Romance is not the end of it all with Silvia Dutchevici

Romance is not the end of it all with Silvia Dutchevici Love Vitamins for Relationships

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] — 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.

  1. 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
  2. Power means responsibility
    I have a responsibility to you rather than I have power, I exert it over you.
  3. 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.

Connect with Silvia Dutchevici

Website – https://criticaltherapy.org/
Books – https://laurieweiss.com/books/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/laurieweiss

Unleash Prosperity in your Relationship with Victoria Rader a Possibility Coach

Unleash Prosperity in your Relationship with Victoria Rader a Possibility Coach Love Vitamins for Relationships

In this episode, we chat with Victoria Rader, a possibility coach on how to unleash prosperity in your Relationships with Victoria Rader, a Possibility Coach. Amongst other things, we learnt about a 4 step Ass Principle 1️⃣ Validation      "What an ass." 2️⃣ Ownership    "But he/she is my ass." 3️⃣ Forgiveness  "I choose to forgive them." 4️⃣ Love               "I choose to love them." 🎧 Listen to the full episode on https://lovita.blog/podcasts We discussed other topics like Self Identity and Conflicts Finding time for your relationships 5 Love Languages Relationship Vision Learning to listen 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 🔗 Website – https://lovita.blog/ Newsletter – https://mailchi.mp/81f58463e76b/subscribe Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lovitalovevitamins/ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/lovitalovevitamins All below links in a single page  – https://linktr.ee/lovitalovevitamins Connect with Victoria Rader Book – Proser mE: https://a.co/fTZYPzO Website – https://yu2shine.com/ Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/vica_rader/ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/Yu2shine/ Email – [email protected] — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support

Victoria Rader, Ph.D. is a Possibility Coach™, transformational speaker, founder of YU2SHINE, and an internationally best-selling author of Prosper mE: the 35 Universal Laws to Make Money Work for You (and three other books). She is also the creator of Empower-mE and Master-mE apps, and the founder of Free mE EFT and Quantum Freedom.

Victoria has been married to her husband for 27 years and puts her relationship with her husband first.

Self Identity and Conflicts

We chat about self-identity and how it conflicts with your partners or anyone else’s identity when in a relationship

Victoria says “When you don’t know who you are and you are learning these boundaries by bumping into somebody else’s.” As an individual in a relationship, you are responsible for your own happiness. You can be happy without any changes in your partner or making anyone else responsible for the happiness.

Finding time for your relationships

The takeaway for us was on the value of having deeper conversations. It is much more impactful and fulfilling in a relationship to find opportunities to have a more meaningful conversations rather than spending more time with each other and having only shallow conversations (like talking about the weather). As Victoria and her husband were often travelling, they would get less time to talk to each other being in opposite ends of the globe, but it would be a much deeper conversation which they found to be a benefit to them. They always get time together on the calendar first. With their own mechanisms to spend time together, like travelling quarterly, watching silly shows, walking the dogs and more, they have set their non-negotiables and get plenty of opportunities to catch up and sync in with each other.

Now how does one get to having a meaningful conversation? At, LoVita we discuss many Frameworks to help this conversation started. The key is finding what works for you and your partner, and building on top of it. Then of course, sharing it with others not only reinforces your learning but also provides you opportunities to validate your thinking and learn from others. If that still seems too daunting, here’s a simple suggestion. Start with asking a question that you would like them to ask you. Start with asking questions, not just about the weather but things questions that will provide you an deeper insight of your partner.

5 Love Languages

We talk about the 5 Love Languages

  • Quality Time
  • Words of Affirmation
  • Acts of Service
  • Receiving Gifts
  • Physical Touch

Understanding your own language and then your partner’s language, and then being able to speak in that is so much easier on your relationship than trying to teach each other a brand new language.

Being aware of the love language of the partner takes communication, observation and time. Rather than defining a relationship, self centered as any human would through your own love languages, it can be a lot more beneficial to identify your partner’s love language. While being aware of each others love language is the first step, the next is to set markers for the minimum fulfillment and then to deliver a little bit more.

Ass Principle

Victoria talks about the Ass Principle. In times that your partner knows very well, something that they’re doing is very upsetting to you and they’re still doing it. When there’s a behavior or a pattern that is frustrating to you, do the below

  1. Validation – in your mind. Look at the person that you love and say, “what an ass.”
  2. Ownership – Say to yourself, “But he/she is my ass”. Own up to your relationship with them.
  3. Forgiveness – Say to yourself, “I choose to forgive them”. You neither excuse the behavior, not punish it.
  4. Love – Time to say, “I choose to love them.”

This 4 step process explained by Victoria, is a “two minute if that, it could be a 30 second mental reset that gets you validated, that gets you resituated in your relationship. That reminds you how the power of forgiveness and you actually look at them [with love]”

She explains how the 4 step process above can be applied to not only relationships but also to strangers. With some variations, she explains with an example of what to the next time someone cuts of off on the road while driving and you can “become a part of the greater healing versus, tearing yourself from inside.”

The power of this Principle is how the whole story, starts from you and ends with you. You’re not at all trying to change what the other person is doing which is powerful. Instead you are inviting them into the process simply by the choice of language that you’re using. Then by adding humor on top of it when you get comfortable with this principle is so beautiful. This can be very empowering, so the next time you bother your partner, you can try saying “Honey, I’m your ass” and see how that goes.

Relationship Vision

Victoria says, “we all go into the relationship with partial agenda, if we’re being honest, we have a vision. And that vision, our ability to communicate that vision to the person we’re considering commitment is going to either save you 10, 15, 20 years prior to divorce of strife or help you find the soulmate.”

Issues or your vision in your relationship should be addressed before anyone deepends their relationship into a romantic level. To those who have jumped into a relationship without this conversation prior, she says “you can say, Look, let’s start from ground zero. Let’s should start from ground zero. We just met today. This is what we haven’t done that we should have done three years ago, 10 years. Where do you see us going and what are the ways you want us to get there? And what are your non-negotiables? And if you see that the person can never meet your non-negotiables, please have enough love for you and for them to end the relationship. It’s not easy to end a relationship, but it is simple”

Learning to listen

Learning to listen without need of giving an answer. There is a simple exercise that she recommends. Set a timer for 15 minutes, and give undivided attention without asking one question, but just listening. Ask your partner, what’s on their mind and just listen to everything they’re saying. Listen, not only for the content, see when does their emotion go up and down cuz you will know more about them than they might be aware of. Then listen for repitition. The more they talk, the more they’ll start saying something and it’ll be a word or a phrase that they repeat. Understand that that is where they need the support the most.

How does this exercise help? Victoria says “We’re trained to listen with the purpose of understanding and even we try to understand so that we can act. Versus understand so we can love. There’s a huge shift to, I can completely disagree with you and still understand you and love you. And when listening is shifted to that, it’s a gift.” To validate your listening, something that you can do is, she adds, “empowering person back and saying, thank you for vulnerably sharing with me. I know you can figure all of this out. You don’t need a savior. I know you can figure this out.” She emphasises at the end on the point that as human being we all want to have somebody else say, you got this. As a partner, you not only have to say it but mean it.

Prosper mE

Victoria Rader has her latest book come out, Prosper mE and it’s about money. Check it out from the link below and also if you haven’t take a quick quiz to begin your journey of empowerment.

Skip the Beat – Ndini – Self Identity in Relationships

Skip the Beat – Ndini – Self Identity in Relationships Love Vitamins for Relationships

In this episode, of "Skip the Beat", we talk about Self Identity in a relationship The balance between Sharing vs Controlling Setting healthy boundaries in your relationship Takeaways How others see us is crucial for our self-identity; start by understanding your beliefs and then share what you learn and know. Remain adaptable; acknowledge that your identity is malleable and that conflicts aren’t bad – just opportunities for curiosity and growth. Regardless of how you are received when you share your truth, stand by your boundaries Before you can share with your partner what you want, there is a lot of self-identity work that is needed to be done to answer how you are and who you want to be. Doing identity work, we start to realize that identity as a concept is quite malleable, it’s quite fluid. Looking at it in terms of “this or that” is very reductionist. Identity is more of an amalgamation or a culmination of different moving parts. To discover the fine balance of how much and when to share in a new relationships Digest and discern what are the important things to share Start to build a foundation of mutual respect and understanding by sharing in small doses and using curiosity to ask questions Start with – Sit with yourself, and identity, what are those non-negotiable boundaries within you? What are the things that you don’t know you can’t function without? Navigating the fine line between controlling and letting go can be tricky. We often feel like we have to give something to get something. By transforming our ORs into ANDs, we can change this negotiation in our favor. Start having these conversations with yourself, to understand where our boundaries start and when it gets to sacrifice. To build a healthy partnership, work on laying down the foundation for your relationship so difficult conversations don’t have to be hard ones and can be everyday, honest and real conversation. Building a healthy relationship requires hard work and being intentional about normalizing such difficult conversations. LoVita – Love Vitamins for a healthier is a community by Partners for Partners. We share stories about how Partners are working intentionally toward building a healthier relationship. To learn more check out the links below 🔗 All below links in a single page  – https://linktr.ee/lovitalovevitamins Website – https://lovita.blog Newsletter – https://mailchi.mp/81f58463e76b/subscribe Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/lovitalovevitamins Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/lovitalovevitamins — Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lovitalovevitamins/support

Inspiration
A word from the Shona language in Zimbabwe, Ndini, that translates to “this is me” in English.

Themes

  • Self Identity in a relationship
  • Balance between Sharing vs Controlling
  • Setting boundaries

Takeaways

  • How others see us is crucial for our self-identity; start by understanding your beliefs and then share what you learn and know.
  • Remain adaptable; acknowledge that your identity is malleable and that conflicts aren’t bad – just opportunities for curiosity and growth.
  • Regardless of how you are received when you share your truth, stand by your boundaries 

Discussion

Before you can share with your partner what you want, there is a lot of self-identity work that is needed to be done to answer how you are and who you want to be.

Doing identity work, we start to realize that identity as a concept is quite malleable, it’s quite fluid. Looking at it in terms of “this or that” is very reductionist. Identity is more of an amalgamation or a culmination of different moving parts.

To discover the fine balance of how much and when to share in a new relationships

  1. Digest and discern what are the important things to share
  2. Start to build a foundation of mutual respect and understanding by sharing in small doses and using curiosity to ask questions

Start with – Sit with yourself, and identity, what are those non-negotiable boundaries within you? What are the things that you don’t know you can’t function without?

Navigating the fine line between controlling and letting go can be tricky. We often feel like we have to give something to get something. By transforming our ORs into ANDs, we can change this negotiation in our favor. Start having these conversations with yourself, to understand where our boundaries start and when it gets to sacrifice.

To build a healthy partnership, work on laying down the foundation for your relationship so difficult conversations don’t have to be hard ones and can be everyday, honest and real conversation. Building a healthy relationship requires hard work and being intentional about normalizing such difficult conversations.