psychology in college because there was something that really resonated with me is that the mind's so powerful and I think where we are able to go back to who our true authentic selves is obviously as adults now and with all the understanding and life experiences we're able to tap into this is what I like and this is what I don't like and then in relationships then you are able to come in and clear and as a whole person and somebody that's grounded who they are versus I mean I think I can speak for a lot of women here

versus finding people to fill these voids of who we want because we don't know who we are and what we so powerful i literally just had this conversation this morning you cannot give what you do not have and we're so ingrained especially as women to give to nurture to give up our own self our own just for something else or for someone else you know what whether it's like society values religious like if you look back like on and on and on and i think the or that you strip that away and you do for yourself and you're more in alignment with who you are you've so much more to give and you're so much more happier and you're so much more like there's just so much more to give and that's like win-win right you're light and airy right

it's a different energy and I think as women we over give so much and then I see it all the time I see it with friends I see it with clients I see with anyone that I talk to and then what happens is that we feel drained and then we are exhausted and annoyed and then we get angry and then we become resentful towards the person that we were overgiving to when they probably never asked us to overgive.

And they probably would have enjoyed the softer, not overgiving person that we could have been instead that would have just been, you know, oozing of love and nurturance instead of the overgiving. But we do it because we want to feel loved and validated and feel like we are good for someone.

you know in a weird way that's like how we feel loved as women yeah okay we all have to stop that ladies okay it's not that we can't give but once we've given to ourself right once we've like started to fill that cup and really and I know it's just so cliche almost to hear and like fill your cup up and then you have like more to give but it really is true because I'm some days like you know it's just a monotony it's like by the end of the day i'm like oh i'm so drained i wish i had more energy well i probably could have if i just you know maneuvered a little bit different did this instead of that like the laundry can wait the dishes can wait all that stuff that's like minute but if i did something that actually fulfilled my um goal like whatever my life goals

my business goals my whatever and stayed a little bit more on track i would have been so much happier and probably had more to give because I wouldn't have been so drained right and we try to take up a lot we try to say oh I can do it all and I don't know about you but being like a hyper independent woman like where I was on my own at 19 and I didn't really want to rely on anyone I was like I have to do it all I get to do it all I will do it all and it's breaking up with that because that is a trauma response from our own childhood as well thinking that we can't rely on people and asking for help is vulnerability and vulnerability means you're weak and all these things and dilemmas that we like create in our heads that you know what if I know a lot of people

don't have the money for it but if like cleaning is something exhausting for you hire a cleaning lady it doesn't make you less of a person or of a woman if you decide that the hours in your day are better spent filling up your cup working on things that you're passionate about that's purposeful spending time at your job whatever it is or your kids whatever is in your environment and I think when we start outsourcing things that we don't really care to do we're like oh wait now there's this like free time and free energy like that we get to choose how we spend it and I think that's a big I started doing that myself because I'm like it's such a big difference you know really allowing myself to have that freedom yeah no I think it's so important and I'm glad that

you're like it's so powerful that you're able to know that this is such a need and i think that like you said as women we want to do it all because because we're you know we're abandoned and we have trust issues and um if i do it it'll just get done i can do it better i don't you know all of these stories that go on in our head and i realized being a sole parent and also you know having, this is my third business now, like, you know, always doing everything. Okay. I hired this, I hired that, but still at the end of the day, I'm still doing 90% of it. That's not working for me. Like, let's, let's adjust. Let's, you know, give myself that. And I think it's also about allowing, right. Being comfortable with allowing yourself that, because I think,

I don't know why we have such an issue with the guilt or whatever is related to that. Shame and guilt are like the hardest emotions for us to work past, but they're the most detrimental. So think of any time that you felt shame and guilt in any part of your life, you'll carry that feeling and that energy for the rest of your life if you don't really allow it to go through, right? So if we feel ashamed of asking for help, that's something that we'll never, we'll block ourselves from receiving for the rest of our lives if we feel shame behind that. Or if we did something that now we feel guilty about and now we feel like we have to overcompensate or overgive, those are two really heavy emotions that can, even on a physical level, will carry, well, you'll carry it so heavily on you that you'll see people be like, I'm gaining weight and I don't even know how or why. And we'll hold it in our physical bodies. It'll cause stress. It'll cause illnesses. It'll cause all these different things. And those are two heavy emotions.

And I think not only all humans deal with that, but I think as women, we deal with it more, the shame and the guilt, because we're told like, don't wear this, don't wear that. And there's this suppressing of being a woman that happens even as little girls. Yeah. So we have to go to you and rewire that shit. I'm not sure. you know it's not too late ladies even if you're my age I'm 47 like you gotta like there's no way that you can't rewire you can I mean it's not going to be easy it's not like one day you're

gonna be like I need to do that and then you've got to implement tools or what are some of the tools that you work through or like offer to some of your clients I know it varies but like just let's just say she does that she does it all how do you help her get past where she can start delegating or whatever it is that she needs to do i will layer it down to why she feels unworthy of asking for help because i think that's what it comes down to right so once i start peeling off those layers i'll ask well how do you feel when you ask for help well i feel ashamed or i feel guilty right or i feel there's always an emotion attached to asking for help and then i try to figure out where that started because that's a lot of the hypnotherapy work that I

went through myself is there was a moment in time that you in your consciousness it's not there it's not something you're replaying but it's storing your subconscious that there was a time where you asked for help and somebody didn't show up or you asked for help and somebody shunned you or you asked for help and there was a negative emotion that came up that you never cleared so your subconscious thinks it's not safe to ask for help if you ask for help you're going to be weak and you're going to get hurt because that emotion is still stored in your body from that first time that it ever happened, which is crazy. But we all operate. And I think that was one of my biggest aha moments that I had when I worked with a hypnotherapist and he was like, we operate

90% of our day through our subconscious and we don't even realize it. We think consciously and we think we're not. We think we're doing everything with our conscious minds and thinking objectively and thinking of things black and white, but really we're wired through our subconscious and all our past experiences. And we won't allow ourselves to get through that. So I try to work with people in that sense, like, okay, let's get back to like, where did this start? And how can we clear that energy? And how can we rewire it in a way, right? I do a lot of EFT tapping as well, some emotional freedom techniques where you hit your meridian points on your body like acupuncture does, but it's tapping with your fingers.

And just having that awareness of I feel this emotion, I'm not going to judge the emotion, but i'm going to clear it out because it doesn't serve me right we're all energetic beings and energies and energetics are so hard to describe and explain because they're on they're unexplainable right we meet somebody we feel this connection like me and you we felt this like energy or you meet somebody and you're like i don't want to be around that energy right like it's unexplainable but it's there so if we think of our emotions as stored and trapped energy in our bodies that unless we learn how to release them they're going to cause havoc so i always go back to that to like the essentials of foundations of how can we release that that negative energy you know

yeah that's got to be so powerful i i learned a little bit about eft but i haven't i know there's like certain how many taps and certain parts of the body and you know like here and so i think it's really cool i think that it helps i know from what i hear a lot with stress or anxiety so like if you're in the moment and it's like a really anxious situation so that's cool that you teach that i love that yeah it's been so helpful in my life and i learned it over two years ago but i didn't really start implementing it until about a few months ago and it's completely changed my day-to-day because like you said stress and anxiety those are all side effects of an emotion that hasn't been resolved it's never what we're doing the days that i find myself stressed out at

work. It's never work. It's that I didn't sleep well. It's that there's something like lingering in the back of my mind. It's that I feel out of control, right? I'm living too much in the future. There's always an underlying truth and reason to the stress or the anxiety. It's never the physical act that you're doing when you're feeling that emotion. That's usually the cause of it. There's always some underlying, you know, but we live in such a superficial world that instead of being like, well, let me sit with it. Let me get uncomfortable. We're like, well, let me go have a glass of wine let me get on social media let me call a friend let me let me numb let me watch tv let me just avoid and numb and distract myself but it all stays right there it doesn't go away

unless we actively point it out and say all right get out of here you're you're when i tab i always say i don't need this emotion i release it and no longer serves me and not not ignoring it i used to be afraid of my emotions to an extent because i didn't understand it so so reactive i mean i'm latina so of course i was reacting yes spicy and especially with my ex-husband like i if i felt an emotion i would scream i would yell i threw shit like of course i was so emotional and so afraid of my emotions but there was never a time looking back that i felt really connected to him when i acted like that because at the end of the day that's what i wanted i wanted to get a reaction him to feel that connection and that love but I always got that funny how that happens

so really understanding ourselves and and why we do the things we do is so important yeah yeah no that's that's so important because yeah I mean I'm not Latina but I still like there's moments when my daughter just is like I've had this conversation 10 times and I just lose it I never was like a yeller I never I was more of like an avoider yeah and now i just have these outbursts sometimes i'm like oh my god that is not me like i gotta figure this out because this is not what's being and then she just runs away so like nothing's happening good i mean they're all different ballpark teenagers and the hormones and poor you yes i'm ready for this like uh she's she's almost 17 i'm ready for like the

getting better but then someone's someone told me that there's fake don't get excited until they're over like 22 I'm like oh my god because college you know I don't know it's probably not as you know important but you're always gonna worry yeah for sure there's always gonna be a little girl I'm sure you know yes I mean I would love that but that's not the case so I have to like learn how to grow with the pain and you know or learn to deal with the pain the growing pains however you want to say it you know a whole nother situation um so what do you find that women really want out of a healthy relationship when it comes down to it we all want connection and intimacy emotional intimacy right i feel like men and you'll speak more on the men's side i feel

like men are more physical intimate and you know like that's how they feel their intimacy and connection they're more visual they're more physical but we want to be undressed with our emotions and really be touched emotionally and we find intimacy to be sexy but i do find that a lot of women nowadays are we want that but we do the opposite right and we will trade we will trade valid love we'll trade actual love for easy quick validation and admiration right we'll trade love respect for validation and you know a few likes on instagram and whatever else instead of actually connecting emotionally as well so it's just what we want but we've gotten it so far from being able to achieve it nowadays i feel well i think because there's a false sense of happiness that that we're

looking in other places and you can't truly truly be happy unless you are happy with yourself so then you're not going to look for that oh she thinks i'm beautiful or i have 10 likes or i don't know i don't know what it is but you're not looking for that self-gratification that instant like false love if you will because you're already you already are confident you already know your worth you already know that you're an amazing person and how much love you have to give so i think what you do is so important because you know you're sharing not only your experiences but you're teaching women how to truly love themselves and not put up with this and not do this and start giving back to themselves. Yeah. I think there's a beautiful balance

that we all should learn of. I have standards, but I love myself so much that I will keep those standards instead of wanting things out of men because we lack and we want to fill those voids, right? When we're set, like I said earlier, in our foundation and who we are and we love ourselves we won't care for the cheap compliments or the cheap likes or the the hot guy liking us or whatever we'll want that deeper connection to me that is cheap right we can't trade actual respect and love from somebody for admiration or likes or like people liking us you know that's that's cheap for me i think we should all hold ourselves to a higher standard but first we have to give ourselves that you know there's i was talking to a friend about this the other day i

I was like, the only reason my boyfriend treats me like a queen is because I treat myself like a queen. You know, right? Like, yes, that's the start. And that didn't happen overnight. I did not have the self-confidence or this ability not in my past relationship or my marriage because I needed that relationship to make me happy.

And the moment that it wasn't happy, my self-esteem, my confidence, everything was on the ground. That validation is what I needed to feel whole as a human. But now my relationship is just a beautiful bonus in addition to who I am in my life and in every in every sense too now my my business needs to be well you know you run three businesses sometimes we'll put our validation towards our business and if that's not doing well then we lack confidence we feel poorly about ourselves so we we find different ways to get this love and validation from other things or people but then we have to

like really look inside and be like well no one can love you as much as you love yourself and that was an aha moment that I had as well where I was like well Maria I want to feel loved very deeply by somebody but I was like well do I love myself that deeply and the answer was no I did not there was parts of me I hated I hated parts of my past I had grew up in a very like shitty childhood with my parents and I was very loved or nurtured there was things that I've done in the past that I'm still that was ashamed of and I had guilt towards and I was like no I don't love myself deeply so i had to like learn to love the ugly the darkness that the shadows right the things that we want to avoid in order to love yourself deeply and i think i got kind of off

track but going back to what we want from men is we want that emotional connection and if you're a man listening to this don't get into a father world either where you feel like you have to father this woman because she's needy you know a lot of men get into that role as well find a woman that's very happy with herself don't try to come and ruin it though find her appreciate her and hold her you hold her high right because when a woman isn't that much of her power she can only give and pour more into you and then it becomes this beautiful dance of give and take but stop looking for the woman that's you know needy or that needs you because that's some trauma in yourself too that you're probably trying to fulfill right and then we trauma bond and i mean i can go

in so many different directions here, but yeah. I mean, I know a lot of men like to be the knight in shining armor and they want to be the fixer, right? I understand there's an innate part of being a man that needs to have a purpose and a job. And the purpose is, is holding space for a woman, being able that she can trust you, that she can be vulnerable and know that no matter what she does, you're going to be there and you're going to be stable and you're going to be able to provide. And I don't mean just in the monetary. Providing means providing a space, providing love, providing all of those things. That is what they call, you know, a high value man. I mean, it's just, it's hilarious to me that this is just like this whole thing, you know,

but that is what we women need from you. Like you said, because when you do, when you come from a place like fix her whatever and she's needy like nothing's ever going to be full like or fulfilled there's always going to be an issue there's always going to be a problem because that's where she's comfortable living even if she doesn't want to be there she's comfortable in the drama or the need or the something the next thing the next thing and then you know the relationship is never going to be healthy you know never going to get there when you have that same repetition one literally and i think men like you said we they do want to fix and i think as a woman now being in my softer side a healthy woman's able to let a man provide and give and become that shine

you know nine and shiny armor and i i see now with my boyfriend like i let him i have to like consciously though like sit back and be like i need to let him do this because i want him to but old maria would have just like going no i've got this i've got oh i want to pay for this no i can pay for it you know it's all these little things so there's these extremes that we're living in and you're right it is funny that high value woman or man is like the foundational stuff yeah like how is this a new standard standard it should just be like common sense that should be the standard right it shouldn't be something new that we created we should all come in whole and hold ourselves to high standards so that other people can do it as well and

and it'll be like a feeding right i don't know about you but i i don't love it when a man is like a pushover or will do anything i say or anything like that because that just shows me he has low self-value low self-esteem and is willing to do just anything for somebody else which is self-sacrificial and that doesn't end up well either you know right and i think what it comes down to what i've been learning over the years is boundaries healthy boundaries and that's got to come from both sides the woman has got to hold like you said a little bit earlier but coming into that relationship and being very secure and okay with the things that you will tolerate and that you will and knowing what who you are and who you are looking for and have those

boundaries and be crystal clear with those boundaries and oh well you know just maybe if he does this then I can I'll just push it out a little bit no because every time that's on you so and guys too have your boundaries like like Maria's just said she doesn't want someone who's gonna be a pushover like she wants to know that you are secure and who you are because that is attractive it's not even that it's attractive it just you know that no matter what he's not gonna stray he's not going to be easily influenced so because if you are i can't trust you right right if you're letting me guide the ship like who's to say that somebody else isn't gonna try to guide the ship and you're just not gonna go along with it i love it when my boyfriend says

no to me or he says no i have a better idea or i think we should do this this way i'm like yes please lead because it's not in a controlling way it's more like i heard you i listened to you but i also have better ideas can you listen to this and be open to this and it's like okay yes i can you know and it's a back and forth and it's like i said it's a beautiful dance that we both as female and male have to learn and and like you said those boundaries are so important and as women i love everything i talk about is self-led and i bring it back to us but we are the gatekeepers of emotions we get to steer that ship in a relationship my man can provide and you know lead and whatever but I am the gatekeeper of emotion. If I can't control my emotions or not, I hate using the word

control. If I can't learn to master my emotions or have enough, you know, self-awareness around them, I will be explosive around him. And a man doesn't like that because if a man doesn't know what he's walking into, he will never feel fulfilled. He will never feel like he did a good job. So it's our responsibility as women to understand ourselves well enough so that we can speak to a man in a soft, loving, caring way, because that's the only way a man wants to be spoken to i don't care i mean that's how the way anyone any person would want to be spoken to right especially a man because a man feels he has to provide he has to be you know the savior he has to come and help you so if you were explosive and you're saying you know you did this to me and you

make me feel this way instead of really taking ownership for your emotion you will shut that door in that man and he will never give you that emotional intimacy that i that i said earlier that we crave oh my god yes you just like nailed it he will never the moment he opens up about anything that's emotional or sacred in his heart one time as women if we shut it down and however way that we shut it down or don't allow it he will never do it again he will never bring that up again because it's one and done for them yeah it's very hard for them to open up let alone they need to know that they have a soft nurturing vulnerable space just as much as we do and so yeah it's different for women we can kind of like we'll try we'll try we'll try because we're just emotional

beings and live in that space where that's very hard for them to tap in and i find that a lot of my clients come to me and they're so open and honest because i don't judge i literally am not a judging person i i don't care what your past is i don't care about anything just as if you're happy and and confident and all these things and so they they tell me right away but they said you know what this is the maybe like the second person i've ever shared that to because they feel non-judged and safe right and i think we're responsible to create that emotional space within ourselves first and then in a relationship because it's a beautiful thing when you're able to give that to a man because then he can show up for you the way you want him to show up for you

right and it's a I learned through my relationship therapist that using you statements is like a big no-no you have to use I right that's taking responsibility for us so when a man does something that we don't like most of the time it's not because they're like purposely trying to piss us off or hurt us right like you were saying men are different than us in the way that they feel emotions or they can express it because men see everything in another relationship coach they see everything in boxes right where me and you women we're all interconnected we can see a pair of glasses and connected to a pair of glasses we saw last week and the color that we saw in some other girl's shirt and everything's interconnected and like interwoven for us where that for them

they can compartmentalize everything so if we're not able to just kind of like say hey this is how i feel and and instead we hold things in like you were saying and then one day we explode they have no idea. I mean, how many times do you hear men saying, well, I had no idea that we were going to get a divorce. This breakup came out of nowhere. But for us, we're like, we have this whole list. Like, you know, November 2nd, you did this. Last year, you did that. Because everything so connected for us, you know, interconnected. For them, it's like, well, you never told me, you never came to me with this one specific issue. Because that's how they think. Yeah. And it's interesting. I'm laughing because, you know, you see this all the time. But I think

as women we need to be more clear with what we're feeling in that moment and let them know and like because we're like oh he just knows because we were still in a fight from two weeks ago and he should just know i'm still pissed off no he doesn't at all there's no correlation for when you just flew up and then something happened two weeks ago and you're still holding on to it and that's not working for either of you the woman's still holding on to it she's still piss and he's like clueless so yeah and so and i want to touch i want to touch on that because i'm sure women are hearing this and they're like well i've tried and i've tried talking to him well have you really though because if you were talking to him still charged with emotions

you're not talking to him your ego's talking to him right it's not your true authentic self none of us want to be vulnerable but when you get back so like i was saying earlier how i talk to people when I layer back to what the true emotion is, like what's that foundational emotion? It's something usually from our own childhood. So there's nothing my boyfriend can do that I can't take responsibility for or that he can do that hurts me

that I can't bring back to. Why did this hurt me? Like it was something that I can take responsibility on and be like, where am I feeling triggered and where did this come from? And then I can vulnerably say, hey, I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but earlier when you did this,

it really triggered me because when i was a little girl my mom used to do that and it really hurt my feelings so i know it's something i still want to work through and i'm trying to work through but i just want to let you know i hurt my feeling totally different conversation than you asshole you hurt my feelings why did you do this yeah he wasn't trying to right like we all have to take responsibility for ourselves because although we couldn't choose how we grew up and what emotions are stored in us we get to as adults have enough self-awareness to realize, okay, this is how I feel. It's my responsibility. And like you said, healthily communicate that to your partner or your

friends, anyone around you. If you want a healthy relationship, it starts with you. You have to be healthy. Yeah, a thousand percent. And then obviously mastering communicating with your partner because that will every time save so much energy, so much, like you said, if you came to him in a different way because when you come with the i statement or you ask a question versus the blame or the you or the blah blah blah everyone shuts down guy girl because when you're attacked you're feeling attacked most people shut down right yeah so yeah that's really interesting how even myself how i threw out my relationships the things that i did and allowed and i think we do have to sometimes go through those till we find you know that guy or

that girl or whatever and it doesn't i'm not saying you have to go through all these miserable relationships you and i are here to try to to lessen that but a lot of times like we just don't have the tools and so you're like okay well i definitely know that i don't want that yeah but then you really gotta like come to you maria like all of you ladies listening and like go to her and say oh how do i really know what i really want because i think i'm sure you helped them figure that out yes getting really clear and concise because like you said if we go into i know what i don't want now we have this huge list of things we don't want but we don't want them because they're triggering to us right so let's get really clear on why it is that we want a certain man

is it to fill our voice is it because we don't want to be triggered because no it's gonna be perfect so we have to get really clear and concise to what it is that we want from a whole place first because now you're going to keep attracting the same people I mean I think you just had to realize that pop up on Instagram you know do you find yourself repeating the same patterns and dating the same type of people right when do we decide you know what enough is enough let me brace this cycle because I'm sorry men especially if you're listening to this a lot of men are like oh I dated a crazy woman and I dated this crazy you know we hear men say that a lot about women this crazy but you bought tickets to that circus you know oh yes and you keep buying new tickets

to a new circus but it's still a circus so let's all take responsibility to why am I still doing this and why am I repeating these cycles yeah and I think that's the first and foremost is like self-realization because I think a lot of people it's them it's them it's them it's like the crazy show crazy show crazy show well like if it's happened twice um then that's more than it should have right so start looking at yourself and sometimes it's not easy to look at yourself and look at like oh shit that was me or that's my own issue or my own insecurities or my things that i need to work on so that my next relationship this won't happen again i might get triggered but at least i know recognizing that that's a trigger that's not the person like

like happened to you right because we will end relationships if we get triggered enough and not realize and not stop it ahead of time right like our traumas will end every relationship man or female if we don't get to the bottom of it right we don't get to the root of it and sometimes a lot of people find healing in relationships sometimes for me i mean i did go through a few relationships where they were healing and i had a lot of breakthroughs but this is probably my first healthy relationship, and it's crazy that it took me 30 years to have a healthy relationship. You know what? I still haven't found mine, so you know what? I'm so happy for you. I think I see you sharing a little bit with your man on Instagram, and it's really

nice to see what healthy looks like. It's one thing to say this is what it should be like, but it's nice to see what it looks like yeah and it's been a lot of hard conversations like points where i'm like i'm so uncomfortable i can't believe i'm gonna say this to him what if he rejects me what if he says well i don't care what if he you know all these stories that i've made up in my head in the past and it's in those discomfort and that discomfort and then the uncomfortable conversations that we've grown the most and and being closer together in that sense we have a long distance relationship so we've had to have a lot of tough conversations so wow yeah so what does that look like for you i mean do you are you at the point i don't know

how long you've been together or where i mean it's not all about the time but it's like you know how the relationship is but are you wanting to get out of a long distance relationship and like be in the same place or are you okay with where it is i think that's what we're going to work towards especially next year we don't have like an actual time frame i go back and forth so i'm coming here for weeks at a time and for me it's really important talking about those boundaries right it was really important for me not to lose myself in this relationship and that's a fear of mine that i i told him from the beginning because i knew that i was going to operate out of that fear so i needed him to know that that fear was lingering and then it's something i'm going to

work through but losing myself in my relationships have been my mo in the past it's been my toxic cycle so in the past i probably would have already been living here to be honest okay but slow and steady for me wins the race at this point because I have to do things that feel right to me and for both of us but when you're on the same page with somebody it doesn't feel like you're pulling teeth or you're you know like no one's going too fast or too slow we're both on the same page so we don't have a concrete date but it is something we're both working towards and that's nice right and now you'll laugh because he brings it up all the time but when I started dating him I was like I'm never moving back to Wilmington so I don't know where this is gonna go because it's the point I

been there my sister-in-law her family would go to ocean isle every every summer so my family now that we're married into her family went a couple years but i was like oh this is interesting i mean it's cute but it's like you know coming from new york city los angeles they like it's like uh yeah okay well it's very interesting wellington has what airport terminal i know definitely man i worked here for six years and it's funny we didn't date when i lived here we dated after i moved away so it's interesting how they and how they work out and how they're supposed to work out yeah exactly well you know what i just want to say one thing because i want people listening here because a lot of people who do listen my

you know are are a little bit older like our midlife like let's say 40 to 60 or 35 to 65 i don't know let's just push it out that far it's never too late doesn't matter how old you are it doesn't matter how many relationships you had that are you know that didn't work out because you're still here on this earth you still have time to live happily and meet your person so you're never too old so I think that's like a lot of the stories I hear is like well I'm 55 like I'm just gonna give up I'm like why would you give up so just know 33 21 I mean that's a little young but meaning the life experience but it's never too you're never too old to meet your person totally and don't ever close yourself up to love it's the most beautiful thing we can do as humans

and we let love kind of break us down sometimes because of the heartbreak but in the heartbreak is where we get to choose how we want to open ourselves up to the next person right after we heal and we really understand ourselves but you're right i don't die at 55 don't close yourself off at 60 or 80 or however old you are because love is beautiful and that connection we're all here to feel connected and to really just enjoy life to its fullest and love is the most beautiful emotion that we can feel yeah it definitely is well i have one more personal question for you and then I want you to tell everybody where they can find out more about you

and your services and offers. But what was one of your favorite dates and what was it? A favorite date? Oh man. You know, honestly, my first official date with my boyfriend was just so perfect and so amazing. Like the conversation flowed. We had great banter back and forth.

And I think it was just the energy that I was in that made it extra special. um just allowing myself to even be there right because it was right after my breakup and even though I wasn't ready and we actually took some there'll be another episode I guess but but it was it was an amazing date and I still think about it now it was just it felt very light and airy and I think when you when you're around the right person it feels different you don't get that nervousness you don't get that you like your nervous system isn't activated right it's almost like a soul recognition you're with the person that your soul recognizes so

i could have been anywhere the i mean the restaurant was amazing but i could have been anywhere and it would have been just as amazing yeah that's awesome i think like that connection that you have and experience in that moment you're like okay that's hands down that feels right and you listen to yourself i mean that's probably was a big thing for you too right like like ultimately like we listen to really our gut, but every time it's right. Yes. Our intuition doesn't lie. That's for sure. Yeah. Where can listeners here find out more about your services? And I know that you have a free masterclass for women that's coming up and I'll let you share. Yes. I'm super excited about this program. It should be releasing here in the next couple of weeks. Don't know when you're going

to air out the episode, but it will be on my Instagram. You'll be able to find it on my bio link and it's tapping into your own power. And it's a free dating masterclass that I curated for women specifically because it's going to help them get really clear and concise to who they want, who they are and get out of that need and that scarcity mentality so that you can attract the person that you're meant to be with. And then I also go into holding your standards and really treating yourself like a queen, right? Being the one that got away or the one there's no in between so i'm super excited about launching that program and you can find me on instagram maria.fuentes i think it's an underscore maria.fuentes underscore and then i also have

my self-mastery with maria podcast that's on all platforms amazing i love that that's so great i'm so excited for your masterclass you'll have to tell me more about that well i'll check it out of course but you'll have to tell me more about that but again thank you so much for being on the show. And I know everybody learned so much today, but amazing. I hope you have an amazing day. Yeah, thank you. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to support podcasts like ours, then please hit that subscribe button, leave a five-star rating and or invite others to listen. Your support is what helps us grow and continue to bring you valuable content.

Thanks for hanging out with us on today's episode. Let's stay connected. You can find me on Instagram at Celeste Moore Image, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's discussion. For all the links, resources, and additional information mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes on my website, CelesteMoore.com. That's all for now, but stay tuned for our next episode where we'll dive into more exciting topics. Until then, see you next time, friends. Thanks for watching!