Saying what you feel and asking for what you want with your partners can often be very difficult. But why is that? And even when you gather the courage and patience to do so, they still don't understand. Kimberly shares that this is common, "What seems to be one of the most difficult conversations for a man and or woman to have in their relationship or in dating is saying how we feel and communicating when we have a need."
Activity to get better at communicating with your partner
This is an exercise to help you fill in what you are feeling and what you really need.
-> Get a pen and paper and write the below down
___<Their_Name>___,
I feel _________.
Because _________.
I would like it if you would __________.
I hope you understand that __________.
To learn more about how this works, listen to the full episode.
Takeaways
1️⃣ Make sure before having a conversation with your partner, they are in the present and free of distractions
2️⃣ When addressing an issue, focus on the behavior. Rather than blaming or pointing at your partner, find the behavior that is causing this conversation to happen.
3️⃣ Ask for what you want, rather than what you don't want. After sharing your feelings on how you feel, go that extra step further to suggest a solution.
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If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
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Connect with Kimberly Hill
Website: http://www.kimberlyninahill.com
Instagram: @kimberlyninahill
Podcast: The Self Confidence Project
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Kimberly is a Certified Dating & Relationship Coach and a Master Neurolinguistic Practitioner who supports men to attract and keep healthy, loving relationships. She is the host of the honest and relatable podcast, The Self-Confidence Project where she talks candidly about the stuff we all face in life and love. She has thousands of hours of direct intimate work with men on confidence, dating, and relationships and brings a mastery of coaching, emotional maturity practices, and leadership to her clients. Her clients go on to find fulfilling and deeply rewarding relationships.
Saying what you feel and asking for what you want with your partners can often feel can be very difficult. But why is that? And even when you gather the courage and patience to do so, they still don’t understand. Kimberly shares that this is common, “What seems to be one of the most difficult conversations for a man and or woman to have in their relationship or in dating is saying how we feel and communicating when we have a need.”
Activity to get better at communicating with your partner
This is an exercise to help you fill in what you are feeling and what you really need.
-> Get a pen and paper and write the below down
___<Their_Name>___, I feel _________. Because _________. I would like it if you would __________. I hope you understand that __________.
To learn more about how this works, listen to the full episode.
Takeaways
1️⃣ Make sure before having a conversation with your partner, they are in the present and free of distractions
2️⃣ When addressing an issue, focus on the behavior. Rather than blaming or pointing at your partner, find the behavior that is causing this conversation to happen.
3️⃣ Ask for what you want, rather than what you don’t want. After sharing your feelings on how you feel, go that extra step further to suggest a solution.
Julie shares with us how she sends out energy to her Angels through a wish or a prayer or whatever term people might prefer to use in their own comfort. The idea being that you're not using directive action to ask for something. You're more of sending out this energy and this request to the things that you don’t have a lot of control over.
Some other things we talk about in the episode
1️⃣ Importance of Self Discovery
2️⃣ Looking at Polarity
3️⃣Conflict Decision Making Tree
Sometimes we don't have the healthiest ways to deal with conflicts. This framework can really benefit making conflicts easier. Here’s how it works.
1️⃣ Take a deep breath and ask yourself, can you think of one nice thing about your partner?
2️⃣ Can you say what really made you upset?
3️⃣ Can you honestly say what you need at this moment?
4️⃣ Can you honestly say what you need at this moment.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Julie Hilsen
Website: https://www.youneedapeptalk.com
Instagram: jhilsen
Facebook: jhilsen
Book: Life of Love
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Julie Hilsen is a spiritual activator who has written the book, Life of Love a Joyful Guide to Self and Sensuality. She is delighted to share how the everyday person in everyday life can reach a higher state of happiness through self-discovery and the simple task of asking. Her approachable book details how to call in your angels and guides as a supplement and to accelerate your ability to live a life of love.
Importance of Self Discovery
If you don’t understand why you need what you need or what is it that you’re asking for, it’s very hard for you to communicate that information. A lot of the times we come into a relationship just hoping that a person’s gonna be able to pick up the pattern or really help us do that hard work. Philosophically and logically, we do get that it’s something that we have to own. Consistently we come to a relationship because we’re so intimately tied, expecting our partner to be able to help pick up the slack and be like, “oh, you should know this by now.” “I always get angry when you do X, Y, and Z.” Well, okay, have you spent any time really understanding why X, y, and Z makes you upset? That’s still your responsibility.
Julie shares how she understand the needs of herself and her husband to build a healthier relationship.
Once I owned that, that my husband, even though he loves me to the moon and back, can’t read my mind once I was able to realize he wasn’t a superhero. He’s a mere human. He’s Im mortal just like me. That, me giving him, Cold shoulder isn’t gonna teach him to love me more.
You have to show up how you want to be loved and, and you know, show by example. And you have to lovingly ask from a place of resource, because when you ask from a place of scarcity or you’re feeling lack, then your partner picks up on that. That angst and that that feeling of frustration. And it’s just a hard platform to start from.
Once you find your inner light and you own that, you do have an inner light, that you’re responsible for your inner light. And once you come to relationship on, on that basis, then you can go and and request from a place of resource and a place of giving because you can’t expect them to give you something that you aren’t able to recognize. Or ld appreciate
Looking at Polarity
One of the ways to get started, understanding ourselves better is to pay attention to the way we self-talk. A bit more kindness to ourselves because sometimes that’s an ingredient that’s incredibly lacking. Julie shares her thoughts about how people should look at polarity in their lives.
We cannot continue to exist in a world of absolutes. because that’s not, that’s not who we are. We’re everything. We’re good and we’re bad. We’re messy, and we’re clean. And, and as soon as we accept that in ourselves and embrace that whole gamut of, of who we are as a person and accept and love even the messy parts of ourselves, the sooner we can show compassion for ourselves.
It opens up a, it opens up a dialogue, it opens up a healing when you can say from your heart, Hey, this is where I am and I’m just gonna accept it. I’m not gonna label it. I’m not weak, I’m not strong, I’m not fat. I’m not skinny.
it’s not to beat yourself up, it’s just to accept, hey, this is human nature. Like our brains try to make everything simple, that our brains are constantly trying to protect us and make sure we can get to. Fastest answer and the easiest possibility, but that’s not always the best for our joy. Our best for our joy is to connect to what’s really happening and accept it. Just be there with it.
Calling on the Angels
Julie shares on how she calls on the Angles every day.
I say, please show me the highest expression of this day. And then something recently I’ve added. Thank you for the obstacles that have been presented. I release them. They no longer serve me. I learned from them. I had my lesson. Now I, I release that back because you’re right. It’s opportunities. It’s opportunities to grow, to grow and ascend. So just because something’s not perfect doesn’t mean it can’t be a perfect moment.
Conflict Decision Making Tree
Below is a chart that Julie shared with us regarding the Conflict Resolution Decision Tree. To learn more about how this works, check out her book – Life of Love or listen to the episode.
In this conversation with Branch Isole, he shares some amazing exercises to build better communication in your relationships. We discuss the different levels of pain and the seven Rs that people in relationships can use as an opportunity to address issues and work towards finding a solution to reconcile and repair the situation. And repair the relationships.
He shares the seven steps that a couple or people in relationships can use as an opportunity to address the issue and work towards finding a solution so that you can reconcile and repair the situation, repair the relationship. All it costs you is an investment of your time and your emotions.
1️⃣ Recognize that you have harmed the other
2️⃣ Take Responsibility for your actions
3️⃣ Have Regret
4️⃣ Have Remorse
5️⃣ Redress
6️⃣ Repetition
7️⃣ Repent
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Branch Isole
Website: http://www.branchisole.com
Facebook: podcastguestbranchisole
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Author, poet and storyteller Branch Isole writes and speaks about choice and consequence, accepting or avoiding personal responsibility, and the power of truth. Known worldwide, his contemporary short stories reveal issues and emotions often experienced, but not always voiced.With careers in teaching, corporate sales/marketing, and founder/partner of five small businesses, Branch is author of twenty-two books.
What does Branch do to build a healthier relationship?
Open communication
Vulnerability
Branch says if you can start and have those two things grow, then the conversation can be more open and honest and you can handle trouble situations where the rough spots are a little bit easier and when we hold it back, it comes out sooner or later.
An exercises to work on improving the communication with your partner?
Branch shares a beautiful practice for open communication – Make contact – Knees and hands; eyes locked
Start your conversation after you both sit in a chair facing your partner and sit knee to knee. Hold each other’s hands. You’re as close as you can get without in their space, i.e. without hugging. Look them in the eye. This contact gives you that intimacy, that when you’re far apart, is much easier to keep. When you have that physical distance, it’s much easier to keep that verbal distance as well. So you wanna make contact, knees and hands, eyes locked, and then you are at a place of intimacy that you can start to discuss, whatever the situation is.
Our takeaway: By creating this physical connection you’re creating an anchor for something that can be quite challenging to share somethings, like expressing our ideas, using our words. Sometimes, we arrive at the feeling state what our feelings are trying to communicate but then that journey that we take to express it using our words can be quite difficult and leave a lot of room for misinterpretation, which creates additional barriers for the conversations. In this practice you’re involving almost all your senses, by touching each other hands looking at each other, looking at each others eyes, and the proximity also activates your sense of smell which can lead to better listening overall. So it does open that space for vulnerability.
Who starts the conversation?
Branch shares more about what he and his wife do in their relationship.
“We’ve been together long enough now that we pretty well know each other and the things and the behaviors that we can expect. We both realize that we have strengths and we have weakness. So what we do is we try to get that 50 50, knowing that it can’t always be there, but we also know that in any given situation that we’re facing, one of us is strong than the other one. One of us has better skill sets to handle leading into the situation and finding resolution.”
He adds that by doing this practice they get closer to that 50 50 balance where what she’s saying has value for both of them because it’s something that both of them are trying to correct or change. This allows them to identify the problem quickly, put out some options for solution quickly and then they follow it up with their 24 hour rule.
24 hour rule
Branch and his wife set aside for at least 24 hours after they are finished talking about the situation in hand, after which they come back and re-engage. Branch shares on how this helps them, “we’re both in a better place mentally. We’ve had time to do other things that we need to do in our life. But when we come back, then we might have thought about it a little bit differently than what we would’ve said in the conversation. So we pick it back up 24 hours later and allows us to find a solution very, very quickly.”
How do you resolve conflict?
So what happens when there’s conflict, when you disagree on things on who has that strength, you both have different opinions on a matter. On how they resolve that and move past from that situation, Branch says, they ask a simple question, “is this a deal breaker?” He adds that unless you’ve done something so egregious to harm your partner the chances are that it’s not going to end the relationship, but we want to get away from that thought right out of the gate. And if it’s not a deal breaker, then talk about the problem. The sooner you can find the solution the better you become as partners and the faster and farther ahead you can move as partners.
3 Levels of Pain
Branch shares more about the different levels of pain and how a simple apology only addresses the first one. He says, “If you have harmed someone verbally or physically or doing something outside of your relationship, there’s three actual pain levels that are taking place.”
Manifested act that has caused the pain By saying, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, let’s move on” it only addresses this first level, which is the manifested act that’s caused the pain.
Betrayal When the person who has been harmed feels betrayal, that first action of let’s move on isn’t gonna cut it. It’s not gonna help.
Trust When we’ve committed some act that’s caused harm, we have betrayed the vow or the agreement that we’ve had between us as partners in the relationship. And when we’ve betrayed that by the action, we have caused a breach of trust.
7 R’s to Relationship Repair
Whether this is in an intimate relationship between partners, spouses, a relationship between parents and children, or a relationship at work, when there’s been a breach of trust, if that trust is never rebuilt, the likelihood is that relationship will never be rebuilt as before.
Branch shares the seven steps that a couple or people in relationships can use as an opportunity to address the issue and work towards finding a solution so that you can reconcile and repair the situation, repair the relationship. All it costs you is an investment of your time and your emotions.
Recognize that you have harmed the other
Take Responsibility for your actions
Have Regret
Have Remorse
Redress
Repetition
Repent
To learn more about these steps and caveats, listen to the full episode.
2/2/2 Date Night Framework for Partners to Build a Healthier Relationship with Saami and Nathan Jaeger –
Love Vitamins for Relationships
Our conversation with Saami and Nathan Jaeger was filled with fun Activities, Practices and Rituals that Partners can take away and practice in your relationships to add fuel to your love Tanks. First they share about a Gratitude Practice that they use for MANAGING RESENTMENT. Then, we get into one of their rituals of 2 COFFEE AND A TREAT and I love it not just because it has 2 coffees in it but also a treat. At the end, we get into their practice of 2 x 2 x 2 DATE NIGHTS.
The Framework of 2/2/2 Date Night, which they found on a Reddit feed sometime ago, adapted to their liking, is that
Every 2️⃣ weeks we go on a date
Every 2️⃣ months, we go on a weekend away
Every 2️⃣ years (or twice a year), we'll go on a bigger adventure or a bigger holiday
This is definitely another exercise that we are excited to try out in our relationship. Our cadence might change to different numbers but the idea remains the same. What do you think would be an ideal frequency for your date nights – 1/1/1 or 2/3/2 or something else? Let us know in the comments below
Listen to the full episode to hear what they share about how this changed their relationship and got them out of their worst fight early on.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Sammi and Nathan Jaegar
Website: https://dateforever.com.au/
Instagram: dateforever
Podcast: Date Forever
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Sammi & Nathan Jaeger are the Co-Host of The Date Forever Podcast. And they are on a mission to empower couples to create thriving relationships. Because with better relationships we can create a better world. Sammi & Nath fell in love as housemates and have now been married for over a decade and love sharing relationship insights from couples and experts on their show.
This is the second part of our conversation. If you haven’t listened to the first episode, you can check the episode on Let the air out of the balloon to prevent resentment. Our conversation with them was filled with fun Activities, Practices and Rituals that Partners, can take away and practice in your relationships to add fuel to your love Tanks. First they share about a Gratitude Practice that they use for MANAGING RESENTMENT. Then, we get into one of their rituals of 2 COFFEE AND A TREAT and I love it not just because it has 2 coffees in it but also a treat. At the end, we get into their practice of 2 x 2 x 2 DATE NIGHTS.
What comes first – Success or Happiness?
A big part of being happy in a relationship is managing resentment. Saami and Nathan share about how they implemented their Gratitude Practice. Before going into bed, they ask each other what are they grateful for today? Sammi shares “Sometimes gratitude flows thick and fast, other times it’s so easy to come by. But what that’s meant is that all day I’ve trained my brain to be looking for the things to be appreciative for the things that I’m grateful for. Like this glass of water on my desk, like I’m so grateful for that.”
This ritual of intentionally practicing gratitude does 2 things – It increases the good credit in your emotional bank account or as you refer to – is refueling your love tank for your relationships. The second, this is checking to make sure that all the parts are functioning as expected to do a “check” on the whole system.
2 Coffee and a Treat
One of the ritual that they have is something they practice pretty much every week. Nathan says “We would go for two coffees and a treat. So we would go, and find a new cafe around the place, have a coffee each and then have something, little to share, share a little treat.” With a practice that costs less than 20 AUD, it creates new shared experiences for them. Nathan adds on what they noticed as an effect to this practice, “the conversations that we have when we’re outside of our own home, when we’re actually out somewhere together are so different than when you are in your home together.” At home there are many distractions like the dog, doing household chores, the Television, and much more that can slowly chip away at your attention and the quality time with your partner. Whereas when you go somewhere new, you senses are activated to up different cues from your surroundings. The environment around you is what often prompts conversation, and a new one. This is what they were noticing as well. “The conversations and the deepness, I guess that level of connection that we were having when we were out somewhere else was so much better than when we were in our home, even if we were doing the same activity”, adds Nathan. This ritual which involves Coffee and Treats sounds like such a fun idea, something that we will definitely be trying out ourselves.
Looking each other in the eyes when sharing a drink
Another activity that they shared with us was about a really intentional practice of looking each other in the eyes when sharing a drink. They learnt this apparently from some Airbnb guests, a Korean couple who stayed with them around four years ago. They though this practice was just beautiful and implemented it into their life as well. It just adds that additional layer of a silent – I love you, I appreciate being able to share this moment of eye contact with you. Such a beautiful, free, enhancing way to add to something something that we already do, which is drink. Nathan adds how this is kind of PDA (Public Display of Affection) without any PDA, “No one else will probably even realize what you’re doing. If you’re out at a restaurant or a cafe, it’s just that micro moment of connection.”
2/2/2 Date Nights
This Framework, which they found on a Reddit feed sometime ago and adapted to their liking, is that
Every 2 weeks we go on a date
Every 2 months, we go on a weekend away
Every 2 years (or twice a year), we’ll go on a bigger adventure or a bigger holiday
This Framework, they share, “really just helped us kind of set that benchmark or that baseline for our romantic relationship, and really just helped us to actually find the time to prioritize it.” Previously they had a very ad-hoc approach to what they were doing. Date nights were unstructured and not very intentional as the weekend would roll around and they wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do.
They talk about how this need to have some structure around Date Nights was one of the challenges they had to face early in their relationship. The fact that only 1 of them was planning and organizing most of their relationship and social activities got overwhelming at some point leading to a really big fight, probably their worst.
Now they divide the month into two half and plan their date nights for their halves. Sammi explains some of the many benefits, they found when doing it this way – “we get the opportunity to both give and receive. We both get the opportunity to create a moment or an experience, something that I really wanna do and Nate’s just now invited to come along with me or something that I know that he will really love. We both get those opportunities now. And it’s a framework that it’s allowed us to have some predictability, rhythm, heartbeat, pattern around its priority. You’re a very important part of my life and I treat it that way. I treat you that way.”
A lot of people could benefit from just a little bit of structure to set them free to plan things, like they said, to give and receive that love and it’s all about creating opportunities for connection. A framework like this takes something we do anyways, plan things for each other and just puts a little bit of structure around it.
This is definitely another exercise that we are excited to try out in our relationship. Our cadence might change to different numbers but the idea remains the same. What do you think would be an ideal frequency for your date nights – 1/1/1 or 2/3/2 or something else? Let us know in the comments below
Fuel Collective
Saami and Nathan share their story about how they started working on the 8 different tanks. Listen to the episode or check the resources below to learn more about the types of tanks and the full story.
Let the air out of the balloon to prevent resentment in relationships with Sammi and Nathan Jaeger –
Love Vitamins for Relationships
We chat with Sammi & Nathan Jaeger, Co-Hosts of The Date Forever Podcast about how to increase the positive or the goodwill in your relationship to help you counteract the negative or the deficit that we tend to collect in our relationships.
Saami and Nathan were around 23 and 24 when they got married in December 2012. And they've been together now for about 15 years, just celebrated their 10th Wedding Anniversary. Congratulations! At LoVita, we're always curious as to why people get married. Everyone has their own reasons, and we really wanted to know why they decided to make that step after 5 years of being together in their relationship. Sammi mentioned that's something she had struggled with herself in the beginning and shares their wonderful story of how she ended up eventually taking the name Jaeger.
Bonus – an exercise to keep fueling their love tank. They had so many things to share. One of the first things they talked about, which I loved, is how they phrased it "let air out of the balloon". It's a weekly check-in conversation to help prevent resentment in their relationship. On what they do to build a healthier relationship, Sammi starts with saying they put goodwill into our relationship all day, every day. Listen to the episode for more.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Sammi and Nathan Jaeger
Website: https://dateforever.com.au/
Instagram: dateforever
Podcast: Date Forever
—
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Sammi & Nathan Jaeger are the Co-Host of The Date Forever Podcast. And they are on a mission to empower couples to create thriving relationships. Because with better relationships we can create a better world. Sammi & Nath fell in love as housemates and have now been married for over a decade and love sharing relationship insights from couples and experts on their show.
Why they got married
Saami and Nathan were around 23 and 24 when they got married in December 2012. And the’ve been together now for about 15 years, just celebrated their 10th Wedding Anniversary. Congratulations! At LoVita, we’re always curious as to why people get married. Everyone has their own reasons, and I really wanted to know why they decided to make that step after 5 years of being together in their relationship. Sammi mentioned that’s something she had struggled with herself in the beginning and shares their wonderful story of how she ended up eventually taking the name Jaeger.
I really love that you’ve asked this because I did not wanna get married. I didn’t really believe in the institution of marriage. I didn’t really understand why anyone would wanna involve the government in their relationship. , I didn’t really, put a lot of value on having the piece of paper. And at the time, like I was like 20 when I had those, Opinions, thoughts, beliefs, values, and there are a few things that really changed my mind. Like my, for reference, my parents were together for quite a long time, like 20 years, but they never got married. So I have a different last name than my brother, despite us having the same biological parents. My parents, my, my mom was quite fiercely independent. She. Had me at 21. She worked in a very heavily male dominated field and a lot of my resistance to marriage was like from a feminist point of view of like, I do not want a man to feel in in any way that he owns me. I want to have an adult relationship where we both agree. Mm-hmm. , and I’m not exactly. . There wasn’t one thing, there wasn’t one thing for me that changed the idea, but a part, a big part of it was that it was important to Nathan. And I was really challenging his view of the world by saying, no, I, that’s not something I want to do.
Nathan adds that one of the biggest real benefits that they saw was of creating that family together and creating a milestone moment creating their family together which gives a feeling of “this is us,” co-creating something new together, rather than having a level of separation while they weren’t married. Saami adds on to that
but it was interesting for me cuz I kind of went through that evolution of like, no, I don’t wanna do that. Hold on. I’ve met somebody and it’s really important to them and it’s how they see the progression of a relationship. And then it was like, okay, I’ll get married, but I’m not changing my name. Like, no, that’s. , I’m keeping it. And then in the time that we got engaged, I really wanted us to be united front. I had connected with this idea, like Nathan saying about being one nurse and creating our family. Mm-hmm. . Because I believe that, a couple can be a family without the dogs, without the kids. Nathan and I are family. Yeah. but there was, this sounds so corny, but I saw on Pinterest. Someone had set up a photo gallery in their home and right in the center of it was their last name, and it was surrounded by all of these beautiful family photos. And I just thought, gosh, I want that. I want Nathan and I to run out onto the field with the same GK ons. And he had a cooler last name than me,
They also mentioned that they had even considered a separate last name. Although, things turned out differently at the end, their relationship is a true testament of holding the space to be able to go through all of those layers of change. Initially they had very different ideas of what it meant to get married, but by the time it actually came around to the special day, their ideas had changed. And the fact that both of them approached those conversations with this sense of togetherness, is such a valuable concept that many relationships kind of find themselves struggling with.
Challenges
Nathan talks about how they didn’t really consciously work on solving disagreements early on in their relationship. They had some pretty bad fights but their willingness to work things out keeps them in this relationship where they can date forever.
probably the first 12 months or two years of our relationship, I feel like that we were very much scoping each other out and working out each other’s boundaries and, and a lot of those sorts of things. And so we did have a lot of arguments or disagreements or like real deep conversations kind of in that, in that early stage of our relationship. And then I think once. We kind of got over those initial hurdles of, of yeah. Feeling each other out and, and working out how we can actually work together and co-create together.
Sammi adds on how they got to a point where they figured out that this pattern wasn’t really suitable for a long-term relationships and spending their life together.
Nathan and I were like already in love when we got together because we’d been living together for a year as housemates. So I think a lot of the teething issues that people go through, we had sort of done that as friends, so we like our, our real honeymoon. The, oh my gosh, this is all really brand new kind of stage was probably kind of short. Really? Yeah. And then we entered like a power struggle sort of phase for what, what I now know is like this sort of power struggle phase. And then we went into a don’t rock the boat phase. Like, he’s so great. He’s so amazing. I don’t wanna lose him, therefore I’m not gonna. call him out on that thing that I didn’t like and I’m just gonna ignore that need that, oh, it doesn’t really matter. And then somewhere from there we fig, we started to figure out that that was not a long-term sustainable way to be doing our life together.
Weekly Check-in Conversation
We wanted to learn some exercises or practices that they use to keep fueling their love tank. They had so many things to share on this. One of the first things they talk, which I loved how they phrased it “let air out of the balloon”. It’s a weekly check-in conversation to help prevent resentment in their relationship. On what they do to build a healthier relationship, Sammi starts with saying they put goodwill into our relationship all day, every day
And that’s not to say that we don’t ever make withdrawals from that, but we’re having a really good conversation a couple of weeks ago about what are some of the things that we do to prevent resentment in our relationship. We have a weekly check-in conversation every week where we ask, is there something that you want me to apologize for? , is there something that I’ve done that maybe in the heat of the moment it wasn’t right to talk about or it was so it felt insignificant at the time, but then when you reflected on it, it did actually hurt and there was something, something that might build resentment there. So we’ve got this weekly opportunity to like let air out of the balloon.
Nathan adds on how their practice is makes it much easier to break free of patterns that are not healthy, while not building resentment from their partner’s side as well.
So rather than like, yeah, the same thing potentially occurring like week after week after week. yeah, it is turning into a much bigger kind of repeat behavior type of thing. this, this. Question that we do weekly does really give the opportunity to, yeah, air any of that dirty laundry or air, anything that you might have been hanging onto for a little while, and chatted out before it actually becomes a big thing. And I think that helps from both sides as well, because like if I’ve done something to upset Sammy, and it’s something that. Integrated or that I’ve been doing for quite some time, like it’s probably a habit that I’ve actually trained myself to be doing, which then becomes a lot more difficult for me to then try and undo when Sammy does finally bring it up. And also on her side, it’s been building this resentment over time because it’s been this long-term repeat behavior. Whereas if, if you’re able to see the behavior once or twice or whatever, and then have the conversation. . It’s not something that’s embedded into my behaviors or habits or anything like that
Amanda shared with us her story about the troubles and challenges she had in her life. How she was able to use Kinesiology to understand all these layers and get out of an unhealthy relationship. Her journey of self discovery helped her explore other relationships. She shares a funny and insightful story about how she used Tinder, as a tool, to find what kinds of energy she was attracting and her journey of how she met her current partner. A couple things she mentioned that she realized what she was intentionally looking in her partner and the relationship was were
Reciprocal relationships
Somebody who was able to hold space
Amanda knew what she wanted and the universe was waiting for her to identify that within herself before those people could be highlighted for her from the universe as a gift. It was bound to happen. One of her messages that I really loved –
“I was really conscious of finding in that reflection what was left unhealed in me because I knew that when I went into my next relationship, I did not want it to be the same. I did not want to be the kind of empath who naturally attracts another narcissist. I didn't wanna be that flame for the moths.”
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
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Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
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Connect with Amanda Kate
Website: amandakate.com.au
Book: DIVINE. MESSY. HUMAN.
Instagram: amanda__kate
Facebook: amandakatetransformation
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Amanda Kate, the author of Divine Messy Human, A Spiritual Guide to Prioritizing Internal Truth Over External Influence is a kinesiologist. She’s an archetypal life coach, a mentor, a mother, partner, dog, mom, all of those things and lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Kinesiology for building healthier relationships
Amanda shared with us her story about the troubles and challenges she had in her life. How she was able to use Kinesiology to understand all these layers and get out of an unhealthy relationship. Her journey of self discovery helped her explore other relationships. She shares a funny and insightful story about how she used Tinder, as a tool, to find what kinds of energy she was attracting and her journey of how she met her current partner. A couple things she mentioned that she realized what she was intentionally looking in her partner and the relationship was were
Reciprocal relationships
Somebody who was able to hold space
Amanda knew what she wanted and the universe was waiting for her to identify that within herself before those people could be highlighted for her from the universe as a gift. It was bound to happen. One of her messages that I really loved –
I was really conscious of, finding in that reflection what was left unhealed in me because I knew that when I went into my next relationship, I did not want it to be the same. I did not want to be the kind of empath who naturally attracts another narcissist. I didn’t wanna be that flame for the moths.
Wrap up arguments
Amanda mentioned that one of the things that she and her partner bring in intentionality in their relationship is that they wrap up arguments.
We wrap it up. We make up at the end. We have connection at the end, and we don’t have to understand each other. He’s a completely different person to me, we don’t need to understand. And the thing that I, that grates on me about understand anyway, if you are standing under somebody, you are submitting to their authority. And we are equals in our relationship. So I don’t need to understand him. I love when I comprehend him. I love it when I can accept him for everything, but because we’re also aware of our own shortcomings, we will often apologize to each other just for being snarky.
At home exercises
Some tools, conversations, techniques recommended by Amanda from her coaching sessions that people at home can leverage to get started on their journey of exploration. Amanda says a lot of the exploration is asking questions and being curious and recommends one exercise that she practices herself.
So one of the things I do is say, I dunno. I get into an argument with my partner and I’ve done this in real time. I’ll be like, oh, this doesn’t feel like it’s our stuff. And so I just check in, is this mine? Is this his? Now, if I get a mine, I then go, okay, how old am I now? And an age will pop into my. So let’s use 28, cuz that’s one of those pivotal ages in my life. I was a new mom living overseas, away from my family. I’d been, pregnant with my first child with basically no support. Having my first child with no support and really, really struggled. I was not feeling seen, I was not feeling hurt, I was not feeling understood. So I can go, okay, 28, and I know all that stuff off the top of my head now, and I’m like, okay, so how does that relate to now, it’s actually nothing to do with him. It’s because I’m not feeling seen or I don’t feel like he’s hearing me, and I can say to him, whoa, hang on. This argument isn’t about what I’m making it about. This is actually why and so I’m almost coaching myself in that moment. Now I do not do that every argument by the way. It just hands up cuz I’m human . That’s the mess human part. But I have done it before and you know what? He’s never once said, no, let’s continue with the argument. Let’s forget about that .It just doesn’t happen. He’s more than happy to backtrack and go, you know, it’s basically me putting up my hand going, this is, this is all me. I’m sorry.
Final words
Amanda says, trust yourself.
I think it’s really about trusting yourself in this, because let’s face it, if we’re in a less than ideal relationship and we start going, oh, is this the person I should be with? We’ve all known the answer. Often. We’re just too afraid to act on it.
In this episode with Liam Naden, a relationships and marriage coach. He talks a lot about the responsibility that we have as individuals to do the, “I” work to make the, “we” work. It gives us the understanding of what is an individual's responsibility for the common components that make something like a relationship or a marriage successful. It also brings a lot of empowerment and responsibility and accountability for what we can actually do to build the relationships that bring us joy back into our hands and makes us feel like we truly are individual agents that are capable of change and leading a life that makes us happy.
Some other topics we discuss
How do you identify if a relationship is great or not?
Shifting the focus from the "We" to the "I"
Counseling or Un-counseling
What can individuals do to be more attractive?
“Then what?” Exercise
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship and ask them .
If you would like to share your story, fill out this quick form.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Liam Naden
Website: https://liamnaden.com/
Book: Marriage Uncounseling: A Counterintuitive Approach to Healing Relationships and Bringing Back Love
Podcast: Growing in Love for Life Podcast: Save and Strengthen Your Marriage
Instagram: @liamnaden
Facebook: liamnadenfan
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Liam is a speaker, teacher, author and researcher. He teaches Neuro-State Rebalancing (NSR), a process for eliminating problems and taking control of your life by rebalancing the four parts of your brain.
How do you identify if a relationship is great or not?
We asked Liam for how can couples identify if their relationship is great or not. Liam says “ask yourself the question – What was I doing when things were going really well in our relationship?” Read the transcript snippet below in his own words on how that helps
What usually happens is people we’re doing something very different to what they’re doing now, and they’re wondering why they’ve got problems and why, that things aren’t as good but they’ve stopped doing the things that made it good.
What you need to start thinking is what was the environment that I had in my relationship when things were going well and what am I doing differently, and it’s the, the differences will be be pretty obvious and pretty simple.
Our takeaway: Shift your focus to the positive and what you wanna create rather than focusing on what you’re trying to remove. Put more of your time and your effort into increasing that positivity, that happiness.
“Relationship that you have with your spouse is a reflection of the relationship that you have with yourself.”
Quote from Liams book
Shifting the focus from the “We” to the “I”
Liam says most of the problems in the relationship, when a partner want to stop working on it comes down to “They don’t find you attractive.” In general, people blame their spouses for the problems in the relationship. Liam says,
You need to change. When you change, when you become an attractive person again, they’re going to want to change. They’re gonna want to stay with you. Who wouldn’t if you were back to being that person, they fell in love with that great attractive person that they decided they wanted to be with, then of course they’re going to want to communicate. They’re going to want to be intimate. They’re going to want to to be with you.
Counseling or Un-counseling
Should people go to Couples Therapy when struggling in their relationships? What are the pros and cons? Liam says “80% of people have said to me that didn’t work or it made, it actually made things worse.” Here’s his take on the topic
There are lots of reasons. Things such as, again, you’re focusing on the problems when you go to counseling and it, and the other problem is that well, often one the other person doesn’t want to go, which doesn’t help. And then it becomes a sort of a picking on them session it can do. But I think the problem, what I’ve noticed, again, problems are a symptom of what’s going on in your relationship. They’re not the cause.
What can individuals do to be more attractive?
There are many kinds of fears in our relationship, that Liam says stops us from being attractive. These fears make us a needy person where we’re always trying to put in all this effort and pressure rather than just being yourself, being fun.
It is a bit, counterintuitive or paradoxical, but that’s the sort of person you need to be. You have to be the sort of person who’s willing to let go of your relationship. if you want to hang onto it. And that’s when I found about people in great relationships who’d been together for a long time. They weren’t worried about the future of their relationship. They were like, Hey, I’m here because I want to be. I’m here because I’m having great fun. And if at any time in the future we didn’t get on, or something happened and we weren’t meant to be together, well, I could just look back and say it was no longer meant to be. And that’s all right. I’ll be fine. It’s just one of those things. Now, it doesn’t mean you’re ready to walk out, but it means you don’t have this pressure and fear attached to your relationship. You’re just enjoying being there and being yourself and allowing your spouse to be themself as well.
Exercise: Then what?
An exercise to help overcome your fear. So for instance, if you say, I’m really afraid that if my marriage ended, I’d end up alone and lonely. The idea is you have a friend. Who in this instance is yourself. You ask yourself,
Q: Well, then what would happen? So I end up alone and lonely. Q: Then what would happen? Well, I’d be really miserable, and I’d be living in a, little apartment with sitting in the corner all day crying my eyes out. Q: Okay. Then what would you do? Well, I’d probably get a bit tired of sitting in the corner and crying in my eyes out. So I’d probably maybe contact a couple of friends and ask if they want to get together. Q: Okay. And then what would you do? Well, we’d get together. And then what would happen? Well, they’d probably say to me, you know, they’d probably try and cheer me up and, and remind me that I’m a good person and hey, you know, why don’t you go and meet somebody else, and do some socializing and you’ll find somebody else. Q: And then what? Well, I probably would, I probably would start to stop feeling for it, sorry for myself, and I’d probably go out and meet new people. Q: Okay. And then what? And then another fear comes up. I’d meet all these weird, strange people and they’d have all these negative experiences, Q: Okay. And then what would happen? Oh, well, I’d probably start to get a little bit clever and or smarter and more experienced about evaluating people and seeing, who was right or not for me. Q: And then what? Well then I’d start to meet some better quality people. Q: Okay. And then what? Well then I’ll probably meet somebody really am really amazing actually.
All of these things that, because all you see, all your brain sees when you’re in a stress state, is that next negative situation. Sitting in the corner, crying your eyes out, with nobody around your brain, doesn’t allow you to see all these other possibilities. This exercise helps you see path that to other options.
What do you do to build a healthier relationship with your partner?
Liam laughs and says “We just have fun in the moment and don’t take anything too seriously.” Liam shares more about one of their philosophy “You worry about what you think, I’ll worry about what I think.”
Kim Sorrell and her husband were diagnosed with Cancer 4 months apart and only one of them survived. In this episode, she shares stories of grief and humor to put forward her thoughts as an expert on love.
A couple of our biggest takeaways from this episode that Kim shares
“Love is a one-way street. Love is not a transaction… Love is 100% up to you to give, period. Whether you get it back or not. You don’t give love to get love.”
“ The best gift you can give yourself is to get outta yourself a little bit and stop thinking about what you need to receive and think more about what you wanna give and want to give desire to give, because it's fun to give.”
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Kim Sorrell
Book – Love Is
Website – https://www.kimsorrelle.com/
Instagram – @kimsorrelle
Facebook – loveisbykim
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
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Kim Sorrelle is the director of a humanitarian organization, popular speaker, and the author of two books. Her first book, Cry Until You Laugh, is about her and her husband’s battle with cancer after being diagnosed just four months a part. Her second book, Love Is, chronicles her year long quest to figure out the true meaning of love, a sometimes funny, sometimes scary, always enlightening journey that led to life-changing discoveries found mostly on the streets of Haiti.
Defining Love as a one-way street
What do you define love as? We started off with the most important questions and Kim defined it as a one way street instead of being transactional. Some might agree others might say it has to be somewhere in between with some boundaries of course. There is not right way of course, just your way of love. That’s the beauty of love.
Well, it is different than what I thought it was. I think there’s a lot of myths surrounding love, a lot of things that we’re told about love or are done in the name of love that are not love. Like one of the things we’re told about love is that it’s a two-way street. We put a number to it. It’s 50 50 or it’s a hundred- a hundred. You go through marriage counseling and these are the things you’re told, but it’s not true. Love is a one-way street. Love is not a transaction. If I give you money and you give me a pair of jeans, that’s a transaction. If I give you love to get love and return, that’s a transaction. Love is not a transaction. Love is 100% up to you to give, period. Whether you get it back or not. You don’t give love to get love.
Love is who you are basically. I think that’s another misconception. We think of it as an emotion, like fear or excitement, and it’s not. We don’t live in fear. We don’t live in excitement every day’s, not in Disney World, and every day’s not watching the Halloween movie or something, and then hearing every creek in the house when you go to bed. But you do live in love. That is something that you live in. That’s something that embodies you. It’s something that you are, and how you show up with it, then it is up to you.
What does grieving for Love looks like
Kim had shared with us her very emotional story of her husband passing away. So we wanted to know how trauma impacts ones ability to love.
That’s a great question. I was 47 years old when my husband died, and I thought we were gonna be that old couple in our nineties and rockers sitting on a front porch drinking lemonade and smiling at each other, or whatever it is that 90 year old people do when they’re sitting on the front porch drinking lemonade, and all of a sudden at 47, that dream of that life was gone. I had to develop a whole new, I had this understanding of love that I wasn’t dependent on my husband’s love to give love. I wasn’t dependent on that. I’m still able to love because of that. I think we all have probably seen some people who, almost feel like it’s disrespectful to laugh again or live again when you love so deeply and you lose somebody, that you can kind of stay stuck in this sadness, with this cloud over you, and that somehow you’d be disrespecting them to laugh again. And I think the opposite is, I think to really show my husband respect and to really honor him, I need to live. I need to live and be happy, because he made me happy and so I, I wanna live and be happy for him.
Manifesting your Love to reality
Kim shares with us a wonderful story of how at the age of 18 years old she got married. At that age, even though she had ambitious plans for her life and had no intentions to get married, she fell for a tall, dark, handsome man. They had babies and at some point in their marriage she felt like she was doing everything and him not much more than taking the trash out once a week. Kim explains how things changed after that that turned their marriage around.
And I started looking at him as just a paycheck and I thought, well, why is this guy living in my house? What’s he contributing? Why is he even here? He is just giving me more work to do instead of making macaroni and cheese for dinner, which would be so easy, I feel like I have to make a better dinner. Cause he’s there or I’ve got more laundry. but then I thought, you know what? No, I want a happy marriage. I want a happy marriage. So I decided, That I was gonna do everything I could to make him happy. Whatever it was, I was gonna do everything I could to make him happy. And so I started doing things like I’d go to the grocery store and I’d buy his favorite treat, and I would make his favorite dinner. I’d write a little note before work, anything I could, and I didn’t put a time limit on it. I didn’t say, I’m gonna do this for six weeks, and if fat guy doesn’t respond, then I’m outta here. I didn’t do that. I knew that I wanted a happy marriage and I figured it had to be up to me. And so the most amazing thing happened though, in doing this. Love has this incredible way of, even though you’re not giving love to get love, it comes back to you. And so things did change in our marriage, but I think a lot of the change was me, like my heart softened toward my husband, and I just grew more in love with him and, and loved him deeper, and it was a real turning point in our marriage.
Love the person, not the act
Well, one would thing that there should be some boundaries right. Sure, the idea of selfless love sounds great in theory but is that really practical? Kim explains more about how our love is for the person and not their actions. She shares about her stories and how love doesn’t keep score.
Our takeaway from the conversation: It is important to set up the relationship for the way you want to receive love, rather than having these unchecked expectations or this belief that things are just gonna miraculously work out. On the concept of familiarity. the longer you spend time with each other, the more you pick up your patterns of familiarity and what another person likes. A small change in the environment, but especially early on when you’re learning each other, you’re understanding your definitions of love is what it means to show up in love. It’s not fair on either party to just assume that the other person should know with one look of an eye what’s actually going on. That’s not a kindness we extend to our partner, and it’s definitely not something you would expect of our friends, and yet it’s a fallacy that we fall into with those that we share a home with.
After loosing a loved one
Kim shares her very powerful and emotional story of how it was to loose her beloved husband to Cancer.
It was quick, but not immediate. I mean, he was diagnosed and we had this incredible six weeks together. They thought he’d live about a year and it was just six weeks. But we did have this great six weeks together watching Cash Cab and playing rummy. I mean, the things that we did just hanging out at the house. He did so good. Like we had great hospice care, great palliative care, so he wasn’t in pain cuz it’s a very beautiful cancer. And it wasn’t until the very last day, that he woke up in pain. And I called the hospice nurse and she came right over and gave him extra morphine and she was on the phone. We were in the bedroom and he was sitting on the edge of the bed cuz he was, he didn’t wanna lay down. He was in pain and I was, Holding him from behind and she was on the phone calling for a hospital bed and a commode and, you know, whatever equipment. Cause up until then, we’d just been in our bed together. Just life as usual. And I was saying, guy, do I call my kids? What do I do? She’s like, oh, no, no, you’ve got lots of time. You have weeks anyway. You’re, it’s okay. It’s okay. Well, in holding him, I could just feel his mis. I could just feel it and I just, whispered in his ear and I just said, baby, just go. And that was it. That quick. He took his last breath. That was it. I consider that very merciful. As you see people just kind of linger. Who are in just a lot of pain and it can go on for weeks and months. And so it was real merciful for him to just go that quickly. He was a great guy. Like, if anybody should go that quickly, it should be him, I figure. Even though we had that six weeks, it was still a shock because it was quicker than we thought. But I felt like I had to be strong for my kids. I felt like I had to be strong for everybody else, and I was still going through cancer. So it was a weird time of really trying to process. And, I cried a lot during the six weeks from his diagnosis till the time he passed. I would just, I tried not to, but I would just start crying and he would just hold me and say, don’t cry for me. Don’t cry for me. You’re the one. It’s gonna be here, don’t cry for me. And, so then I didn’t quite know how to process things and then I was finally able physically to go back to work. And when I was, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do. I had some businesses I didn’t know if I was gonna go back to there. I’d been running a nonprofit and resigning that because I got diagnosed with cancer. I ended up thinking, oh, I’m gonna take it slow. So, Took a job as a part-time bookkeeper of an organization that my father and I had started about 10 years before this, and, is being run by somebody else. And so January one that year I started as part-time bookkeeper, and 12 days later there was an earthquake in Haiti that killed 200,000 people. So I went from part-time bookkeeper at full-time 24 7. And within two weeks I was in Haiti. And then for the next several years I was in Haiti at least part of every month for the next many years. And I really believe that was the healing, that in service there’s healing, that there’s nothing that heals grief like surface. When you get out of yourself and give to others, that’s when real healing can take place.
Final Thoughts
The best gift you can give yourself is to get outta yourself a little bit and stop thinking about what you need to receive and think more about what you wanna give and want to give desire to give, because it’s fun to give, you think about the holidays or birthdays or whatever, and I love giving gifts. I’m not great all the time at receiving gifts as I am at giving gifts and giving, is fun. and that’s what love is, is it’s, it’s just giving. The more you can do that, the happier you’re gonna be. And who doesn’t wanna be happy?
In this episode we chat with Silvia Dutchevici, a psychotherapist with more than 20 years experience working with individuals and couples on topics ranging from relationships, intimacy and how to survive a long term partnership.
Some of the topics we discuss
🧑⚕️ Therapy to understand ourselves and our Partners
💪 How Power shows up in Relationships
⛪ Traditions and How People hide behind Culture
🎯 Shared Vision and Goals
🥷 Dealing with Conflicts and Practice to Fail
We discuss how to become aware of power statuses in relationships and the power struggles so that Partners can lead into power negotiations.
Shift our understanding of power is not something bad
Cuz if it's something bad, it's something we don't wanna have. And then when we have it, we pretend we don't have it. And that gets really problematic, especially for couples
Power means responsibility
I have a responsibility to you rather than I have power, I exert it over you.
Shift the way we talk
Language is powerful. Pay attention to how you talk. Rather than saying I'm doing this for you, try I'm doing this cause I love you or as a gift to you.
If you enjoyed listening to this episode (or the podcast), please share your diagnosis with 1 close relationship or anyone else who would enjoy listening to this as well.
The best gift you can give us is positive feedback and your observations. Follow us wherever you are listening and do us a favor by adding a Review on Apple Podcast.
LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally towards building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗
LoVita Blog for Frameworks
Sign up for our monthly Newsletter for exclusive content
We're also on Social media – Instagram, Facebook,
All above links in a single page
Connect with Silvia Dutchevici
Book – Critical Therapy - Power and Liberation in Psychotherapy
Website – https://criticaltherapy.org/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/silviadutchevici
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvia-dutchevici/
Email – [email protected]
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Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message
Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support
Silvia M. Dutchevici, MA, LCSW, is president and founder of the Critical Therapy Institute. A trained psychotherapist, Dutchevici (pronounced “doot-KAY-vitch”), created critical therapy on perceiving a need for the theory and practice of psychology to reflect how race, class, gender, and religion intersect with psychological conflicts.
Therapy to understand our Partners along with Ourselves
With more than 20 years experience working with individuals and couples Silvia engaged with us in conversations around relationships, intimacy and how to survive a long term partnership.
One of the things that I realize, and this is one of the reasons I created critical therapy that’s a little different than traditional therapy, is that most people go to therapy and because of the way therapists have been trained, it’s usually only a one-sided relationship. So you go to therapy, you talk about yourself, and you know it’s great. You have all this insight and now and then, Wow, I think I’m healed now. I’m ready to have a relationship. And then you go out there and you can’t have a good relationship because nowhere else in the world is it all about you. So I think part of good therapy is to teach us and to teach our patients how to be in relationship with another, how to share space, how to share power. I think power is the biggest thing that happens in relationship dynamics. and it is really not analyzed, it’s not talked about it. We kind of shy away from power. We don’t wanna look at it, which, is the missed opportunity. So therapy can offer you the space to learn how to be with another and a blueprint for a relationship where you learn how to communicate, you learn how to ask questions, you learn about your partner’s desires, you learn about your own desires, you learn how to negotiate.
Power
Silvia shares her insights on how power shows up in relationships
To go back to power, so power is a very important aspect of critical therapy. And the reason is that there’s power in every relationship. Especially couples, couples, always wanna be equal. Everything’s equal. Nothing is ever equal ever in our world, but power is not a bad thing. What makes power a bad thing is that the models that we’ve seen in our society are always models of power over someone. I have power. I’m going to use it to manipulate you. I have power. I’m your boss. You have to do that. I have power, usually traditionally as I’m your husband, a heterosexual relationship, I get you to do this for me. But power can be something that we share together. And depending on our race, class or gender, our relationship to power inside the world and outside is different. So we’ll always be more or less powerful than others. We need to learn how to negotiate that. So because of that, I figured therapy should be one place where people investigate, interrogate, and learn how to share power.
One other thing to be cognizant of is that, especially for people who have been disempowered, power is not something that’s given to you. Power is something that you have to claim. You have to assert, you have to learn how to reckon with it. So in critical therapy, part of the dynamic that happens between the therapist and the patient is we have these conversations. We look at our identities, my identity, your identity as a patient inside and outside the clinical hour, and how that influences who we are and how we show up. And after we do all that, and we question why you believe the things that you do and how do you use power, and how do those beliefs impact your daily life? Then we learn how to create a more collaborative space. And as I often say, if you are able to do it in here, then you’re able to do it out there in your life.
Our conversation drifts towards what can Partners in a relationship can do to become aware of their power statuses and their power struggles so that they can lead into power negotiations.
Shift our understanding of power is not something bad Cuz if it’s something bad, it’s something we don’t wanna have. And then when we have it, we pretend we don’t have it. And that gets really problematic, especially for couples
Power means responsibility I have a responsibility to you rather than I have power, I exert it over you.
Shift the way we talk Language is powerful. Pay attention to how you talk. Rather than saying I’m doing this for you, try I’m doing this cause I love you or as a gift to you.
People hiding behind Culture
We discuss about how communication plays into effect when, there are people coming from different races or different backgrounds, with different communication styles. Silvia shares her wisdom on how to embrace the differences and goes on to talk about what role society plays into it.
I often say people hide behind culture. So a couple of things. We all have very different identities and we all have very different intersectionality of our experience in the world. Whether you are a woman, whether you are a person of color, whether you’re heterosexual, whether you are rich or not, and all those things matter in relationships, and by talking about them, by not erasing the differences but embracing them.
Traditions
Silvia addresses another layer, which is how society views us. She thinks it’s important to always question ourselves, what are the traditions we want to keep that enhance our lives? This is what makes us lovable that builds community rather than these traditions that we’re keeping, that actually impact the way we show up in a very negative way. Our discussion goes into the process for negotiation these traditions with your partner. Below is our takeaway from the conversation:
the prerequisite to even getting to negotiation is being able to have a dialogue and the prerequisite to being able to have a dialogue is realizing that you’re on the same team and being charitable to your partner and knowing that they are coming from this understanding that they’re on your side, they’re not against you. We are having a moment of difficulty here, but it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. This ties back to something Silvia mentioned earlier, which is that we really have to change the language that we’re using at home because that distills down into all of the smaller interactions that we have in the day. Using the concept of an emotional bank account: All of these little transactions either add to your emotional bank account and then you can leverage that shared foundation to continue having some more difficult conversations leading into negotiation otherwise, a lot of the times we’re chipping away at that bank account without even realizing it, and then we enter into this deficit. So it’s absolutely a fundamental way of, starting this, this much longer, maybe slightly more difficult process called negotiation, but the prerequisite for it is our bread and butter or everyday aspect of living in a relationship.
Shared Vision and Goals
Can it help couples communicate better when they have a shared vision or goals that they would be talking towards. Silvia shares what she has discovered.
What I discovered about couples is this opposites attract, but they may not stay together. what’s important is not that you are similar in what you do and how you do things, what’s important is that you have similar values, and this is how sometimes you get people who seem like opposites but actually make it work. And that’s because deep down they have the same vision of the world and the world they wanna live in. So what’s important is how do you see the world? What does happiness look like for you? Because if you’re someone who’s like, well, happiness for me is having a stable home and doing, taking vacations, if we could do that and so forth that’s great. If you find someone who’s like, happiness for me is having tons of money and going to 5,000 parties, throughout the year, then it’s probably not gonna work out because you have very different ideas of what you want in life and I think it’s important for people to talk about those things and to sort of like when they start dating.
Conflicts
We tried to peel apart what Silvia said, that, opposites attract, but they don’t usually last forever.”
The first one is I believe that the people we choose in relationships reflect something about ourselves. We’re working through. So whenever someone says, well, I’m in this relationship and it’s all their problem, I’m great. I remind people, but you picked this person for a reason. And the reason is because we’re attracted to those things that we haven’t quite mastered, or understood. And this is one of the reasons I say it’s important that you reckon with yourself and know who you are, because the healthier you are, the healthier your relationship is. It’s a dynamic. It’s always between two or more people. It’s never just, it’s me. I’m great. This person’s the problem. You are in it.
What I often also say to people is that what makes a good relationship. It’s not the absence of conflict that’s not possible.
Practice to Fail
Something that we practice is that in moments of conflict, to revisit the conversation from a healthier place, from a healthier emotional state because there’s still some work that needs to be done there. Silvia shares her practice
It’s lovely and I think when you’re in the midst of conflict, if you are so activated, I think it’s your responsibility to also say, this is too much for me right now. I need a timeout. And then to really reckon with yourself what is happening for me? Cuz sometimes it’s not even about what is happening in the moment. It’s about, again, all your history and all the things that you are associating with this conflict. So if you have that space, you can realize, well, maybe this is not really about you. Maybe this is about how, when I was 12 my mom said this and you sound just like her right now. And I never resolved that. Because I think it puts a different spin on things. And it’s important to take a pause and come back and also be open to being wrong.
What does Silvia do to build a healthier relationship?
Therapy and many failed relationships were a couple Silvia shared. Listen to the full episode to learn more.
At the age of 83, Dr. Laurie has been married for 62 years, business partners with her husband for the last 50 plus years. She shared some details about that journey along with us in this week's episode.
Along with many other things, she shares a few simple steps on how and when Partners should communicate when there is a conflict which arises.
When to communicate – The moment you (or your partner) notices there's something wrong.
After noticing – Take time to think about it.
After thinking about it – At the first opportunity, tell your partner that you'll like to share with them what you've realized.
Just say it straight out – Ask them instead of trying to read their mind
Some of the other topics we discuss
Serious Relationship Problem vs Ordinary Growing Pain
Release Stuck Energy
Stories from Laurie Weiss
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Laurie Weiss, psychotherapist, coach and relationship communication expert has helped more than 60,000 individuals reclaim life energy and find joy in life for more than four decades. She has taught professionals in 13 countries and authored 13 books that make complex information accessible to anyone. Her popular, Letting It Go, teaches rapid anxiety and stress relief. She and her husband, Jonathan B. Weiss, Ph.D., started working together in 1970. Both Drs. Weiss love mixing business and pleasure and enjoy visiting professional colleagues and friends around the globe. They live and work in Littleton, Col. USA.
Life Partners as long as Business Partners
At the age of 83, Dr. Laurie has been married for 62 years, business partners with her husband for the last 50 plus years. She shared some details about that journey along with us.
Well, one of the interesting things is I married at a time when women had very limited options and where women were seen as second class citizens, and so, The evolution from that very rigid structure that we both expected to maintain to the second wave feminist, and I was a strong cart carrying feminist therapist. For quite a while and learning to make it a co-equal relationship rather than a co-dependent relationship as relationships were supposed to be, was I think probably one of the most important things
As we learned that we also were learning ways to communicate very cleanly and very effectively. So that we didn’t let problems go by and we taught other people. We went around the country and around several other countries teaching people how to not let things go by, and that was very influential. And after a while we kind of settled. . It’s like, well, we know how to do this. We’re pretty comfortable doing it. We would get in the hot tub at night after a therapy group, would not have anything much to say about it because it worked just fine. We trusted each other. We worked just fine.
Then of course, came the inevitable children growing up an empty nest and what do you do now? And we kept on working and, starting to write books. We wrote our first book together. Basically I wrote, he edited, put together, challenged me and then he decided that he didn’t like writing, but I kept on it, sort of became a disease.
I think one of the biggest challenges is not being exactly the same. The same field, but we’re, and doing very much the same thing and learning a lot of the same things, but we have very different interests. In fact, sometimes we joke and say we’re incompatible.
For example, he loves jazz. I love classical. He can’t stand offright. It’s one of my favorite things, but in a lot of ways we are compatible and it’s been a constant struggle about getting back into the very old patterns of doing things without asking about it, assuming things, and then getting caught up short and saying, whoops. We’ve gotta do something else. And now our relationship is changing again because he has some physical disabilities so I have to compensate in ways that I never had to compensate. So it’s been an evolution all along.
Think there’s one very significant thing that is probably unusual, and that is very early on, we made a commitment that we would support each other’s. And that got to be pretty scary sometimes. But we did it anyway.
Serious Relationship Problem vs Ordinary Growing Pain
In her book, being happy together and what do you do to keep love alive, Dr. Laurie points to the difference between a Serious Relationship Problem vs an Ordinary Growing Pain. We asked her to talk a bit more about that
When people fall in love, it’s fireworks. You wanna be with each other constantly. And then the first transition is when you get married, then you are together constantly or can be. And then its like oh, it’s not so exciting anymore. We’ve fallen out of love uhoh, and people think that that’s, that’s a crisis We’ve fallen out of love. There’s, there’s no excitement anymore, but it’s not, it’s normal. It’s what happens. And at that point, you stop being at the position. I love everything he does. I love some things he does, but I hate other things he does. Then comes to the point of, we won’t talk about it. We’ll just go into the patterns that we think we’re supposed to have, and that works for a while, and then it doesn’t. And again, that’s an ordinary crisis in a relationship. The fact that we start struggling.
For me it was really funny. He had dragged me to psychotherapy. I didn’t wanna go, but I, I went and the first time the therapist said, it’s okay for you to like opera. It was like, really? can still do that. It’s that kind of a change. It’s okay for you to be who you are, but I don’t know how to do that. And so that’s another crisis, that’s a normal kind of development is how do we set our boundaries? How do we figure out who we are? How do we keep being who we are and still be together? Because then at a point in relationships, it feels like we’re going our separate ways, we’re going in our own directions. And then, it’s like, oh, I don’t need you anymore. People feel like they need each other, and then it’s like, I don’t need you anymore, but I, I still like you. I still wanna be together. and that’s really the healthiest part of a relationship when you’ve got two individuals sharing fully with each other, and they may be dividing things up.
Like when my, when we go somewhere, my husband usually drives because I don’t particularly like driving and he enjoys it but, but if there’s something wrong, I can drive, there’s no problem. And we don’t just have to do. and I usually cook, but I don’t always cook and I don’t have to cook. When in, in a support group early on, women were whispering to each other. I really don’t like to be in charge of all the cooking. I really don’t. But we thought we were supposed to be, there was a whole lot of. issue about teaching our husbands to be responsible for dinner once or twice a week, and they would serve our leftovers that we had planned for another dinner. It doesn’t seem like a big deal now, at the time, trying to establish those boundaries was really difficult.
And then the interesting thing that happens is when there’s a major life change of some kind, you cycle through all those things over. So it may be that you need each other and you’re locked together for a while, and then you figure out your boundaries again in a new situation, a new way.
Communicate when conflict in interest
Dr. Laurie shares a few simple steps on how and when Partners should communicate when there is a conflict which arises.
When to communicate – The moment you (or your partner) notices there’s something wrong. After noticing – Take time to think about it. After thinking about it – At the first opportunity, tell your partner that you’ll like to share with them what you’ve realized. Just say it straight out – Ask them instead of trying to read their mind.
Release Stuck Energy
Dr. Laurie talks about a whole other area that she’s passionate about. She explains that so much of this is all about stuck energy and about 12 years ago, she learned a way to release stuck energy, that is so simple. The process is more involved but includes the below three sentences
I retrieve all my energy bound up in this rumination and I take my energy to the right place in myself.
I remove all of the not me energy involved in this rumination from all of my cells, my body, and my personal space, and I send it to where it truly belongs.
I retrieve all my energy bound up in all of my reactions to this rumination.
Final Thoughts
I’d say work on your relationship, not just in your relationship. Be aware of what’s going on between you and take the steps that you need to grow. rather than just assuming that everything is okay, cuz it inevitably will crash in some way.
LoVita 