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 Biggest Mistake I Made in Love: Trusting Him Over Myself
Have you ever silenced your own intuition for the sake of love? Have you put more trust in someone else’s words than in the quiet knowing within you—only to watch it all fall apart?
In this episode of The Femme Cast, I open up about the heartbreaking moment I realized I had given away my power, trusting him over myself, and the deep unraveling that followed. I share the painful lessons I learned about self-worth, betrayal, and the dangers of outsourcing our truth.
For years, I navigated the maze of insecurity, jealousy, and self-doubt—struggling to feel “enough” in a relationship that slowly eroded my trust in myself. Gaslighting, infidelity, and emotional manipulation kept me trapped in a cycle of self-abandonment. But my healing journey taught me one life-changing truth: The foundation of a healthy relationship isn’t just trust in someone else—it’s trust in yourself.
If you've ever ignored red flags, questioned your worth, or lost yourself in love, this episode is for you.
In this episode, we'll cover:
- The biggest mistake I made—and how you can avoid it
- How gaslighting erodes self-trust and keeps you stuck
- The emotional toll of self-betrayal and how to break free
- The mindset shifts that helped me rebuild my self-worth
- How to trust yourself again and attract emotionally available love
Your intuition is speaking—are you finally ready to listen?
🎧 Tune in now.
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 am so excited and grateful to have you here. We are going to continue through my evolution from breaking toxic patterns and becoming a magnet for healthy love. We are continuing with my heartbreak era today, where it all began, where all the magic began, even though it didn't feel like magic at the time, um, and we're going to talk about the biggest mistake that I made in that relationship. I mean, there were many mistakes, but I think the biggest one for me was the mistake of trusting him more than I trusted myself, or just not trusting myself full stop, right. Um, I think that was the most devastating thing I had done in that relationship and probably what led to most of the pain and the heartbreak that I experienced, not to mention the mental impacts of what happened, but also, I think it was you know, it was very it was an important part of my evolution, because I think it's what kept me there longer, so that it would do enough mental and emotional, like there was enough mind fuckery there for me to have to undo and be able to share what I share today, you know. So I mean again, in retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I went through all that, but, man, if I had to, if I could just save myself, I mean, I know again, I say this and I always say this and I said this in the last episode. You know, when you see the benefits of having gone through an experience, you know you can appreciate having gone through it and be willing to go through it again in order to get the benefits on the other side. Well, it was still quite painful. I don't know if I'd want to do that again, but I do appreciate the lessons learned. So, um, so we're going to go back to um. You know, I do want to hold an intention and I apologize, I totally missed this part the last time but wherever you are, if you can just take a moment um, you know, don't do this if you're driving or you know working right now or whatever but you just take a moment to hold an intention, if you can close your eyes and take a deep breath and just hold the intention that everyone listening to this episode get exactly what they need to hear from it, that they get an insight, an inspiration, a motivation to do things differently, to love themselves a little bit more, to break toxic patterns and to become a magnet for healthy, loving relationships that we all deserve, every single one of us, to see our worth, to see just how lovable we are, to see just how deserving we are, and to recognize that lovable, that lovability if that's a word, and that worth in ourselves, without ever needing anybody else to validate that for us If you could just hold that for one second and to trust ourselves, to know that we know our truth, to know that we know what is best for us and to not outsource that to other people to do on our behalf. So be it. Okay.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Now let's talk about this, because in this experience and I said you know, as you know, as we move through this almost slightly chronological account of my evolution, through this journey, looking back on this, you know, betrayal era, this heartbreak era that I experienced, that kind of, was the initiation into all of this evolution. There were many mistakes that I made, many, many, many mistakes, but I think the biggest mistake that I made was entrusting him more than I trusted myself in myself. I knew what was happening. I knew the writing. The writing was on the wall. Everything I needed to validate what I knew was there. The signs were everywhere. The pain and the fear and the panic that I was feeling was very, very, very real and this was very out of character for me, like wildly out of character for me, and I always make this distinction you know if your man is cheating, you know, you just know.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Now, you know I say that with a grain of salt because I know that there are so many of you out there who just struggle with insecurity and struggle with self worth and do get uncomfortable around other women and there's, you know, other women or society will make you feel badly for that, and you know that also comes from deep insecurities and wounds and of rejection and abandonment, maybe not of a partner, but, you know, maybe somebody else in your life that was important to you. You know, these are all. We don't, we don't wake up a jealous bitch, I'm sorry, and this is not. This is not to, this is not to encourage that behavior, because I do believe that in order to have a healthy, loving relationship, there needs to be trust and there is no getting around that. So, whatever you need to do in order to be able to be in a relationship with somebody that you trust, whether that means finding the right person and also probably doing some work on yourself so you can trust, then do it. Okay, because you do need to have trust in order to have a healthy, functioning relationship, non-negotiable. So I'm not making excuses for the behavior, but I do understand where it comes from and I think we need to. I think we need to start looking at people's behaviors a little bit differently and start asking ourselves where does that behavior come from? You know? So you know.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Having said all that, this was very out of character for me. So for my intuition to be screaming at me dude, this guy is cheating on you, wake the fuck up. And for me to continue to outsource my need for validation to need the smoking gun, to need the confession going out of my way to try and catch him in the act. One night we had had this horrible fight, I came home from work and I said because you know, like I said in the beginning, you know, there was this period where we were where I was constantly interrogating him about it. He would constantly lie to me, pretend he didn't know what I was talking about. Or my favorite was I don't remember that was my favorite Whenever he couldn't come up with an excuse of what it is I was asking him about, like whether it was a phone call that we got that morning or whatever the thing was. You know, his response was always I don't remember, even though it might have been, like you know, 24 hours ago, you know, and so in that quest for the validation, in that quest for the confession, in that quest for the smoking gun, I can remember, you know, one day saying I'm sorry, I know I said I wasn't going to like berate you with this anymore, but I cannot get it out of my head what happened and the fact that you continuously say to me that you can't remember what happened. Less than 24 hours before, when I asked you, like like I'm having a really hard time trying to like digest this, like what's happening and trying to make sense of it and I was crying.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:I remember I was crying that day on the phone and he was still at work. I had just gotten home from work I don't even think like I remember kind of sitting on our sofa and I just kind of came into the house. I still had my shoes on, I put my bag down like onto the floor next to me. I still had my jacket on, like I just kind of walked in the house and just sat, plopped myself on the couch. You know, I couldn't even put my purse or my jacket away or take off my shoes before I came in. I just flopped on the sofa. And I can remember just calling him in tears, saying this makes no sense to me. I'm trying to understand. Please help me understand, because I can understand why you don't remember and why you can't explain what happened. And you know all this nonsense. And to his response was I'm so tired of hearing about this, I'm so tired of fighting about this, I'm not coming home tonight. And that moment, um, I remember I closed the phone and I just fell on the floor and just started crying.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Um, there was a lot of the falling on the floor, crying moments. This was one of them, um, and I called my sister that day and I said listen this, and that we just had this argument. Um, I know he was working, you know, late last night. He always did. Right, that was very convenient. He's a restaurant manager, so it was quite often that he would use working late as an excuse, even though the restaurant closed by like nine o'clock. You know what I mean there was always some sort of crisis that kept him there until three in the morning.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Um, and it's funny because I can remember back to when we were dating, um, when we were still in university together. Um, you know, we would often come home at three o'clock in the morning. That was like our, our, our. That was like his, his MO. He would keep me out until three o'clock in the morning even though we had class the next day. Um, we would show up to, you know, sociology or whatever class we had class the next day. We would show up to sociology or whatever class we had in the morning. I don't know what class did we have together. I think it was sociology or was it anthropology. Anyway, I can't remember. But we would show up to class 8.30 in the morning, half asleep, because we were out until 3 o'clock in the morning the night before and that was totally his MO.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And so he was coming home at three o'clock in the morning every night when he was working night shifts, um, even though his shift was done at like nine o'clock. So, you know, um, he said he was working late that night and you know he would not be home. So, you know, my sister and I did a stakeout went to his restaurant. We kind of went to the parking lot across the street, saw his car. We kind of sat there and waited and waited, and waited and waited and he didn't move his car. It was there, um, but there was no other cars. I remember in the lot, um, actually I'm trying to remember now if there was an. I know there was like the odd car here or there and there was a couple of other like businesses kind of in the plaza, but nothing that I think was open until that time. So you know whether he was alone, I don't know. You know whether he was alone? I don't know. Probably not. I'm guessing that would be a guess, you know, I just don't know. What I do know is that you know he didn't go anywhere after. He kind of stayed there the entire night and then at one point, I guess you know, I think at about three or four in the morning, me and my sister just got tired and we just kind of went home.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:And I don't remember when we came home after that, but I do remember feeling like I failed because I wanted that smoking gun so badly. I needed that smoking gun so badly is because me just knowing what was true wasn't enough, me just knowing that I know myself and I know my partner and I know what's up and I know what my intuition is telling me. And instead of trusting my intuition, I totally negated it and needed that validation outside of myself before I could walk away free and clear. And until I had that validation I couldn't walk away. So herein really lies the mistake, because I would spend another seven years in this relationship because I didn't have a smoking gun, because I didn't have a confession, because I didn't have the external validation that I needed in order to walk away free and clear.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Now, because of the nature of this relationship, the damage that it did, staying in it for seven years, was monumental. It just had such an impact on me mentally, physically, emotionally. It was insane. And but again, it was the undoing I needed in order to start to heal the beliefs within myself that were attracting toxic relationships right. So it's probably a good thing that I stayed in it for seven years from the perspective of well, if I hadn't, then I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing today.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But you know, being in that relationship for seven years and going through the motions of, you know, first being, you know, in shock, then being in, and I don't know what the 12 stages of grief are, and if this is it, and if somebody knows, tell me, cause I haven't actually Googled this in a while. Um, but you know, first I was in shock, then I was in grief, then I was in fucking anger and then I just went into denial, you know, and then I would kind of tiptoe back into grief and then I would tiptoe back into anger and then I would just come back to denial and denial became my home base, right, denial became my camp and, yeah, I would kind of tiptoe back into and toe test back into some of the other phases, but ultimately I would always just come back to denial until there was just acceptance of my truth, which came years later. Years later, I would come to the point where you know what, whatever happened happened, I know something like this does not feel right and I'm not being treated right, and I know that whether I can't prove what's wrong or not doesn't matter, because I know what I've seen, I know what I've experienced, I know what I felt and I know how I've been treated and I am done, you know. And then I would walk away. But that took seven years. And so I mean, in that time, you know, the effects of not trusting myself, of, you know, of me trusting him more than I trusted me was probably the most damaging, because what ended up happening was I completely disconnected from my intuition in that experience. So I really, I mean, if I couldn't trust myself before, I certainly could not trust myself now. I couldn't even hear myself, at least not until I made the decision, I think, to leave. And that's when my intuition really woke up, right before I left, and spoke to me and you know, we'll share more about that in a future episode.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But the damage that I had done to the relationship with myself and how I trusted myself was insane, and not to mention this needing somebody else to validate, the dangers of needing somebody else to validate my experience, my truth, what I know to be true. Nothing could have made it more evident. Because, you know, in that whole seven-year period, you know, like I said, I went from, you know, the grief, the anger, and then the denial, and in the denial I was literally trying to convince myself that all of this was untrue. Not only was he trying to convince me that I didn't see things or hear things, that I saw I was doing that to myself. So the gaslighting was coming not just from him but from me. And if you, you know, if you, if you, if any of you, have ever experienced gaslighting, that's a lot of damage to undo to your thought process, right and your self-trust. And that's really what gaslighting does it erodes the trust you have in yourself and your reality and your experience of it. So, you know, I had a lot of work to do on the other end, just on that alone, not to mention the impacts that it had on my self-worth right, which really didn't present themselves until the next era, um, which we'll talk about more, which was like the hot mess era, which was like the hot mess era.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But, um, you know, the biggest mistake was in trusting him more than I trusted myself, because I kept giving my power away to him to validate what I already knew to be true, to validate my experience, my intuition, my experience, my intuition, what I knew was happening behind the scenes. I needed the evidence, I needed the confession, I needed the smoking gun, otherwise I couldn't just lean into what I knew, I believed, and it kept me there and it kept me there. Um, I mean, we had been together for years before we even moved in together and I probably um, kind of ballparking it here I probably found out about what was happening just several months into, like right after, we had moved in together, and I'm pretty sure it had started happening just before we moved in together. So, you know, let's say you know, we lived together for seven years. So let's just say I spent seven and a half years living with somebody who's lying and cheating on me Because I couldn't just trust myself in the process to know what was true. And again, like you know, I don't want to make every woman out there who thinks her partner is cheating on her believe oh my God, it must be true, because that's what I'm believing, you know.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Again, I want you to look at your who you are in relationship. Do you have a pattern of thinking that your spouse or your partner or your boyfriend or whoever, is cheating? Is this a thing for you? And if it is, you know, maybe you are in a pattern of attracting people who you know lie and cheat and that is a very real experience and many women have that. Or are you dealing with your own self-worth and insecurities, issues that are manifesting as lack of trust in your relationship, in which case case, do your work, you know, get out there, get some support, get some help, start to really rewire the beliefs that you have about yourself and what you deserve right, and maybe your relationships will have. You know, you'll, you'll, you'll be able to save yourself a lot of pain, a lot of heartbreak, and maybe you might even be able to turn some of your relationships around, because trust is mandatory.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Okay, so I, you know, I really want to underscore that If you're a woman who's never been jealous before in your life, who's always trusted her partner explicitly, especially the person you might be with now, who you would give your, put your life in their hands, and suddenly you're getting some serious signs that this person is cheating, listen to it. You know this is not who you are and you know it. And there's a reason why you're feeling this way. Now, there's different kinds of infidelity, of course there's emotional, there's physical. There's different kinds of infidelity. Of course there's emotional, there's physical, there's mental. I mean, cheating can look many different ways, but it's all painful and it's all a betrayal. And when we put that responsibility in the other person to validate that experience for us. We set ourselves up for catastrophe Because you could be waiting a lifetime for that validation, for that confession, for that external confirmation of what you already know to be true.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:It may never come, and I'll tell you, mine came after I left. It was so ironic that I stayed for seven years because I didn't have validation and I didn't have confirmation. And then, right after I left, boom, I literally stumbled on the confirmation I had been waiting for all those years and I was like dang like. And I was like dang like. If only I'd left sooner. Maybe this confirmation would have come sooner.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:But I think I needed to go through the experience of learning to trust myself. And when I finally learned to trust myself and just make decisions according to what my intuition was telling me, then the external validation that I was waiting for for so long finally fucking showed. So where are you giving your power away? Was telling me. Then the external validation that I was waiting for for so long finally fucking showed. So where are you giving your power away? Where are you outsourcing your need for validation or confirmation that what you already know to be true?
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Where are you putting your trust in someone else more than you're trusting yourself, because that is a dangerous pattern to bring into our relationships, because unless we have trust in ourselves, we will never have trust in our partners, and if we can't have trust in ourselves and trust in our partners, we will never be able to have a healthy relationship. It all starts with you. Learn to trust yourself, learn to navigate your life, to make your decisions, to listen to your intuition and take action accordingly. To listen to your intuition and take action accordingly, and then you're going to see yourself making much better, much more aligned decisions when it comes to your relationships and start to break away from some of these toxic patterns. So I leave you with that. Of course, email me at mariaatthefemcoachcom. You can hit me up at the Femcast on Instagram and send me a DM. Let me know where you're not trusting yourself in your relationships. Let me know where you're trusting them more than you're trusting yourself, because that is a very, very, very dangerous slope.
MARIA @THEFEMMECAST:Take it from my experience. If you will, don't make my experience be something that I went through in vain, like. Make it mean something. Do take a different action than what I did. Okay, and trust that you don't need something to validate what you already know to be true deep down inside. Okay, so I'm going to leave you with that. If you love this episode, it would mean the world to me If you would leave a positive rating and a review on Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you're seeing this. Until next time, you guys, massive, massive love.
