The Femme Cast
Welcome to The Femme Cast—the podcast for women who are truly ready to break free from toxic relationship cycles, choose themselves, and become a magnet for the love they deserve.
I’m Maria Rei, aka The Femme Coach—Master Energy Healer, Radical Self-Love Leader, and Relationship Mentor. I’ve been where you are, stuck in cycles of chasing love, waiting for validation, and abandoning myself in the name of relationships. But I turned my pain into purpose, and now I’m here to help you do the same.
Each week, I share personal stories, actionable insights, and a blend of spiritual and practical tools to help you heal from past wounds, reclaim your self-worth, and rewrite your love story. You’ll hear everything from vulnerable truths about my own journey to breaking toxic patterns to empowering lessons that will guide you toward creating the healthy, loving relationships you crave.
Join me as we say goodbye to self-abandonment, people-pleasing, and unhealthy dynamics, and hello to radical self-love, emotional freedom, and true empowerment.
It’s time to choose yourself and step into the love you were always meant for. Ready?
Let’s do this.
The Femme Cast
The Betrayal That Slowly Broke Me
There’s a kind of betrayal that doesn’t just break you—it slowly erodes you, piece by piece, until one day, you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. And you most definitely can’t trust yourself.
That was me.
I lost myself trying to hold on to something that was never real. I stayed in cycles of deception, gaslighting, and self-abandonment, convincing myself that if I could just be more—more patient, more understanding, more lovable, and live in complete denial—then maybe, just maybe, I’d finally be chosen and it would be like the betrayal never even happened.
But betrayal has a way of forcing you to wake up.
In this episode of The Femme Cast, I’m pulling back the curtain on the heartbreak that shattered me, the unraveling that followed, and the painful, beautiful journey of rebuilding myself from the ground up.
- The moment I realized I had been living in an illusion
- The slow destruction of my self-worth—how I let betrayal define me
- The breaking point—when I finally had to face myself and my deepest wounds
- The rebirth—choosing myself, rewriting my story, and reclaiming the love I was always worthy of
This is the episode I wish I had when I was drowning in the pain, believing I wasn’t enough. If you’ve ever felt like you lost yourself in someone else’s lies, like your heart has been shattered beyond repair, I want you to hear this: You will rise from this.
🎧 Hit play. Let’s go there.
Ready to step into your Magnetic Love Era? If so, The Magnetic Love Story Manifestation Method is now open for enrollment.
https://www.thefemmecast.com/products/courses/view/1180320
Hey you guys, what is up? And welcome back to the show. I'm so excited and grateful to have you here. We are doing things again, as I said last week, a little bit differently on the show. What has been on my heart to share with you guys is kind of my journey through this evolution and breaking some of my toxic relationship patterns and there's kind of four distinct phases that I went through which I've kind of talked about before. But I kind of want to go a little bit deeper into some of these phases and some of the micro moments that took place within them. So you start to understand how the story unfolded and how the evolution unfolded. And you know, part of what's been on my heart to share was my experience through emotional and physical infidelity and the impacts that that had on me and how that really kind of started my whole transformation. Now there's four kind of distinct phases that I can, you know, quantify that I kind of went through on this journey and you know I've talked about them before, so it's nothing new. But I am going to go a little bit deeper into some of the micro moments that shaped these experiences more real and vulnerable, about the whole journey and how it all unfolded. Right, it was an evolution over time and I want you guys to keep that in mind as we talk about these things on the podcast.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Everything that I share with you was an evolution over time. I mean, this all started probably back in 2005, you know, and we're now in 2020. It's been a 20 year evolution. You guys, like it's not stuff that you know, I kind of you know, I went to a retreat one weekend and I did some journaling and I got all these insights and now I've called myself an expert, like I've literally been through the rabbit hole and through the ringer for the last 20 years, um, trying to unscramble all this. So please take everything I'm well, take everything I say I share with you with a grain of salt and take what resonates and leave the rest. But please know that it doesn't come from a place where I'm taking it lightly, where I haven't done the work or, you know and this is not to prove anything, this is just something in my soul has been nudging me to share about these things, more especially the beginning, which is when I experienced, you know, the lying, the cheating, the gaslighting and really what kind of sparked this whole journey, I think for me, you know, every phase had its purpose and we'll go through the different phases and I will share. But, oddly enough, I knew I wanted to start with the lying, the cheating and the gaslighting first, and this is not the first time I've shared about this on the podcast. But, like I said, we're going to go deeper into some of the micro moments in that experience.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Right, but an interesting thing happened the last time I shared about the experience of cheating and infidelity and, you know, lying, cheating and the gaslighting, I had made the decision to start sharing about it and I remember I had intentionally I usually record on Sunday, so I went to bed Saturday night with the intention that I was going to record it the next day, and then that night I was flooded with dreams and visions, and even when I would wake up from these dreams and visions, I would recall moments in that experience. It was almost as if I was going through the index card of memories that I wanted to share, and so that never happens for me. I get inspired ideas. Everything I share on the podcast is an inspired idea, but when it comes to sharing the pieces of that story, it's literally like my soul goes through the index cards of memories, of things that I need to start talking about, I need to start sharing about. And so last night I went to bed with the same intention that I was going to start sharing that story today and let me tell you, I've barely slept because, I swear, my subconscious, my soul, has been like, has kept me up all night going through a whole series of events and things that I want to start talking about, and I was like, okay, well, I can't talk about all this in one day. I only have a couple of hours to record tomorrow.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So I've written down what I can and, you know, let's just start and we'll see where we end up. I don't have notes. I don't have notes. I don't have a plan, I don't. I maybe have like some general kind of titles or milestones through the journey that I kind of want to cover. But we're going to try and wing this and you know, I really just kind of want to try and speak from the heart as much as I can.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So if I were to break it out into four different phases right of the last 20 years of my life, going through this process, this undoing and rebuilding of my relationship patterns and breaking these toxic relationship patterns so that I can become a magnet for healthy, loving relationships. Four distinct phases. The first one, you know kind of, was my heartbreak era. That's when I went through the lying, the cheating, the gaslighting and that was really showing me that was. That was very intentional, you know, because with that period was trying to show me that I didn't see before and even going through it I didn't see it. I probably didn't see it until like now was how much of my power I was giving away to other people, how much I was self abandoning to please people and to keep love in my life, and how much of my own self-worth I was externally sourcing to people around me, how much of it I was kind of contracting out for people to validate my worth and my value.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And it was a very, very painful experience and a painful lesson, but something I really needed to go through in this lifetime, to go through this evolution. It really just it was the spark, it was the catalyst, it was the beginning of the end. So dramatic, but you know I wouldn't be who I am today if had I not gone through that, you know. So you know to say you know, oh, you know, you know, when you've healed from an experience, when you're truly grateful I don't know if I'm so, I still don't know if I'm fully grateful yet Like, I mean, there was a lot of pain and hurt that I would cringe to have to go through again. But you know, knowing where it brought me and the experiences that it led to, then, yeah, I probably would do it again, honestly, okay.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So after that was, you know, that was the heartbreak era. After that was my hot mess era, and that was literally where I was trying to escape all my pain, all my hurt, all my wounding, just find the next source of validation. And you know someone who would save me or rescue me from the pain of my own experience, again externally sourcing my validation and really going through like partner after partner after partner, and realizing they were getting more and more toxic each and every time. And then was really my self-love era, when I finally just got so exhausted from the whole process that I just cut myself off and that, I think, was really my dark night of the soul, because, you know, it put me in a place where I needed to learn to love myself again from the beginning. Right, I needed to undo all the damage of the past, I needed to heal through all that emotional crap that I'd been through and I really just needed to learn to love myself when, I might add, I really had no reason to love myself.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:By societal standards I mean not by, you know. I mean, obviously we're all worthy beings, we're all worthy of love. We all deserve our own love as well as the love of others around us. However, by societal standards, I didn't deserve that love. You know what I mean. Like I wasn't successful at the time. I was really struggling financially, I was struggling to find myself, I was struggling with depression, I was overweight, I didn't have a partner, I wasn't married, I didn't have children. There were so many things that, by societal standards, would have pegged me as just this, like disaster, like utter failure.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And in that moment of feeling like a total failure and feeling like a total write-off, I had to learn to love myself and you know it wasn't easy, you know, but I think that was kind of. You know again, the evolution that I needed to go through to break that codependency for needing my environment to validate me right Externally. You know, giving my power away to other people, self-abandoning and choosing to prioritize other people's needs over my own. That was the phase I needed to be in in order to undo all those patterns. And then you know which kind of brings us to today in this you know kind of magnetic love era that I'm in, where I'm kind of manifesting these amazing love stories you know still haven't met the one, but definitely in a very different place where you know I'm not giving my power away, I'm not self-abandoning anymore. I am choosing myself first and I am really clear on what it is that I want, or I'm getting clearer on what it is that I want.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And you know, all these love stories have also been an evolution over time to kind of show me what it is I do want in a relationship, right, because I think up until now I really had no clue, because I had no idea what healthy love really was. So all of that is starting to kind of be revealed to me now and I'm starting to piece together you know what I would look for in a partner and also knowing that you know I don't need to, you know, externally source my validation, knowing that I can choose myself and put myself and my needs and my priorities first, and knowing that you know my person if they're truly my person, will love, honor and respect that, and just being in a place of knowing that I don't have to settle anymore and I don't, a place of knowing that I don't have to settle anymore and I don't, I'm perfectly okay with living my best life until this person shows up, right, and I think that's a very different place from where I was in the beginning. So that's kind of the evolution, right, like that's kind of the overview of you know what the last 20 years has looked like and each phase kind of took like I probably spent five to seven years in each of these phases Like I'm not even kidding With the exception of the last one which has only been kind of like a few years now. Oh yeah, five, I would probably say about five years, right and so or no less. Anyway, I'm I digress, let's just say five to seven years at each phase, loosely, and there's no like I mean, please don't think of it as like you know an exact timeline where you know there was this time and then it got cut off and then we went into the next timeline.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:All of these kind of merged and you know, I kind of trickled a tiptoed back between time, between eras, like before I finally, like moved on over to the next one. You know what I mean. Like they're not, it's not so clear cut. I'm trying to put a clear cut timeline on it but it wasn't very clear cut, you know. Like I mean there was times where I dabbled in my self-love era while I was still in my heartbreak era, and there was times where I, you know, kind of dabbled in my magnetic love story era while I was still in my hot mess era. So you know, like, again, very loose, it kind of happened very organically. But for context and for understanding, I'm trying to break it down into kind of these four neat little compartmentalized phases.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:So, going back to the beginning, right, and the betrayal this was really the betrayal that broke me slowly over time, because I, you know, when we talk about infidelity and you know, you know, when we talk about experiences of having been cheated on, it happens a lot Like I can't say, like I can't speak for other women, I can only speak for myself. You know, experience um was without a doubt, the most painful experience of my life Because when I think back to who I was when it all happened. You know, this person was my happily ever after. This person was someone who I trusted more than I trusted myself. This person was somebody that I felt like I could put my life in his hands and I would be totally taken care of. And so for me and I think I've said this before when the betrayal happened, I was blindsided. And I don't think it was funny, because there was a distinct moment where this betrayal kind of became evident to me. But it was in that moment that I realized, oh my God, this has been happening for months, maybe even I almost want to say, well, no, it was happening, I think, for several months. And you know I can still recall the moment. You know we're in bed.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:We got a phone call. I could clearly hear her voice on the other end of the phone. It clearly was not a friend. It clearly was not. It wasn't how you talk to your co worker and it wasn't how you talk to your friends, especially if they're a man and they're married. You know what I mean and I could hear her clearly. And I can just remember having everything inside me just kind of sink for a second and I just wanted to vomit in my pillow Because up until that point, you know, we had our challenge.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I knew we were having challenges and I knew that there were things. I knew there was a distance between us that I couldn't quite put my finger on and I knew that we were moving through something, but I honestly thought that we were going to be okay and I was doing everything in my power to kind of, you know, bring us closer, bring us back together and, you know, create the love affair that we had experienced when we first come together, and so, but it never even dawned on me that this was happening. I thought we were moving through a difficult time. I thought he was stressed at work you know, he was, ironically, working so many hours, you know, and just so tired all the time, and cranky and disconnected and felt like, you know, he didn't want to be. You know, he kind of felt like he was always off somewhere else and even when he was there, he wasn't, and so I just chalked it up to he was going through a difficult time.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:He was stressed, he was tired, he was depressed, you know, and this was a very difficult experience for me because we had just moved in together, right, and you know, we moved in together with the excitement of starting a life together and then, all of a sudden, we move in together and it's like whoa, like where's the relationship? What happened? Like, you know, like, how did we get from you know, this crazy, passionate, connected relationship to now, this right, literally the moment we moved in together and so it never occurred to me what was happening. And it's so funny because I was sad, I was disappointed. It had been going on for several months and I felt so unseen and so unloved and I couldn't understand why this person who I loved with all my heart was just suddenly emotionally checked out of the relationship, right, right, when we were supposed to be beginning our happily ever after, right. I couldn't understand why he had checked out and I was so hurt and let down, but I knew he was going through a hard time. So I put that aside to kind of, um, you know, focus on him and focus on what he needed and and and and trying to kind of work through his priorities to bring us closer together, right, and bring that connection back. So, instead of dealing with what I was going through, I was more focused on what he was going through, thinking that would be the thing, that would be the glue to kind of bring us back together.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And it wasn't until that morning when she called and I heard her on the other end and I was like what the fuck, like what the actual fuck. And then in that moment I had this. It was, you know how they say, like right before you die you have this flashback of your life. On that moment it was almost like the death of our relationship, or at least the death of how I experienced our relationship, because in that moment I had a flashback of all of the patterns and the behaviors that I had been completely oblivious to, completely oblivious to that he was cheating. And as I started to recall all these memories and these moments, I can remember being in a shock state where I couldn't say anything. I was literally in paralysis. I remember being in a shock state where I couldn't say anything. I was literally in paralysis.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I got up that day, I confronted him and you know he pretended that it was nothing. You know he tried to cover up the voice, he tried to kind of bypass the whole experience and I confronted him on it and he totally fumbled his way through like a flimsy excuse, trying to cover it all up and I knew he was lying. I knew him well enough to know he was lying and I knew that and I just took it in and I'm like I was like a deer in headlights, you guys, I didn't know what to do in. And I'm like I was like a deer in headlights, you guys, I didn't know what to do. So I went about my day. We were expecting company that night. I went through the motions of the day and I was shocked. I was a deer in headlights the entire day. I don't even know if I was blinking. I think I might've actually stopped breathing.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I was just in this utter state of shock where I was just going through the motions of the day and doing what I needed to do to get through it. You know, I did the cleaning of the house, I prepped the food, I did all the things that you do when you know you're expecting people over for dinner. And all the while, something in me was just screaming and I couldn't quite comprehend it. He had gone out to buy some things that we needed for the dinner and I remember, you know the store was like 15 minutes away. You know he came back five hours later I couldn't get a hold of him. His cell phone was off. Um, you know, clearly in retrospect he had gone to see her.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Um and I was sitting on the front step at the front of our house, um, and I was just Um and I was just, you know, I wasn't crying, but I was in a in a state of like I again like shock, where I was just kind of sitting there and I had all this emotion welling up in me but I didn't know what it was and I didn't know how to explain it. And you know, I wanted to cry but I think I was just too shocked to cry. You know, I wanted to cry but I think I was just too shocked to cry. And you know, thinking back, I don't know when the moment was that I finally allowed that reality to sink in, because it took time, I would say probably. It took me several weeks to let the reality of what was happening really sink in.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And then the fighting started. And then there was this denial on his part I didn't have a smoking gun. So there was a part of me that believed well, unless you have hard, concrete proof, you can't really end a relationship on. You know. You know something that could be so circumstantial, because then you know, you're just another crazy jealous person. You know, I had it so much in my head like don't be that girl, don't be that insecure. You know woman who constantly accuses her partner of doing things, of cheating on her, of being with other women, of giving other women attention based on, you know, circumstantial. I needed the smoking gun, you know, because I had so so much idea around. You know, I just wanted to be the cool girlfriend. I just wanted to be the cool partner, the cool, you know, who didn't obsess over these things.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And I never was like I was never a jealous person Like I. You know I would never get jealous when he was around. You know other women and you know we had friends who you know. You know he, you know we, you know all everyone kind of got together and you know other women and you know we had friends who you know, you know he, you know we, you know all everyone kind of got together and you know some people were partnered and some people weren't. And you know I never had issues with thinking that he was cheating. I never has. I never had the idea that I needed to feel threatened about other women because I felt I was center of his universe. You know, falsely. So there was never like a shadow of doubt.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And this is where I think I tripped myself up or I did trip myself up in that time is that I was, and you know, telling myself that. You know, I didn't want to be this person. And then he started making me feel like you're just being a jealous, you're just being jealous, you're insecure, you're jealous, you're this, you're that, Kind of putting it all back on me. And it's like I allowed that to really kind of sink in and I really kind of took it on. I mean, in the beginning I was, you know, really fighting for validation. I was fighting for a confession. I was, you know, trying to make sense of everything that happened and get him to really just be honest with me so we can, you know, start working on the issue. But you know it was never dealt with that way. It was more you're crazy, you're delusional, you're jealous. I can't put up with your jealousy anymore. This is your own insecurity that's doing all this.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And I started to believe that I think, and I didn't want to be that person, you know. So I tried to pretend that things were okay. For a very long time I tried to pretend that things were okay. I kind of went through this denial era where everything was perfect, everything was fine, we were happy, I was smiling, but all of it was perfect. Everything was fine, we were happy, I was smiling, but all of it was fake because, deep down, I knew the truth. I knew the truth of what was going on.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And you know what, guys, it was still happening and instead of dealing with it, you know, I let those words of you're just being jealous, you're just being insecure. You don't trust me. You know you can't have a healthy relationship if we don't have to, if there's no trust. You know kind of putting all the blame back on me, and I really just started to take that on. And this is the danger when we become of, you know, being in relationships where we constantly give our power away, you know, where we trust our partner more than we trust ourselves. Because, looking back, you know, if I were to have, you know, coffee with the version of me who was going through that experience, I'd be like, dude, you don't have a jealous bone in your body Like you've never been jealous before. So why, all of a sudden now, are you going through this experience that clearly is feeling like, is so painful and you're feeling so deeply, you're actually having a visceral response to what is happening, like, wake up, like.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I just wanted that Sorry, guys, that was my book. I just wanted to baby shake my. I would want to baby shake myself out and to wake up to what was happening around her, but the reality was is that it would take me years of fighting, fighting for confession, fighting for validation, fighting for confirmation and then denial where you know, I realized all the fighting wasn't getting me anywhere, but the potential loss of this person that I love so deeply. So, rather than fight and push them away, I decided, hey, we're just going to pretend that it never happened. We blew it up in our mind. It wasn't real, it was an illusion, everything's fine, we're all happy. You know, even though we haven't had sex in months, we're happy.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And so you know this is a betrayal that broke me slowly, because I don't, I didn't want to see what was happening. Because to see what was happening and Because to see what was happening and to actually acknowledge what was happening, I had to look at how unworthy I actually felt, how unlovable I actually believed that I was Because I had put all my worth and all my value into this person's hands To validate for me. And now to accept what was happening was to accept that all that validation was untrue and in my mind, the only thing that would validate is how unworthy of love and how unvaluable and unlovable I really was. So, um, with that, you know, um, to be continued. Um, you know, to be continued.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Where are you maybe giving the responsibility away for how lovable you are, for how valuable you are, for how deserving of unconditional love you actually are? Because you are, I can guarantee it. But if you're contracting that out, if you're sourcing that out to people around you, if you're sourcing that responsibility, that validation, to people around you, you'll never really experience it for yourself. And I think that you know when we are needing to sort, outsource that, it's because there is a deficit there, a deficit that can actually come and bite you in the butt and probably well, I can guarantee it if it hasn't already. Um, you know, look at all the ways you're giving your power away. You know where are you giving your power away to your relationships to validate your experience what you're feeling, what you're moving through, what you're needing in that moment.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Where are you self-abandoning in your relationships? Because you don't want just keep the peace, move along, rather than have the mutiny that you know that your heart and soul is literally screaming for you to have, but you're too afraid to rock the boat and lose the relationship in order to have it, lose the relationship in order to have it, and even to accept it, to own it. To say it out loud, I am experiencing this instead of the denial you might be moving through. No-transcript. And, of course, if you love this episode, please leave a positive rating and review. That's all for now, you guys. Until next time, massive love.
