3 Steps to Creating a Thriving Relationship; Become a Power Couple with Special Guest Railey Molinario

Hey there parents, welcome back. Has your relationship taken a backseat as you navigate all things parenting? Are you ready to rekindle your relationship but you could use a little help igniting that spark again? My guest today is Riley Molinario.

She is a love educator and relationship coach. Riley is empowering individuals to create a better future by teaching them relationship intelligence. future is dependent on us managing and mastering our emotions and interactions with ourselves and others relationship intelligence is vital for guiding our moral and social well-being and riley's mission is to provide the world with this education that has been missing for way too long so that we may become more understanding compassionate and connected and today she's really going to help us do all that as it relates to our relationship with our partner or our spouse. You guys, this is really a great episode. I want to help your kids help your relationship. Work on that first. And I'm just so excited to welcome Riley to the show. But before I get into that, hey guys, I could really use your help. I'm working on getting in the top 3% of podcasts. Yes, we're a top 5% podcast and I'm super grateful for that. But could you take a quick minute, pause this episode and leave us a five-star review. Leave a little bit of a comment.

you can say something that you like about the podcast, leave me some sort of encouragement, or even just how you know me or how you met me or when you started listening to the show and how long you've been a listener. Maybe you want to leave a suggestion for other topics that you'd like to hear about the show. Whatever you do, I just really appreciate you going and leaving us that five-star review and a comment because it helps our algorithms and helps us to help more parents by reaching more parents. So I appreciate that. All right, let's get into it.

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Fineman. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling? Whether you are at your wit's end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman.

Welcome to the show, Riley. I think I'm just going to have you start out by letting us know a little bit about your background and how you got into this world of relationships and nurturing relationships, and then talk a little bit about what relationship intelligence is. Absolutely. So yes, my name is Riley. I am an expert love educator and relationship coach.

I work with couples to give them the formula for success how do we create thriving relationships I think most people get into relationships thinking that you know they're going to fall in love with someone they're going to have these beautiful moments together the honeymoon phase is really exciting we get a house a car pop out a few kids and then it's supposed to work out in the end but very few of us actually understand exactly what are the tools and techniques that we need to create a thriving relationship like anything else we have to create a foundation we have to maintain the relationship so those things are not taught by society there are things that you know we don't see in the movies or the music because those are entertainment pieces and so I've come in to try to give this education to couples, to families, to people who have any kind of relationship so that they can have successful ones. Because everyone wants to have a successful relationship, but so few of us really understand exactly what are those components that we need to have one. So there are three steps to creating a thriving relationship.

First, I'll say this. A lot of people think that relationships are so complicated. We've gotten into this idea that they're hard, they're difficult. You know, when you get married, marriage is difficult. It's, you know, this thing that you have to push through and get through and it can be, and it typically is, but it doesn't have to be. We've sort of gotten into this way again, because of the lack of education, but it absolutely doesn't have to be this way.

So when we're creating a thriving relationship, I tried to explain it in three steps because three steps are easy to remember. So the first is to have a common vision, to create a common vision in your relationship. And this goes for your relationship, your family, your life in general. Before you build a skyscraper, the first thing you have to do is create a blueprint, right? How many floors is it going to be? What color are we going to paint it? What materials are we going to use?

So the same thing for a relationship and a life with your partner, with your family, what kind of life do you want to live what are the boundaries goals and expectations of you as a couple when we're talking about parenting when we're talking about the relationship when we're talking about things like what is fidelity and infidelity what do we want to do as a couple do we want to live on a farm do we want to travel the world we really want to understand what are the values expectations goals and boundaries as a couple for the relationship so that is called creating a common vision. The second part, the biggest part, is relationship intelligence, navigating your relationship successfully. So that's all of the meat and potatoes of the relationship. It's communication. Do we have effective communication as a couple? Do we practice understanding? Do we have compassion? Do we understand exactly what is interdependence and how to practice interdependence in our relationship. So all of these key elements that create the successful functionality of a relationship are essential to being able to thrive. The third step is the step that a lot of us try to skip to, and that is cultivating joy. So that's quality time,

amazing sex, intimacy, all the different types of intimacy. We really have to understand that these steps come in order. So first it's the vision, then it's the relationship intelligence, and then finally it's cultivating joy. What most of us tend to do is we get into a relationship, we fall in love, which is a beautiful thing, but we forget or we don't understand that love simply is not enough. Love is a deep sense of affection for someone. It's a feeling. Feelings come and go all the time. This is why you can fall in love and break up with someone or get a divorce.

from someone because love is not enough glue to keep the relationship together. So that relationship intelligence is really what is going to keep the two of you functioning day after day, week after week, year after year. So we really have to make sure that we do these in the correct order. I think that makes perfect sense. The vision, the relationship intelligence, and then cultivating joy, which you actually, I mean, cultivating joy, you say people would kind of skip to or jump to right away because that's like the fun part. But I feel like, I mean, my husband and I have been together for over 30 years and sometimes we get caught in that going through the motions and the cultivating joy just gets skipped over, even though it's more fun. We're finding our own things to do,

right? Or our separate, kind of our separate things to do. You talk about being a power couple. What is a power couple? Yes. So power couple in mainstream media is going to mean, you know, a couple with a lot of money that, you know, it's sort of the Angelina Jolie and Brad situation, you know, they're rich, they're actors, they're, they have beautiful children.

But the way that I see power couple is that it's a couple that is deeply in love and able to navigate relationship intelligence. It's the ultimate couple, the couple who really has control over who they are, control over where their life is going. They show up in their relationship in their life and their family doing exactly what it is that they want to do. They've created this life for themselves that is based on that common vision, those goals and those expectations. So it's a couple that shows up very confidently in their selves in the relationship and in life. I just like the way that you approach all of this because it doesn't seem I mean, obviously coaching is different than therapy, like people going to marriage therapy or something like that. But this just seems intentional, almost powerful, like, like you really have control over this, the between you and your spouse that you can or partner, you can really just like, put all the other stuff aside and say, Hey, who is it we want to be? What is it we want to be? What's you know, and like, even sometimes, whether it's beginning of a relationship or, you know, you're you've been in the relationship for quite a while, this just seems really empowering. That's the word I was looking for. When we're talking about fixing a relationship,

or fixing a problem or trying to get the spark back, however you want to refer to it. Yeah, we can we can basically start from the beginning because when you lose that spark or when you start to have a relationship with fighting or when you have resentment or anger or people who have had an affair and there's difficulty with forgiveness and things like that. When we get to that point, we really have to ask ourselves, do we understand exactly what is the formula for success?

Or are we just sort of trying to pick at different things and solve different problems that we have? Most people think that when we're in a relationship, we're fighting about money, we're fighting about fidelity, we're fighting about, you know, who didn't take out the trash and things like that. But we really have to understand that in relationships, in life, we're never fighting about those things. We're fighting about power and control.

We're fighting about, do you see me? Do you hear me? Do you want me? We're fighting about, are you spending enough time with me?

Closeness and connection. So really understanding how a relationship works. It's basically like speaking another language. And right now, the way that I describe relationship intelligence is like, if I ask you to speak Chinese, I'm imagining that you don't, you would say to me, no, it's too hard.

I can't do it, right? I don't know how to speak Chinese. But if I give you a book and a tutor and I send you to China and you live it and you understand it and you study it, you will eventually learn to speak Chinese. Chinese people speak Chinese.

It's not difficult. but they have tools and techniques that we don't at the moment. So it's really just about understanding, okay, this is where we are right now. We're fighting about the bills. We're fighting about the kids. We haven't had sex in three months. You know, we don't spend enough time together. We're eating dinner in two separate rooms. What do we do from here? The first thing we have to do is get that education because we really have to understand what actions do we have to take that will lead us to success. And right now, because of the society that we live in, because of the TV that we watch, although I love it, the TV that we watch, you know, the shows, the music, the environment that we're in, we're getting a lot of misinformation. What do we do?

You know, don't talk to him for three days, and then he'll come crying back. And, you know, we're getting a lot of really bad information out there with all of these influences, but they haven't been based on science. So relationship intelligence has been studied. And it is something that we understand, you know, the same way we understand what makes up water, it's H2O, you know, one plus one equals two, it's fact. And we really have to understand that some things are suggestive in society, and other things are just pure fact. So when we are trying to create this relationship, the first thing I would say is create that common vision. If you're not happy in your relationship right now, it's simply because you're not in alignment with your values. Something is off, right? So whether that's, we're not spending any time together because we're two super busy entrepreneurs. Well, what do you value? You value quality time. You value connection. You value intimacy. So how can we start to create a life that is in alignment with our values. When we add that relationship intelligence on top, then we're able to navigate the difficulties that come our way. So power couples don't necessarily have fewer problems than anyone else. You know, life happens and this is just part of the game, but it's just that they understand how to navigate those difficulties. So let's say that you're in a relationship, you're two

entrepreneurs, you're super busy. Question, is this going to happen forever? Is this the life, you know, that we're going to live on a daily basis? Or is this sort of like the moment that we're in right now? And what do we choose? Do we choose to just go through this moment?

Is it worth it for us? You know, it's like problem solving, figuring out a mystery in your relationship together as a couple. So you can say to yourself, you know what, I'm building my business, my my partner's building their business, this is just a time we have compassion for the relationship, we have compassion for each other, we have patience, right? So we're not stressed, because we know that this isn't going to last forever. But if you have been doing this for 40 years, you can ask yourself, okay, is this a moment? Or is this a lifestyle? And so do we have to make some changes when it comes to that? This is really good. I love it. I absolutely love this.

Okay. So as far as, is this just, is this a lifestyle or is this just like, like what's happening in the here and now? I think that holds true for parenting. You know, if you've got three kids under the age of five or three under three, I have actually families that have three under three. It's like, that's a lot. That's a lot of, there's a lot, a lot of time for connecting because you're just going through the motions and you're just keeping those kiddos, you know, as safe and alive as possible and getting through the day. What are some of the ways that parents who are parenting, and maybe they are both entrepreneurs or self-employed or, you know, CEOs or whatever it is, and they have the demands at home. What are some of the things that they can do to make sure that they're mastering their relationships intelligence during all of that parenting chaos? So when we are with our partner and we decide to have children, hopefully we have already created this vision, but sometimes we don't. So if we haven't already, we need to go back to the drawing board. We need to go back to step one. So when we have, you know, three kids under three, we're both working two jobs. There's not enough time to clean the house. It seems overwhelming. We can stop and say, let's not work harder. Let's work smarter. Let's start from the beginning. So what is the vision that we have? You know, what kind of home do we want to live in?

Do we want to live in a peaceful home? Do we want to live in a high functioning home? Do we want to live in a home that's very connective? And so we start to create these values. Do we want to have a relationship with compassion and understanding and patience? So you can start to see these things come up in the household. Because a lot of times when you have a household that's chaotic, and there's a lot of yelling, and there's not a lot of connection, and there's a lot of stress.

It's not that the people have chosen to have these things, right? No one wants these things, but we have it as a default because we haven't chosen something else. So we can stop and say to ourselves, hold on, this is, you know, this is very chaotic. What do we want to add into this?

How can we go back in alignment with our values? How can we show up peacefully? Regardless of what happens around you, you can choose to be peaceful, you can choose to respond peacefully, you can choose to respond compassionately. You know, imagine my husband comes home and he's slouched over and he's just, you know, not in a mood and he has that face, right? If one of my values is compassion, that is the way that I can show up to him. So if I'm stressed because I'm an entrepreneur, what I tend to do is, you know, what's wrong with you? What happened? You know, why are you in such a bad mood. And, you know, why didn't you help me with this? And what's wrong? And, you know, I'm working all day too. And, you know, we tend to do those things. But instead,

I have to remind myself, my value is in criticism, it's compassion. So how can I respond to that compassionately? That's what we call self management and relationship management. It's how you respond to the things that happen to you. So if you feel that you're stressed, you're overwhelmed, there's a lot of chaos, we want to start with that value system. And we want to remind ourselves that that is the way we want to show up. The second thing is we utilize that relationship intelligence. So relationship intelligence has four parts. There's self awareness, self management, relationship awareness, and relationship management. It's very similar to emotional intelligence, but it's specific to relationship. So for example,

compassion is very important and understanding how to respond to emotion with compassion I feel overwhelmed I feel stressed I feel angry but I can always choose how I respond I can respond compassionately I can respond with love I can respond with understanding I can respond with curiosity so being able to utilize that relationship intelligence will allow you to have the most peaceful, even if it's not 100%, right? Because again, life, but the most peaceful, the most compassionate, the most loving, the most understanding that you possibly can have.

No, I think that's really good. And it really does start with being self aware. I think it's important to kind of look in the mirror a little bit before we start expecting our partner to, you know, be doing all the things if we're not even doing all the things for our So what are some of those ways that parents can really start with moms and dads start with themselves and becomes how to become self-aware and really kind of what you're in need of and what you're maybe even what your lines are, you know, your boundaries and that kind of thing.

And then how to have that conversation with your partner. Yeah. So understanding yourself, understanding what's important to you, your own values, your own boundaries, your own expectations, understanding this within yourself first. What kind of role do you want to play in the family? Do you want to be the one who's strong and compassionate and understanding? Or do you want to be the one who has an attitude and a very short temper?

Again, we don't typically choose those things, but that's what we get when we don't choose and focus on something else. So we want to think about what kind of person do we want to be and really understanding ourselves what triggers us, what makes us uncomfortable. When do we feel sad? When do we feel angry?

Because these negative emotions are an amazing tool that we can use. Negative emotions are amazing because they trigger an awareness. Once you feel a negative emotion and you identify it, self-awareness, you say to yourself, I feel frustrated. I feel angry.

I feel overwhelmed. Then we want to pair that with self-management. Now I understand that I'm angry or I'm frustrated or I'm overwhelmed. Now, how can I respond to that in a way that's going to benefit me?

A lot of times we're very reactive, right? I'm angry, so I throw something. I'm sad, so I eat a piece of cake. But when we get to choose our response the same way that we choose our clothes, we get to have more control over how we show up and what life we create for ourselves.

When it comes to communication, this is very important. Communication is sort of like the nervous system throughout the relationship. It touches everything. It affects everything.

We have to understand how to have a conversation. most people are very very bad at this I was terrible terrible at this and now that I understand how to have one I look back at myself and I think oh yeah that was I was really bad I was so when we're having a conversation with our partner this also can can happen exactly with our children with anyone else but I'll stick with partner when we're having a conversation We have to understand that in order to have an effective conversation, you need two jobs and one person picks one.

Right. You can't do both at the same time. So one is the speaker and one is the listener. Both of us always try to be the speaker. Right. It's like you're just talking over each other.

No one's actually listening. So we have to ask ourselves, am I the speaker or am I the listener? If I'm the speaker, I need to speak clearly with love, openly, honestly, with eye contact, with compassion. even if my partner does something that I don't like, I still love them. I still respect them.

And so I always need to speak to them with love and respect. We forget this sometimes when we're upset. And if I'm the listener, which is the harder of the two jobs, I need to practice active listening. That means I'm listening with the intent to understand. This word understand is a is a hot buzzword that people say all the time. I don't understand you. I don't understand why you would do that. I don't understand why, you know, why he did that, or he doesn't understand me or she doesn't understand the way that I feel. What does it mean to understand? Because that is our goal as a listener. Understanding simply means that you're absorbing the information and that you can comprehend it. That's it. So I can understand a serial killer. I can understand a pedophile. I can understand a mass murderer, right? It doesn't mean that I agree with them.

It doesn't mean that I would do what they do, but I comprehend, I understand. So understanding, it's actually really not that difficult, right? It's sort of the comprehension of what my partner is saying to me. We need to separate understanding from agreement. So again, understanding doesn't mean that I agree. It simply means that I comprehend. Understanding is really important Because that is the first step to conflict resolution.

So when we're having a conversation, we have one speaker, we have one listener. The listener's job is to understand, which is simply listening, comprehending, and the hardest part, accepting what our partner is saying as truth. Now, this is the hard one, because again, accepting that it's their truth. if my partner is saying something and I completely disagree, that is okay. That is absolutely okay.

Because we're two different people having two different experiences. We're allowed to have two different perspectives, but I need to accept that what my partner is saying is their truth. It's their experience, unless I don't trust them. And that's another conversation, right? But if I trust them, then I need to accept that what they're saying is truth, even if I don't agree.

because again once we have that baseline of where to start the conflict resolution it's going to be so much easier but if we don't understand and we're not accepting that that's our partner's perspective we're just we're never even going to get our foot off the ground so that's essentially how we start to have a conversation and then through that once we have the understanding once we have the acceptance then we use compromise negotiation and brainstorming techniques to really mold and be able to go on this journey to find solutions for our problems that work for both people. So I'm a strong believer that relationships are meant to be 100% without fighting.

And people hear that and they think, well, that's impossible, right? It's everyone fights. It's normal to fight. You're not in love if you don't fight. That's what we hear though, right? Everybody's, oh, it's just what the way it is. Absolutely. But I'm a strong believer that we do not have to fight ever. It's not to say that we won't have problems. It's not to say that we won't have disagreements or differences of opinion, because those things are great. We don't want to be with someone who's exactly like us. How boring would that be? Right. We like that people are different, have different perspectives, have different opinions. But it's how we navigate that we can do it peacefully with love, with focus, with patience, right? With compassion, without fighting,

or we can do all of the theatrics that actually bring zero benefit to our relationship. Yeah, this is so good. I think a lot of times it's just like you were saying, I mean, when you're not actively listening and you're not understanding, you don't even have to understand where they're coming from. You just have to be able to understand what they're saying, right?

But then when we're not doing that with, if we're not in agreement with them, then automatically we just blurt out our opinion or our yeah buts, right? I always say, yeah, my dad would always say, yeah, buts live in the wood. But yeah, but this and yeah, but that. Like we're trying to convince them to be, to see things our way.

And that's not the point. Absolutely. Absolutely. And our attention spans, especially in 2022, are so ridiculously short.

We have about 10 seconds during a heated argument to listen to our partner before we start thinking about what we want to say next. So we constantly get into this defensive mode. As you said, if we don't like what we're hearing, we will block it out. And it's like we can look at you, we can see you, you can be this close to us, but we don't hear actually anything that you're saying because we're on the defensive.

That's another really important idea of relationship intelligence, which is the difference between making a complaint and criticism. We can have a relationship completely out without defensiveness or criticism. But again, we tend to think that this is sort of inevitable. And so we sort of get into these bad habits.

for sure well I can see how this is not only going to help parents become more empowered but also the modeling that they're going to do for their kids and the fact that kids can see this in action and see how their parents are communicating with each other being understanding compassionate and so I just I just see this as like a win-win all the way around so this is so great all right Well, how can people get in touch with you and learn more about you?

You have a relationships without fighting masterclass. I know that. Yes. Yes.

It's a free masterclass. I invite everyone to come. I have created a, I love numbers. So I try to keep things as simple and easy as possible for people to understand.

So there's a seven step technique that I've created called the power couple technique. And it's a seven step technique that will go will allow you to go from problem to solution anytime in your relationship without any of that fighting resentment or negativity. So it's a problem solving technique for couples to really learn how to have a relationship completely without fighting. And then tell us about L&E magazine.

Yes. So L&E magazine is a magazine that I created last year. We've done a few trial publications and next year we're hoping to do a monthly publication. It is a very big project. So it's a magazine.

It's a free magazine for anyone looking for any kind of insight into health, wellness, lifestyle, relationships, you name it. And it's a collaboration project with myself and various different doctors, coaches, therapists, sort of experts in various fields. And it's sort of an all in one place for you to learn about just how to make better decisions, how to learn, how to make your life better and how to interact with others better and really create this life that you really, really deserve.

it is a big project with you doing a magazine I did a book compilation book and I've got another one coming out and I know just even that and kind of coordinating all that it's kind of a relief when it's done and so to do that every month I mean that's a big big project all right well I just want to thank you so much I think that we have more partnering we need to do in the near future here Riley just because I really love your approach and I love what you're doing to help couples really stay on track and nurture. I love that you say it's not love is not enough because it's so true. That's true with parenting kids as well.

So just thanks so much for taking the time to be with me today. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. And again, I absolutely love what you do as well. So thank you. Thank you for tuning into the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Join Jackie next time for more tips, tools, and resources that will help you become the confident leader your kids crave you to be.

Who do you know that we could support on their parenting journey? Like this podcast, subscribe, share, or leave a review of the show. Your support of the No Problem Parenting podcast pays it forward and helps us help more families. Thank you.