What is the hallmark green flag of a healthy marriage? What are some common marriage struggles for high-achieving women? Why is safety so important for vulnerability as an ambitious woman?

In this podcast episode, I talk to Jen Kem about building a business and nurturing an interdependent relationship as an ambitious woman.

Meet Jen Kem

Jennifer “Jen” Kem is a San Francisco Bay Area-based brand-building and leadership expert who gets entrepreneurs seen, heard, and paid for being themselves. 

She’s the creator of the Master Brand Method: a framework to develop powerful brand archetypes that win customers’ hearts, leveraging Jennifer’s 20 years of corporate experience and her launching of multiple companies. 

She uses the Master Brand method in strategic consulting for emerging entrepreneurs, celebrity brands like Oprah Winfrey Network and Steve Harvey, and major corporations including Verizon, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Bank of Hawaii. 

What she is most passionate about in her work today is her legacy project: Femmefluence, a platform that supports women leaders to fully rise into their influence and affluence, so they can make an even greater impact in the world.

Jennifer serves up straight talk wrapped in love because she understands entrepreneurs’ challenges: She built a retail business and became a millionaire at 32, only to lose it all in the recession two years later. She is now the successful owner of three million-dollar brand-building businesses and the mother of three children.

Connect with Jen on her website. Find her on Instagram, and find her on Youtube.

Summary

• Uncovering marriage struggles for high-achieving women
• Safety is necessary for high-achieving women
• The four things you need to take care of
• The goal of a healthy marriage

Uncovering marriage struggles for high-achieving women

High-achieving, ambitious women are rare. Sometimes, their marriages need extra attention to work well and smoothly, because the societal standard is not always accepting or encouraging of an ambitious woman.

Let’s be clear: this is the fault of society and past norms, not of you or your partner. However, to make things work, it’s necessary to deal with those issues and be upfront with them, wherever they come up.

I’m just going to speak for myself, I kind of defaulted to, “Hey, he’s a good person … so fine, if he wants to marry me, let’s go.” (Jen Kem)

Jen felt like she couldn’t identify what was the source of her unhappiness in her first marriage, but she just knew that it wasn’t working for her.

I said, “It’s so interesting that you think that we have it all when we’re very unhappy in our relationship … that we have to tolerate just being okay.” We weren’t intimate anymore, we were just kind of going through the motions, and we were young still. (Jen Kem)

Love is one thing, but do you like each other? Do you like your spouse, and do they like you?

Safety is necessary for high-achieving women

High-achieving women need to feel safe to be vulnerable and to celebrate themselves first with other people who can see them, then that will motivate them to come out and say, “Look, I don’t want to have to trade out my ambition for love in my life.” (Jen Kem)

It is vital for high-achieving women to feel safe with their partner in for them to truly be vulnerable with themselves, their feelings, and their relationship with life.

If a high-achieving woman feels like she cannot trust her partner to hold her or their family together so that she can rest, then she never will.

Apart from the obvious necessities in successful relationships like attraction and respect, there needs to be compatibility on a deeper level. There needs to be real trust in one another that you both have each other’s backs.

All relationships require some level of compromise which is fine, but if you don’t know what’s being unsaid, that’s when shit falls apart and for me when I got remarried, I was clear that that’s not what I wanted to allow to happen again. (Jen Kem)

The four things you need to take care of

1 – Health

2 – Wealth

3 – Self

4 – Relationships

You need to find a way to learn what you need in these four areas in your life to feel fulfilled and that you are leading a meaningful life.

The goal of a healthy marriage

You guys are both aware that, “We’re not going to be perfect”, and that the goal isn’t perfection, the goal is to have these uncomfortable conversations and if we’re not able to identify what this is that keeps on coming up … that we are both willing to navigate these unchartered waters together. (Veronica Cisneros)

The hallmark of a healthy, respectful, and loving relationship is that both people are willing to do the hard work.

A healthy relationship is made up of two people that know they’re not perfect, and who love and respect each other enough to be vulnerable as a team to get through a tough situation without abandoning their partner to do all the heavy lifting alone.

Useful links:

• Join our FaceBook Page – Empowered and Unapologetic
• Take the Marriage Predictor quiz!
• Follow me on Instagram
• Check out the new website! https://veronicacisneros.org/
• Outside The Norm Counseling – 951 395 3288 Call to schedule an appointment today!
• 5 Things that are Killing Your Marriage Free Guide available at www.veronicacisneros.org
• Website: https://www.JenniferKem.com
•   YouTube: www.JenniferKem.com/YouTube
•   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifer.kem/
•   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JenniferKemComm/
•   LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenniferkem
•   Twitter: https://twitter.com/_JenniferKem_
•   Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/jenniferkem/

Meet Veronica Cisneros

Hello, my name is Veronica Cisneros, I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Marriage Coach, Course Creator, Retreat Host, Mother of 3, married for 23 years, host of the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast, and owner of a group private practice called Outside The Norm Counseling.

A lot of couples struggle with setting aside intentional time to connect and communicate. They yearn for meaningful conversations that don’t lead to arguments.

1 month away from divorce, I realized I had to do something different. For years I had compromised myself to meet the needs of my husband and my child, I lost myself and was about to lose my marriage. After years of personal growth and self-reflection, I not only reclaimed my identity, and celebrated 23 years of marriage but also helped hundreds of couples transform their marriage from feeling like roommates to experiencing a deeper love.

I am on a mission to help couples reignite the fire by providing them with the skills to have the relationship they deserve.

Whether you listen to the podcast, join the free Facebook community, or do the Workshop,  you’re in the right place. Let’s do this together!

Thanks for listening!

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