What Two Feminist Relationship Coaches See in Heated Rivalry, with Maggie Reyes

It's Pride Month, and I am celebrating with my dear friend and fellow feminist relationship coach Maggie Reyes by doing something I've been wanting to do anyway: sit down and talk about Heated Rivalry — the show, the books, why we love them, and what they actually teach us about real relationships.

Beware: There be spoilers ahead, matey. 

This is a fun one, and it goes deeper than fangirling. Maggie and I both coach on many of the dynamics this show depicts — vulnerability, shame, the cost of hiding your real desires, and what happens when someone finally has the courage to go first. We talk about how we can all learn from this show through that lens.

In this episode:

• Why the closet dynamic in Heated Rivalry is a perfect illustration of how shame works, and how to heal it
• Turning toward vs. turning away: what Shane and Ilya get right (eventually) and what costs them years
• What Scott and Kip's relationship models that most couples never figure out
• Why vulnerability requires someone going first — and how to do it without it backfiring
• The cottage episode as a masterclass in why time and play matter as much as hard conversations
• What women's response to this show tells us about desire, representation, and who mainstream sexual culture has never been built for
• The communication pitfall that we both want to warn you off

Maggie Reyes is a master certified life coach, feminist marriage coach, and host of the Marriage Life Coach podcast. Find her at maggiereyes.com.

Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

More links:
Substack at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/

Pleasure Path Diagnostic here: https://laurajurgens.com/diagnostic/

About me, testimonials, blog, bookings: https://laurajurgens.com/

Wheel of Erotic emotions, go to: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited. 

Transcript

Laura Jurgens 0:00 Welcome to Pleasure Uprising. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens, intimacy coach, somatic practitioner, and your guide to getting out of your head and into your body, your desire, and your real capacity for connection. This show is for people who are done performing and ready to actually feel it. Let's go.

Hey everyone, happy Pride Month. It is June 2026 and I am celebrating with you by bringing you a really fun conversation with my dear friend and fellow feminist relationship coach, Maggie Reyes, where we are going to talk about Heated Rivalry and why we like it so much. Buckle up — first of all, this is not a spoiler-free zone. So if you haven't watched the show, or you really don't like spoilers, pause on this and come back to it later. You definitely want to listen, because it is a really lovely, fun conversation. If you don't mind spoilers, or you have watched the show, welcome. We're going to dive in.

I want to introduce you to Maggie first. She and I wanted to have this conversation anyway, and so we decided to record it for both of our podcasts. Maggie is a master certified life coach, she's a feminist marriage coach, and she specializes in working with high-achieving women who want to strengthen marriages that feel stuck but not broken. She hosts the wonderful Marriage Life Coach podcast, and you may have heard me on there before talking about polarity. She and I are aligned in so many ways, and so we're going to have this conversation about this wonderful, beautiful show — from a romance perspective, from a cultural perspective, from a queer perspective, at least from my bisexual self — and the communication patterns, and what we see in this show that's valuable to take into thinking about our own relationships. How do we learn from what is special about Heated Rivalry? That's what we're doing to celebrate Pride Month on this show, and I hope you enjoy it.

Welcome, Maggie. So much respect for your thoughtfulness and for the way you approach your work, and how much fun you are. I know we're gonna have a fun conversation.

Maggie Reyes 2:23 We would have this conversation anyway, even if nobody was listening — two relationship coaches talking about Heated Rivalry. I want to ask you, I was kind of evangelistic about it. I was like, have you seen Heated Rivalry? Tell me when you watch it, message me, tell me your thoughts. Kind of annoying, but charming.

Laura Jurgens 2:50 It wasn't annoying, it was lovely. I'm an enthusiast, you know. We are both very enthusiastic human beings, and we really enjoy that about each other, and we are also very enthusiastic about this show and the books, so you are going to hear enthusiasm. If you do not like enthusiasm, this is probably not the room for you.

I love a good recommendation. I love giving recommendations for things that I love, I love receiving recommendations for things that other people love. It's like, hey, here's a person that you love and respect saying here's something that just brings me joy. I was all in. I didn't have HBO at the time, so I was waiting until I got it to binge it — and my version of bingeing is like one episode a night, because I don't watch that much TV — and then of course I read all the books, because I really like books, and I really like smut books, so that just worked for me. I had the greatest time, and I'm always thankful for that recommendation. And everybody who has a clitoris and has watched this show knows that they need to prepare. I did not know I needed to prepare by having my vibrator fully charged, a backup fully charged, and making sure that there was lube — that everything was ready. Yeah, it's spicy, and it's really nice.

Maggie Reyes 4:42 It's such a sexy show. I mean, it's really sexy. It's a smutty, sexy show. I also love to read romance novels with lots of sex in them.

Laura Jurgens 4:53 Yeah, it's actually hard to find good sex in romance novels. But I have a low bar for romance novels because they're written — I can kind of reimagine things. The books have even more sex scenes than the show, which is fun. And The Long Game, which is the sequel to Heated Rivalry, we're not going to go in depth about today because we're going to start with the show, but there's a really hot scene that everyone who has read that book is hoping they put in the next season. I'm sure they will.

Maggie Reyes 5:41 This is the thing — I think I've never talked about this on the podcast — I am convinced that I am demisexual, which is like I have to know you to be into you and to get excited. I didn't know that was a thing that existed until I was an adult, and I was like, oh, I think that describes me. So I love that there's all this sex, but there's all this tenderness and layers and all of these things. It just speaks to that side of me that is so tender about all of that.

Laura Jurgens 6:16 Yeah, for sure. And even though they kind of pretend that they didn't have feelings for each other right away — we know the truth. You can see it initially. They do have a lot in common, even though the main characters also have so many differences. They really relate to each other on a particular level that is pretty obvious from the beginning, so there is an emotional connection, and then there's also all this tension.

It's interesting, because I texted you every time I was watching an episode, and I was like, okay, is Ilya gonna stop being a dick at some point? I was wanting to wring his neck. And I think this is one of the things I find fascinating about the show — the portrayal of patriarchy, and the impact of homophobia, and the like don't be a girl, don't be gay training, being so magnified in this ultra sporty dude-bro universe that is professional male sports. So different from professional female sports — not only are they paid way more, but there are a lot of gay women in professional women's sports, and not in men's sports.

Seeing that context and the baggage these guys have to navigate in order to just connect with somebody they feel really connected to — I thought that was a beautiful portrayal. And as a bisexual person who's navigated a lot of queer relationships in my life, I had my first girlfriend at 15 — the portrayal of the closet, and the pain, and the huge burden on your relationship and on your soul of having to hide a relationship. It not only juices up the chemistry, which it does, but it also really shows the real human impact on these just young guys as they try to navigate the repression of their feelings and not being able to talk about it. I thought that was something really beautiful from the beginning. I was really glad when we started getting a little more feelings later in the show.

Maggie Reyes 9:08 Same. I think it's heartbreaking that it's not fiction, right? I think it's heartbreaking that this is how hockey works today, that there are no current out players — it's devastating to realize. And then to see something that you and I coach on a lot, especially around sexual things but among so many other things — being ourselves, being human — is this internalized shame we have just for whatever we like, or whatever we don't like, that we think we should like, or think we shouldn't be into versus who we are, our real desires. All of that. We sort of point that judgment toward ourselves instead of looking at society or the cultural narratives and saying, no, that is wrong. That is what is wrong. It's not this, it's that. And it's just a fight that we have to keep on fighting.

Laura Jurgens 10:11 Yeah. And shame has this fear of consequences with it, right? Shame is a really interesting emotion, and it's something I deal with all the time in my practice. I've done quite a lot of work on it, I've taught workshops on deshaming, and I have a whole podcast episode on deshaming. But shame itself is a social wound — it's a social emotion. It doesn't exist without the fear of other people's censure, without the fear of being ostracized, and oftentimes we build that fear up a lot more than it actually is.

Even in this case, where there are real serious consequences for these guys — you can imagine that if they were to come out and be like, hey, we're together, there would be consequences in some way, shape, or form. People will say nasty stuff. They might lose an endorsement deal, they might lose privacy, they might lose respect from teammates or relationships that they already have. But a lot of times when we have a thing we're ashamed about — about who we are — we build that stuff up so much and get so scared of it that we forget we're creating a cage for ourselves, and that the only way to actually feel better — and this is not me saying anyone should push themselves out of the closet before they're ready, that's not what I'm saying at all — but that actually deshaming yourself involves allowing yourself to be seen.

This is why we have things like Pride celebrations, and why they're so incredibly important. To really own out loud who you are is such a powerful way of releasing shame. And then when somebody stays with you, when the people around you actually get a chance to see who you are and celebrate that — that is what actually completes the destruction of the shame. It's a social wound, so you have to heal it socially.

I think that scene of Shane coming out to his parents is a really beautiful example of that. Shane has this moment where he admits all the shame — like, I tried to be straight, I tried not to love who I love — as if it was something he should be ashamed about. And you hear that part of him that is ashamed come out, and his mother stays with him and says, no, this is not something you need to be ashamed about. And that's that process, right — having somebody stay with you when you admit the deepest, darkest shameful thing you're afraid of. I thought that was a really beautiful scene.

Maggie Reyes 13:30 I just feel so deeply moved by this whole story, and all the healing that we witness in it, and the ways it touches us in different ways. Thinking about listening to you talk about shame, and thinking about this as a former HR person — they could also lose their profession. The thing they've worked their whole life to be an expert in. Some person could just decide, because of who you love, you can't do this thing anymore — the thing you're one of the world's foremost experts in. And then your profession and your identity, especially in the United States, are still collapsed into each other, where it's like, what is your job, what are your accomplishments? They're still collapsed into who you are. So then you're like, well, if I don't have my job, who am I? So it's this constant fear of I could lose everything that makes me who I am, if I honor who I really am.

Laura Jurgens 14:32 For sure. And they're protected in a lot of ways that people in real life aren't, because in this fantasy world that was created, they're the top two players in the league. They're protected from consequences that most people aren't, because they've literally gotten to the point where it would impact the team worse to lose them than to have them be together. And so I think that's really important for people who are watching too — the risk of okay, what about my public identity, and am I allowed to be myself? I think we all relate to that in some way, shape, or form, because we've all been shaped by the boxes that society wants to put us in and who we're allowed to be.

Maggie Reyes 15:32 So one of the things I was thinking about preparing for this episode is I like to look at relationship lessons or takeaways — what can I apply to my marriage or my life from this? So for each episode I picked a theme, and thinking about everything we've just talked about — this deep fear, this deep shame, this huge emotional boulder they're carrying — and then the courage that Shane had to introduce himself to this guy he just thought was an amazing player, to go seek him out and find him and say, hey, it's amazing to watch you. To follow that intuitive impulse to say, I just want you to know I see you and you're amazing. I took from that the courage to listen to our inner voice, even with all of that. What are your thoughts?

Laura Jurgens 16:35 It's also a really good cultural context moment. I love this. I haven't met every single Canadian in the world, I'll admit that, but I do have a deep abiding love for Canadians.

Maggie Reyes 16:55 I used to work for a cruise line, and I would hire people from all over the world, and I had to talk to a lot of Canadians, and I would start my interviews with, I am predisposed in your favor because you're Canadian — I just need to let you know, my bias is I already love you.

Laura Jurgens 17:12 I've had a lot of friends who are Canadian, including while we were living in other countries, and there was this cultural moment of — Shane is a really good example of a guy who had loving parents, and this is one of the themes for me of this show: not only cultural differences, but the differences in the trauma history you carry. One guy who's very like, I'm open, I'm going to go say hey to this person, I'm going to go talk to a stranger, I'm going to just be a nice welcoming person — and he's coming from a stable family where he has a good relationship with both of his parents, a foundation to go explore the world in a more innocent way than Ilya does, who has a really traumatic attachment history in his family, and then also being from a country where English is his second language, in an entirely different alphabet, all of a sudden playing in another country. He's still living in Russia at this time.

I think that juxtaposition for me was really poignant in the first episode — more than just the you gotta go put yourself out there piece. It's also about who can put themselves out there, and how. If we are resourced enough to put ourselves out there, to really notice that that's actually a privilege — but also something we can celebrate in ourselves — and be understanding that not everybody's going to do that. So if you feel like you can, sometimes it's the right idea to do it.

Maggie Reyes 19:51 Yes, I love that so much. And thinking about them as like 18 or 19 year olds —

Laura Jurgens 20:01 They're babies. They're babies. And when I was 18 or 19, I felt old — I'd been living on my own since I was 15 — but looking back now from what is currently my favorite age, 48, I can see that. And then also, if we think about boys and how boys are socialized, with really low expectations for emotional intelligence, really not encouraged to develop a lot of that — Shane had a little bit more in his family of origin, and we could see that, and it helped their relationship throughout the entire arc. Shane's willingness to come forward with emotion was a key factor in the success of their relationship over time. Without that I don't think it would have worked.

Maggie Reyes 21:18 My second note for episode two was turning towards each other, because it's such a thing in relationships — you have to turn towards each other or it just falls apart, you just drift away. It's like constantly Shane, and then at other times Ilya also, turning towards each other even when the other one was turning away, and eventually they kept turning towards each other enough to stay together. But they had so much turning away and turning towards, turning away and turning towards. Tell me your thoughts about that.

Laura Jurgens 21:50 You see it all the time when people are playing a lot of games and trying to pretend they don't care as much as they do — it's a real breaking point. It does not build trust, does not build safety, and it doesn't speak of confidence. I think what I've learned over time — I used to think when I was their age that not showing any vulnerability was really important because it was protective in some way.

Maggie Reyes 22:45 It's rewarded in our society.

Laura Jurgens 22:46 It's so rewarded in our society, especially for men, but really for everyone. Really encouraged at the beginning of relationships to not show any vulnerability — which is the exact opposite of what is actually needed. Because if you don't actually show vulnerability, you're letting someone start a relationship with a plastic person you've put out in front of you. It's not you. And you never get to feel loved if you are loved for being someone you're not.

So vulnerability requires courage. And there's also the courage to stay with someone when they're having a hard time being vulnerable, to be patient when they're turning away and see if there's some way for them to come back. I think the vulnerability to stay with someone when they need a moment to come back to you is really challenging and really rare. In this case they had so many years in between, with probably so much yearning that we don't see — even in the books there's a lot of skipping over that part, and you just get the sense that it was just hard. But all that absence, and then the continued need to turn back to each other, kind of created a level of patience in the connection that was really important and really moving to watch.

Maggie Reyes 24:40 Yeah, I love that. What else?

Laura Jurgens 24:44 What else for you? Like, for the first two episodes, were you already obsessed?

Maggie Reyes 24:48 Okay, great question. The first two episodes — because I read a lot of romance — I liked it, and I thought, I've read so much of this, it's not really groundbreaking as a romance in the genre of romance. I was like, okay, I like it, I'm gonna watch the whole thing, but I wasn't like, oh my god, this is the best love story ever told. That didn't happen until the end, and now it's my whole personality. But in the first two episodes I was just like, okay.

And also, I am not a gay man, obviously, so I didn't have the cultural references or the nuanced understanding of how amazing it was, even in those two episodes, to just see these people come together — how powerful that was as a cultural experience. I was kind of blind to that, and only afterwards, reading other articles and people's reactions, I was like, oh no, this was a very, very big deal.

Laura Jurgens 25:52 Representation in a mainstream show like that was really big. There have been a few more in recent years — there was a movie that came out last year on Prime that was pretty high-profile and was a gay romance — and the trend has been more, but they're often tragic, and they're definitely not sports-oriented very often. But I think you're totally right. The first couple of episodes were more like hot hookup softcore — really pretty to watch but not as emotionally compelling — and then if you stay with it, the sweetness starts coming through, the emotion starts coming through. At first I was just kind of turned on, but also frustrated for them, you know, kind of on the edge of your seat.

Maggie Reyes 27:01 So I watched it, I loved it, then I watched it again, I read Heated Rivalry fan fiction, all these things, and then I asked my husband to watch it with me. When it was airing live, the last episode — we were on a Christmas cruise — my mission became, is the Wi-Fi working, can we watch it, I need to watch it when it comes out. The Wi-Fi worked. It was awesome, and my sweet husband was like, I'll watch the last episode with you since you love it so much. So I got to watch the last episode cozy in our little cabin on our tablet, and he would ask me questions about the significance of certain things, which was really nice. But then I really wanted him to watch the whole thing with me, so we had a staycation and watched it together.

The reason I want to share this is for two things. One is that he was so frustrated with those first two episodes. My husband is a person with a lot of emotional maturity, who tells you what he thinks, who makes clear decisions — he was just mad, just frustrated at their incapacity to have a direct conversation about how they were feeling.

Laura Jurgens 28:38 Definitely not a straight conversation, but a direct conversation. Absolutely. But they're 19-year-old boys in hockey, so that's realistic. Though I was totally with your husband on this — I wanted to shake them.

Maggie Reyes 28:54 And the other thing I thought was so interesting — one of the actors, so Connor, who plays Ilya, has said that one of the things he thinks his character loves about Shane is that he has no artifice. He's just so earnest. Like, this is what I think, or this is how I feel — there's no filter when he's allowing himself to be that way. And I was thinking about that, and thinking about when I was dating my own husband. One of the things — we met, and six months later he proposed, and 20 years later we're still together — is that from the moment we met, we were completely direct with each other. No game playing, no smoke screens. We knew who the other person was, and how powerful that is, as you said, to create intimacy and trust and safety. When you do that, it's very scary, so you have to have courage. And at the same time, it's very powerful and a very strong glue that can hold you together.

Laura Jurgens 30:12 And it makes things move a lot faster than if you were Shane and Ilya in this story, where it's drawn out for so long, in part because they're not honest with each other or themselves a lot of the time.

Maggie Reyes 30:26 Yes, and that creates a lot of that drama, right? The slow drip towards courage and honesty. That's kind of the whole arc, I think, in a lot of ways — the whole theme of the show and the books.

And that brings us to Scott and Kip. My favorite Scott moment is when he's sitting at the kitchen counter and he says, can I be too much with you? Can I just be really intense right now?

Laura Jurgens 30:58 And it's the opposite of what the boys are doing, because the boys are like, I really want to stay the whole night, but I'm not gonna say it, and I want you to stay the whole night, but I'm not gonna tell you.

Maggie Reyes 31:21 Whereas Scott is like, this is what I want. Do you want that too?

Laura Jurgens 31:26 Yep. And their relationship progressed so much faster, even though they also had struggles because he was in the closet.

Maggie Reyes 31:34 They had the societal pressures, obviously. But then they were real with each other.

Laura Jurgens 31:42 Yeah, from pretty much the get-go. I mean, after like a couple of smoothies, they were pretty honest with each other.

Maggie Reyes 31:55 Some sexy smoothies. Some smoothies, a little cuddle. What was your favorite part of the Scott and Kip story?

Laura Jurgens 31:58 It wasn't shown as much in the show, but in the book — so one of the things going on with Ilya and Shane is that they have a pretty strict top/bottom dynamic, which is not uncommon but also not like super standard. I was really happy that there was some portrayal of more fluidity of sexual roles for Kip and Scott, because they both bottom, they both top, they have a loving relationship that does not rely on a particular role. And I loved that, because as a sex coach, I like to see representation of diversity of sexuality when we're portraying gay men rather than putting everybody in stereotypical boxes. So that was useful from a cultural standpoint.

But favorite emotionally — it was the honesty of their relationship, and also just the openness of their interest and emotionality, both with each other and with Kip's friends, with his dad. Very warm, a lot of male affection. I love seeing men be affectionate and caring with each other and with the other people in their lives. A lot of my gay and bisexual male friends are really openly affectionate with each other, and it always makes me so happy, because I think so many men don't feel like they can do that. This was a lovely glimpse into some of it.

Maggie Reyes 34:37 You probably know more about this than I do, but there was a study years ago that men are severely under-touched — they don't hug, they don't hold hands. If we're in a group of women, sometimes I'll watch TV with a friend and I'll hold her hand, we're like on top of each other.

Laura Jurgens 34:55 Yeah, men are severely under-touched by their friends, just in a warm, non-sexual way. I love that this show depicts that. And in the book Game Changers, which is the Scott and Kip book — one thing I really loved is the ride-or-die of the character named Carter Vaughn, who is Scott's best friend. This person is your person, no matter what you tell him, no matter what's going on, he's just like, I'm here for you. Not as explored in the show because there's only one episode for that storyline, but definitely one of my favorite things to see.

Maggie Reyes 35:44 When Scott came out he had so much support from his best friend, and then from a whole circle of them, and there was so much acknowledgement of bravery. That was just really lovely to see. There are so many times when people don't feel like they have enough support around them. And I think it's also important to show how incredibly scary it is to come out in that kind of space, under that kind of spotlight, even when you do have resources around you.

Laura Jurgens 36:41 It makes it a little less hard, but it doesn't make it easy. There's nothing that's going to make that easy.

Maggie Reyes 36:49 So one of the things I like that we're talking about is the show, the storyline, how it impacted us, what we love about it — and then the show as a phenomenon, the effect it has had in the world. One of the things that comes to mind is there's this old narrative, especially as a relationship coach I see it a lot, which is like women don't like sex. This is not true — there are all these cultural myths around that, men want it more than women, whatever. Actually talk to people for real and that's not the case at all. And one of the things I love about this show is you can now write the headline: women love sex.

Laura Jurgens 37:37 You mean because of the response of women to this show as a phenomenon?

Maggie Reyes 37:43 The response to the show. It's acknowledging that that's important, that it's interesting, that it's fun. One of the things I've seen a lot is people saying, seeing that you could have this type of connection with somebody, I don't know if I've had that, or I think I want that — what would that look like for me? And obviously everybody has a different relationship to their sexuality, and some people like it more and some people like it less. It's just this cultural narrative that makes it a monolith, that this is not something women enjoy. I love Emily Nagoski — one of my favorite authors and teachers — who says women like good sex, and don't like sex that isn't good for them.

Laura Jurgens 38:24 And the thing is, our sexual narrative in modern society is for and around men's sexuality. So women don't like sex that's only for men. Women like sex that's for women. We don't like sex along the porn narrative, because that's entertainment for men — that's not how real women's bodies work.

In my work I see this all the time. I get a lot of high-libido partners who are women who want more sex and have male partners who want less sex — this is not uncommon. And even women who come to me thinking they have low libido, thinking they don't want sex — 90% of the time, if you scratch the surface, they just want really different sex than what they're getting. They have been disappointed for so long by the type of sex they've been getting, and it's not just because of their partners — it's also because of our internalized expectations for ourselves. A lot of women are putting up with stuff they don't really like in order to protect their partner's feelings. We're not asking for the toys we need, we're not asking for the type of foreplay we actually need, we're not getting curious about what actually lights us up. We're trying to perform sex according to some kind of checklist.

Of course you don't like it. That's like, if you could only ever eat pizza on somebody else's schedule, at the time they wanted, the type they wanted, as fast as they wanted you to eat it — you wouldn't want pizza either. It's not about the thing, it's about the fact that it's not for you.

And one of the lovely things about this show is women are like, hey, this has given me some nice fodder for my self-pleasure time. Having the inspiration, and then time and permission to take care of yourself in the way you want to. It's not a manual — I don't think the way these boys are having sex is a manual for how you want to have sex as a woman — but it can be some hot inspiration.

Maggie Reyes 41:18 I love that. Okay, episode four. Episode four is when Shane freaks out.

Laura Jurgens 41:29 Yes. That episode is titled Rose, right?

Maggie Reyes 41:32 It's titled Rose. And one of my thoughts about it, thinking about how as a coach I deal with emotions all the time — this is what happens when you let fear run the show. When you let fear run the show, you break up, you feel awful, all these things that happen when fear is in the driver's seat.

Laura Jurgens 42:02 Or sometimes you actually stay together with somebody when fear is running the show who you shouldn't stay together with. But in this episode, absolutely — he's just reacting, trying to fix his emotion.

Maggie Reyes 42:16 Yeah. And then what happens? He gets clear. He has this conversation with Rose. He understands something about himself that he didn't fully understand until that conversation, which is why we need friends, why we need coaches and therapists and people in our lives who are a little bit outside the situation and can help us see things more clearly. Rose does such a beautiful job of saying, hey, I see you — do you see you? And then when you have that awareness, which we talk about on the podcast all the time — the awareness for the purpose of authority, I see myself, and now what do I want to do — he sees himself fully, and then he's like, now I know what I want, now I'm gonna fight for what I want. I love seeing that whole arc in one episode. What do you think?

Laura Jurgens 43:11 I totally agree, and it enabled him — that awareness, and then the acceptance again, the deshaming that Rose did with him, staying with him, encouraging him, even playing with the situation. They joke together, he's kind of like, yeah, this is more my style than that style, right? And he has an ally now. It's okay to need allies. It's okay to need someone to help you sometimes see yourself — we can't always do that in a vacuum.

And once he does, you said he's unstoppable — that is when he came really vulnerably to Ilya. That vulnerability was enabled by the courage of having seen himself and claimed, this is real for me, out loud with somebody else. This is my desire. This is what I want. This is who I am. And then had somebody stay with him.

That's a lot of what I do in my practice with clients around sexual shame. Just staying with you, whether it's that you're admitting you've never had an orgasm, or that you've never enjoyed sex, or that you have a particular kink, or that you just don't know what you like — all of those things people have shame about. When somebody stays with you, it's magic. And so it gave him all that courage, and then he could show up to Ilya and be like, hey, I have feelings. There are feelings here. I like you. We gotta talk about these feelings.

And then his vulnerability enabled Ilya's vulnerability, which is what happens when someone is courageous enough to be vulnerable first — you find out whether the other person can rise to the occasion or not. If they can't, that's not your person. But if they can, then your vulnerability will help them be more vulnerable too.

Maggie Reyes 45:37 This is 100% what my coaching is all about all the time. Someone has to go first. I talk about the power of one all the time — which is not that you do all the work, it's that you go first, and then you see how your partner responds, and either they rise to the occasion or they don't. But then you have clarity about what's possible with this person.

Laura Jurgens 45:57 And sometimes the first round, when you come to your partner, is not actually as vulnerable as it could be to have the biggest impact. A lot of times the first round you're still hiding behind a little accusation, or a little blame, or some anger energy, or a little resentment — so it's like, I want you to do this thing, and the person is confused, and they get defensive. You can't BS your way through. You have to be really truly vulnerable.

This was a really good scene — when Ilya, Shane shows up at Ilya's hotel room at the All-Star game and is like, we need to talk, and he's got his little shoulders all hunched over, but he's still doing it. That's bravery. And then he stays with Ilya when he's freaking out — I couldn't go home, my family's all back in Russia, we are part of a persecuted group, I don't know what would happen to me. He's freaking out about the fear that they can't actually be together, and that even talking about it would bring up everything he's been trying to suppress. I thought that scene was really beautiful, when they actually finally let themselves have some feelings.

Maggie Reyes 47:25 I love that scene. And then you see them both now on the same wavelength — they're tender and vulnerable together, they're in this together as one, versus trying to blindly guess what's going on with each other.

Laura Jurgens 47:41 If you are in that phase of dating where you have to blindly guess what's going on with the other person, most of the time we're just wrong anyway.

Maggie Reyes 48:04 The episode right before this one — we'll link to it in the show notes — it's about consent, and the theme of that episode is stop guessing and start asking. Everybody's coaching homework is stop guessing, so whatever you're guessing about in your relationship right now, stop guessing and start asking. Whatever you can ask, doesn't have to be the biggest thing — start asking the smallest thing that feels okay to ask. Which is actually the best transition for my favorite takeaway from episode five. Episode five is the famous I'm coming to the cottage episode.

One of my forever favorite quotes is from Oprah — to the surprise of no one — which is, you get in life what you have the courage to ask for. I try my best to live my life by that. And when Shane says, will you come to my cottage this summer, he's saying, this is what I want. I'm vulnerable, because you could say no and I could be sad and disappointed, but you could also say yes, and the upside is very, very high. So I'm going to be scared and do it anyway.

Laura Jurgens 49:37 Yeah. It helped that he was maybe a little hopped up on painkillers, but I loved that he did it, and he was planning on doing it anyway.

My favorite part of that episode, though, was the Russian monologue from Ilya in the tunnel, where he's admitting his feelings to himself. And here's why: I think there's no way forward with anything unless you actually admit your own feelings to yourself and what your desires are. There's something special about actually using your voice and your body when you've been suppressing what you have to say — you have a particular bracing pattern in your body that's holding down some of your own life force energy. And there are moments when just saying something out loud releases that. I've had friends tell me something out loud and just go, oh my god, I can't believe how much better I feel just saying that. That happens in my practice all the time.

You see it happen with Ilya — he just admits his feelings out loud in Russian. Shane can't understand him, and it changes everything from that moment forward. He actually says that he loved him out loud. We haven't even heard that from Shane yet — you can tell he feels that way, but he hasn't said it out loud to himself. And that's a moment where Ilya is going first.

Maggie Reyes 51:45 Turning towards, right there.

Laura Jurgens 51:47 Turning towards. And they both go first back and forth on things, and I think some of the big moments are actually Ilya going first. I love it so much. Okay, episode six — the cottage episode. Everybody is obsessed with the cottage episode, and there's a reason it has T-shirts. I got a watercolor of the cottage in my office right now, and I love loons already, so I was so tickled that they're in the episode and the book. They're really cool birds, and they do sound amazing. I cracked up when Ilya freaked out about the loon.

That episode was just sweet. Really, really lovely. The takeaway for me is really this culmination of people allowing themselves to want what they want even when they're scared, and allowing themselves to be vulnerable together. The time together without the pressures, creating that space, creating a bubble where you can be honest with yourself and with each other, and really take the time to connect as humans. Shane even asks at the beginning of that episode, can we just be honest with each other? And you could see it going all kinds of ways if they weren't able to do that.

We also see what happens when you're not honest — sometimes things happen and you get outed in ways you didn't expect and didn't want, and sometimes you're surprised at how much love and support there is for you that you didn't expect. All of that was really moving and beautiful.

Maggie Reyes 54:01 Yeah, I loved that episode. And something that really popped out for me is a pattern I see in couples who are struggling, over and over again. I'll ask, how much time do you spend together without family or kids or other obligations? How much together time do you have? Whenever somebody's really, really struggling, they have very, very little time together. There's often a pattern of being afraid of what will happen if we spend time together — afraid of fighting or disconnection or more disappointment — but then there's no space to repair either, because there's no time together to find a way forward. So much of this episode is that they had to have some time alone together to find a way forward, to have the mental and emotional space to say, what could we do? What is possible for us?

So important to have space for the conversations that matter, and space to just have fun. The play.

Laura Jurgens 55:19 They're playing in the water, playing video games, playing soccer, working out — just playing together. And having that time means you don't have to be having deep, difficult conversations constantly. Please don't do that. Sometimes people go through their relationships as if every time they're together they have to be dissecting everything that's wrong. That doesn't feel good to anybody either.

I love this point of yours about creating the space — it's not just creating the time, it's creating the right kind of time. They've not just created time together, they've also gotten rid of all the external pressures that previously defined their relationship. For other people that could be work and kids, or taking care of an elderly parent, or the to-do list, and a lot of times people will hide behind those things and act like they have no control over them. I don't buy it most of the time — there is some way to create some time where you could remove some of that external pressure and give yourself a chance to play and to connect. And then the conversations will have their time. I always recommend people do the maintenance of a weekly relationship check-in anyway. But a little retreat like this can be really powerful too.

Maggie Reyes 57:11 I love a daily check-in. And when you make it easy and fun and not heavy all the time, yes. Another pattern I see is, I'm upset with you about something, so I'm going to withhold play, I'm going to withhold joy, I'm not going to do anything fun with you because I'm mad about this other thing. Versus, when we have rapport, when we do play, that's how we heal — we create more rapport, and then we talk about the thing when it needs to be addressed.

Laura Jurgens 57:46 But you have to have enough trust to do that. And you have to check yourself — you're not just pulling a passive-aggressive card, which a lot of people are doing. It doesn't work, by the way. 

Maggie Reyes 57:57 Yeah, it doesn't work.

Laura Jurgens 57:58 Trying to get somebody to find remorse by withdrawing and giving the cold shoulder — just FYI, doesn't work. Two relationship coaches here shaking our heads at you.

Maggie Reyes 58:13 That's a no. There's extensive research from the Gottman Institute that the cold shoulder is a relationship killer. And if someone's giving you the cold shoulder and is not willing to meet you anywhere — not halfway, a quarter of the way, any part of the way — that is a red flag.

Laura Jurgens 58:35 It's a big red flag. But also, we don't just let it be — we call it out, without making it an attack. Like, you're giving me the cold shoulder, could we talk instead? Could we set aside some time to figure out what's going on here? There are a lot of relationship repair skills that are really important here. We're not going to get into all of them in a Heated Rivalry conversation, but you're totally right — time and space and playfulness to connect, and then allow yourself to have the conversations that need to be had.

Maggie Reyes 59:21 Okay. Final thoughts.

Laura Jurgens 59:23 I'm just really tickled that this super gay, lovely hockey show has gotten so popular. I've seen a lot of people fall in love with these characters, and I think some of it is how much everyone can relate to the challenges these guys have with being honest about their emotions. It's heightened and exacerbated because we've got 19-year-old boys in hockey — if you put every socialized block for being an emotional human being together, here you go: you're male, you're in hockey, you're young. And so everybody gets to relate to how hard it is to be honest. But what we see is that at the end of the day, it's this vulnerability that allows for this really beautiful connection, and that is hopeful for everybody. That's why I think it's so powerful, and why I think everybody should watch it or read the book or whatever floats your boat.

Maggie Reyes 1:00:38 I love it so much. One of the things for me, thinking about the show as a show — Jacob Tierney, the person who wrote and produced and directed the show, trusted his vision. He wanted to make a show about this book that he loved, and he wanted to make it the way he wanted to make it. I watched the show first and then read the book, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what we saw on the screen.

Laura Jurgens 1:01:03 Tell me more about what that means to you.

Maggie Reyes 1:01:06 So often we have an intuition, an intuitive hit — I should do this, I should zig where everybody's zagging, whatever it may be in your relationship, in your career — and we second-guess ourselves and talk ourselves out of it. In the case of making this show, Jacob Tierney was like, this is the book, this is what I want to make, this is how I want to make it. If you're not on board with this vision, I'm going to find someone who is. And staying true to that intuitive guidance in a culture that encourages us all to second-guess ourselves, for a variety of reasons, is something I find equally as brave as the bravery we see in the story itself. This is so incredibly specific, and that specificity makes it so universal. It's why the episodes work the way they work. They have this emotional anchor from both Rachel and Jacob that you feel as you experience it, whether it's the book or the show.

Laura Jurgens 1:02:13 Maggie, I want to thank you so much for this super fun conversation. We do have to stop recording, but we are going to talk about this so many more times, everybody, because we really enjoy it.

Thank you for being here and listening to us. Let us know what your thoughts are. You can find Maggie at maggiereyes.com or on her podcast, the Marriage Life Coach podcast. You can always find me here, at my Substack, or through my newsletter. We would love to hear from you. Happy Pride Month, everyone. Go watch Heated Rivalry.

Hey, before you go, if you enjoyed this show, I want to invite you to check out one of my favorite things I've ever created. It's a free guide called Get Out of Your Head, a starter guide to releasing the pressure, shame, and shoulds around intimacy. It has four reflection exercises that go deeper than anything you'll find in a typical freebie, and most people feel a shift just after part one. Go grab it at laurajurgens.com/guide — the link is in the show notes. And if you're ready to find out what your specific path looks like, I'd love to talk to you. Booking info is also in the show notes, and I will see you here next week.