Reinvigorating Marriage and Connection Through Authenticity and Intentional Practices - Sophie Orozco

Imagine standing on the precipice of marital dissolution, only to discover a new path to rejuvenating your relationship. Relationship coach Sophie Orozco has been there and back, and she’s here to share how she turned potential heartbreak into an opportunity for a deeper connection. Join us as Sophie debunks the myth that a marriage can coast on autopilot and reveals the everyday moments that truly reignite passion and intimacy. Forget the grand gestures; Sophie guides us through the art of nurturing a marriage with authenticity and intention.

We'll take a journey through the evolving dynamics of relationships, from the spark of first attraction to the challenges of maintaining emotional and spiritual intimacy. Sophie shares her personal insights on handling conflict with grace, prioritizing listening and understanding over argument, and offers a compassionate framework for rebuilding trust after betrayal. Discover the blend of practical, psychological, and spiritual practices that can transform your relationship into a source of joy and fulfillment. This episode is packed with wisdom for anyone committed to cultivating a vibrant, loving relationship that stands the test of time.

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Chapters

• 0:08 Reviving Marriage
• 8:13 Navigating Relationship Dynamics for Lasting Change

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hey everyone, welcome back to Pleasure Principles, the podcast where we explore what makes life worth living, from relationships to self-discovery and everything in between. I'm your host, avik, and today we are diving into a topic that so many people think about, stress over and dream of approving Marriage and keeping the spark alive. So if you have ever felt like you are caught between routine and romance, then you have wondered how to rekindle that spark when life feels overwhelming. And you are not alone, and this episode is for you, definitely. So joining us today is someone who has lived this challenge and turned it into a life's mission Sophie Orozco. Welcome to the show, sophie.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Hi, thank you, I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Lovely, lovely. So, sophie, like before we start, I'd quickly love to introduce you to all of our listeners. Dear listeners, sophie is a relationship coach, wife and a mom of four amazing kids, and she knows firsthand like what it's like to feel disconnected and on the brink of giving up, only to find her way back to a thriving marriage. So she's here to share her wisdom, her hard-earned lessons and some real, actionable advice to help you cultivate a relationship that feels alive, loving and exciting again. So, sophie, I'm so glad you are here and ready to spark up this conversation. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 1:45

Oh, thank you for having me. Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Lovely, lovely. So, sophie, like I mean, you have talked openly about your husband asking for a divorce and how that moment forced you to rethink everything. So what did that experience teach you about the difference between surviving in a marriage and thriving in one?

Speaker 2: 2:10

Great question, yeah, so my husband asked me for a divorce. I had four young kids under the age of five years old. But you know, once he asked me for a divorce, obviously I was devastated, I was completely heartbroken. But I recognized in that moment that he was right. Like we had completely disconnected over the years of having kids. We had no spark in our marriage. We had really like our marriage had completely disintegrated.

Speaker 2: 2:40

And so that whole year that I spent rekindling my marriage and like reconnecting my marriage taught me so much about relationships. But it also taught me that, you know, with marriage, I think what happens so many times and what happened for me is I thought, well, we get married and then it's done, right. I didn't realize that marriage is like a living organism, like you have to keep it alive, like you have to really tend to it and you have to nurture it and you have to feed it with all this positive good energy, otherwise it will turn into a hostile environment and it will eventually die over time. And just because you're married and you have a legal agreement, it doesn't mean that you can then just give up and put it on the back burner and think that it's going to thrive.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Lovely, lovely. I mean thank you so much for sharing this. I mean it's really important, and for the couples who are listening, or maybe they might be listening, and for the couples who are listening, or maybe they might be listening, who might not be facing something as drastic as divorce but still feel emotionally distant. So where do you suggest they start reconnecting?

Speaker 2: 4:07

Yeah, that's a great question and I think that you know, um, this kind of roommate stage that a lot of people get to in their relationships. They might think, well, it's going to get better when the kids get older, or it will get better when we're not so busy at work, and they think, well, it's not, it's not so bad, right, like we're not on the brink of divorce, um, but they're just feeling that lack of emotional connection that actually this is not something to be overlooked or taken lightly, because if you are not feeling that real deep emotional connection and you're not feeling that intimacy, you're not feeling even the physical connection, then you're kind of leaving your relationship up to, you're kind of opening it up to some potentially worse things coming down the line. And that's what I tend to see with the people that I work with, that they kind of were in that roommate stage for a while and then their marriage crashed and burned, because we all, as humans, crave deep connection. And if we're not having that deep connection in our relationship, in our primary relationship, in our marriage, then we feel very dissatisfied. We'll seek that connection elsewhere, outside of the relationship, not necessarily in an affair, but I just think it's definitely something not to be overlooked.

Speaker 2: 5:20

So your question what can people do to bring back some emotional connection? I think is to recognize, firstly, that the relationship has gotten to the stage where they're more like roommates than you are, like soulmates, as it were. And just think about the general day-to-day interactions that you have with your spouse, like what do you guys talk about? Are you discussing things that are important to you? Are you discussing your hopes with your spouse? Like, what do you guys talk about? Are you discussing things that are important to you? Are you discussing your hopes and your dreams? Are you sharing funny things that happen throughout your day? Or are you just like asking them to pick up the groceries on the way home, you know, are you asking them who paid the bill today? Right, um, because that tends to be. What happens is that we get into more of these transactional relationships we're like business partners with our spouse and then we wonder why there's no connection but we're also not sharing from that connected place, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Exactly, very true. Exactly Very true, and I mean I really love that. You said reconnecting doesn't always mean to be a grand gesture. So sometimes it's those little moments holding hands, meaningful conversations, so that rebuilding the foundation. That's very important. And also, like when couples come to you and say the passion is gone, how do you help them redefine what intimacy looks like?

Speaker 2: 6:57

Yeah, absolutely so. The passion, like the passion, it goes out for a reason, right, like it's not like magically the passion is gone. It's not like magically the passion is gone, it's just because, over time, just like you said, people are not doing those small everyday ways of connecting and building intimacy, right, and I think people think, oh, intimacy is like physical intimacy in the bedroom, but it's not, it's much deeper and the passion tends to come back when we're doing those day-to-day things. Right, and I think that what I see a lot of the time because I work with I do work with men and occasionally couples, but I mostly work with women, because I work with women who are young moms, you know, like just like I was, who had young children and who had kind of like abandoned themselves in that stage of life and then they had been wondering why there's no passion in the relationship, but they're also not connected to themselves, so there's no real way for them to connect to somebody else in that way. Does that make sense? So it's almost like rediscovering.

Speaker 2: 8:13

You know, when I ask people like, who were you when you got into the relationship? Yeah, did you wear, what did you? How? What like, did you flirt with your, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, right? Like, what kind of messages were you sending them back then? And then compare and contrast that to today. Like how are you feeling about yourself today? What are you wearing today? What text messages are you sending? Right, and it's not about physical appearance, it's about how we feel and like the energy that we're putting into the relationship perfect, perfect, lovely and like uh.

Speaker 1: 8:51

Do you think that intimacy is often misunderstood as purely physical, when, when, in reality, it's emotional and even spiritual, sometimes as well? So what do you think?

Speaker 2: 9:02

yeah, absolutely. I think that the physical intimacy part is one piece, like it's obviously we we need that, we really need that in a in a, in a relationship, in a marriage. But we also really uh need and crave emotional uh intimacy and and spiritual like I think marriage especially is a very spiritual journey wow and and like.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Let's talk about a conflict. Many people avoid it, but you have mentioned that healthy conflict can actually strengthen the relationship, and so how do you help couples argue better?

Speaker 2: 9:46

um, I'm not sure that I believe healthy conflicts can strengthen a relationship, but I think that having deep discussions can strengthen a relationship. And I don't really help people argue better, I help people learn to listen better. Because, you know, what I tend to see is that in a, in an argument, what we think of as communication is generally like trying to force our opinion on someone else, right and when, when in reality two completely separate opinions can coexist within one conversation if we're really learning how to deeply listen to our partner, and arguments tend to happen when people are not feeling seen and they're not feeling heard and they're not feeling understood. And so if we can create a culture of like in our marriage, of feeling heard, feeling seen, feeling understood, then the argument and the heat, as it were, gets taken out of the conflict and you can just actually have a really deep and meaningful conversation. Then the argument and the heat, as it were, gets taken out of the conflict and you can just actually have a really deep and meaningful conversation.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Okay, okay, does that mean, yeah, you're saying something? Yeah, please.

Speaker 2: 11:03

No, I just wondered if that makes sense to you, because I don't believe necessarily that conflict is a natural part of relationship. I think that that, yes, like when you're with someone for a long time, you are going to end up like occasionally having arguments, right. But if we can really like work with our own triggers and within with our own nervous systems and be able to regulate in a conversation, then we shouldn't ever really be getting to the place where we're having explosive arguments with each other I understood.

Speaker 1: 11:42

So I mean on this only, like I was about to ask you, like do you think is there a technique or maybe the framework that you should recommend to help couples communicate without kind of escalating things into, um, uh, full-blown arguments?

Speaker 2: 12:02

yeah, I'm my.

Speaker 2: 12:04

My framework, I guess, is to first listen, first right listen, first acknowledge and then share what you think and feel yeah and to really be mindful and aware of like, where we want to be highly defensive because, um, arguments like will trigger all of those survival instincts within us, you know, and we end up feeling like we're being attacked, um, and we want to work with our nervous system to lower that, those trigger responses, so that we can feel calmer, more at peace. If you need to take breaks in the conversation, like, I definitely recommend that you take a break. Slow down right after a certain point in an argument. If we're, if our nervous system is too flooded, we can't actually hear what the other person's saying. So, just becoming really intentional in all of our practices, in our, in our relationships, gotcha and and uh for someone who is struggling to trust again.

Speaker 1: 13:23

How do you guide them to find that balance between vulnerability and self-protection?

Speaker 2: 13:30

yeah, so, um, I was actually just talking with a client about this trust, right, and I think that, um, depending on what's happened in the relationship, yeah, rebuilding trust can be a real challenge for a lot of couples. And, um, you know what? What I see that that leads people down a path of more disconnection is when people get into the habit of wanting that person to prove their trustworthiness to them over and over and over again, and they're tracking them and they're checking their phones and they're and they're doing all of this right, you need to prove to me that I can trust you, right, and that's never. It never works in the way that we want it to work. It will always backfire.

Speaker 2: 14:21

In my experience, like and so I think it's it's it's helping people to see that if they choose to stay in the relationship after there's been a breach of trust, that it is a choice that they make and that they get to choose to trust that person that day, because people tend to live up to our expectations of them. And if we choose to trust someone and they feel that we trust them, they're much more likely to act in trustworthy ways. Right, and that rebuilding of trust is something that happens slowly and it happens over time and it's tough. It's very tough to to really move through that journey of learning to trust someone after there's been a big betrayal in a relationship, and I think it always takes having some sort of help. Um, you know, I see I see couples and individuals that try to do it alone and it's tricky.

Speaker 1: 15:31

Understood and you have mentioned, like blending the practical, psychological and spiritual aspects of marriage coaching. So how do these elements work together to create lasting change in a relationship?

Speaker 2: 15:46

Could you repeat that question for me?

Speaker 1: 15:49

I mean, I was saying like how do you think like these elements, like the practical, psychological and spiritual aspects of marriage, work together to create lasting change in a relationship?

Speaker 2: 16:04

to create lasting change in a relationship. Well, I think lasting change in a relationship comes from really understanding what makes a relationship work. I think there's a big lack of understanding in common culture about what actually makes a relationship successful. And so, with my clients and the, the people that I help, like, I really teach them like how to build that kind of a relationship that you really want to be in right, and how to really take care of it and how to nurture it and how to, how to make it a priority every single day. Um, and I think, once you learn practical tools and practical skills to implement into your relationship, that you can see quite quickly the amount of influence that you actually have on your relationship.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Understood your relationship, understood, understood and uh, do you think? Uh, couples sometimes lean too heavily on one, like focusing only on the practical fixes or only on the emotional healing, without addressing um, I think, yeah, that that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 17:25

I think that, um, what I see is that couples will either try to do the practical fixes like I'm going to initiate a date night every week, for example, and then they'll go on the date night every week, for example, and then they'll go on the date night, but they still feel that deep sense of a lack of connection, right. So they're trying to do the practical things but they're not really addressing, like, the deeper root issues that are going on in the relationship. Or I also see that people will do the emotional work, like I have a lot of clients who are like, oh I'm, I'm doing all this inner child healing on myself, but it's not translating through to the marriage, if that makes sense understood, understood, great.

Speaker 1: 18:20

So that's really lovely, sophie. Uh, this conversation has been so enlightening. I mean, I know so many listeners are walking away with hope and actionable advice For anyone who wants to dive deeper or work with you directly. Where can they find you?

Speaker 2: 18:39

And they can find me over on Instagram. It's probably like the easiest place to find me is sophiarascocoaching.

Speaker 1: 18:51

Or you can go to my website, which is sophiarascocom. That's really lovely. So to everyone who is tuning in, but in wholly and totally, sophie has inspired all of you to take even just one small step towards reconnecting with your partner, whether it's a heartfelt conversation tonight or is scheduling that long overdue date night. So relationships evolve, and that's okay. So what matters is how we show up for each other every day. So until next time, this is your host, avig, reminding you to prioritize love, passion and connection. And thanks for listening to Pleasure Principles. Have a great day ahead, thank you.