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Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m here to talk about breaking up – a difficult topic. Many of us find it to be one of the most painful things we’ll ever go through in our life. Either we have to let go of somebody that we love because it’s the right thing to do, or we’re being left by somebody else and we don’t want the relationship to be over. In both cases, it could be difficult in very different ways.

I’m going to give you some information and advice from the wealth of experience that I have around this subject. Not that it will take any pain away, but it will hopefully be a guide for you to take care of yourself and how to make a healthy decision.

Everyone gets to decide what is essential for you in a relationship. It could be “I need to feel safe,” “I need to feel love and passion,” “I need to be attracted or sexually attracted to my partner,” “I need to be friends,” “We need to be compatible maybe in a certain way.” There could be a million other reasons but everyone has to in their own lifetime figure out what it is that’s essential for you and be guided by that, because many people stay and return to unhealthy relationships when their essential needs are not being met.

The first thing, especially in couples counseling, I always explore and exhaust all options. Have you thoroughly explored this? Are you really clear that this is essential for you? Have you tried to get your needs met with your partner? If you have thoroughly explored these options and they have not given you what you really need, you need to end the relationship.

On the other hand, if you’re the one that’s being left, you don’t want somebody in your life who doesn’t want to be with you. It is unloving and unkind to yourself to be in the relationship no matter how much it hurts. Truly letting somebody go that doesn’t want to be with you is a very courageous act and very important for you to do because you deserve to have somebody that takes care of you, that worships you, and loves you completely.
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Communication where no one needs to be defensive or to be made wrong. Learn the skills for a healthy relationship.

Video Transcript
Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m here to talk about a way of being in a relationship where nobody needs to defend themselves and nobody needs to be made wrong for anything, but it’s a really open relationship where you get to have an experience, have a feeling. You can feel hurt by your partner and you can bring it to each other without defending it, deflecting it, pushing it away.

Oftentimes I think in relationships when somebody has been hurt and “you hurt me when…” and the person tells their partner and the other person goes, “I only did that because you do this.” Or it wasn’t like that or “I only meant this by that,” or there’s some way of explaining it. There are all kinds of ways in which we don’t actually receive what person is saying and they have a right to have that experience, whether you did anything wrong or not.

It’s not about whether you did anything wrong. What matters most is the person is having a feeling and they’re hurt through the one you love. So the first thing that I recommend is that if you’re hurt and you want to share this with your partner, don’t come at them pointing fingers but come in a very vulnerable way, first of all.
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Letting go of the Small Stuff in Relationships

Hello. My name is Sevin Philips and I’m here to talk about letting go of the small things in a relationship. That’s a hard thing to define because what one person feels is small, the other person feels is a pretty big issue.

I’m asking all of you to be pretty darn honest with yourselves. You might notice in most of my videos, it is a lot about examining what you want. What are your essential needs to be safe, to have trust, to have respect? Essential needs are important and I don’t want you to let those go. I want you to know what they are. I want you to communicate those in a good way to your partner and I want to know if you know how to figure out how to take care of yourself in those situations.

There’s a lot of stuff that I feel gets pulled into that category that may actually not belong there. Having you examine what those things are is all about you having a better life and having more ease in your life. One of the most underrated areas in a relationship I think is ease. We talk about passion, love, and all these things. Having ease in a long-term relationship is very valuable. I think a lot of times it’s achievable if we both work really hard at it.
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I’m here to talk about the fundamental principles that are in healthy relationships. It’s important for us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of what really allows us to thrive in a relationship and what really puts us off on the other path of not doing well and not being happy together.

Video Transcript

The Openness Principle in Healthy Relationships

Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m here to talk about the fundamental principles that are in healthy relationships. It’s important for us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of what really allows us to thrive in a relationship and what really puts us off on the other path of not doing well and not being happy together.

The general principle that I notice is a general principle of openness, adaptability, changeability, being flexible with each other even when things are difficult in a relationship, that allowance – that kind of communication – really allows couples to change, to move, to adapt, to handle things and really to learn how to love and trust each other. Having that room in a relationship allows for really big lives. When you have a partnership where each person has a big life and you also have an amazing relationship, everyone is for the better.

On the other hand, some of us struggle with trust, insecurity. These things are very difficult and it drives us to behave in ways that are clingy, needy, possessive, controlling – ideas in which sometimes we want to close the relationship down and keep it from being bigger. Maybe we limit our friendships or the times that we have with other things outside the relationship. These typically don’t go so well for those couples.
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Exposing the Need to Control Other People and Breaking Free

Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’m here to talk about feeling controlled and being controlling in a relationship.
There are two sides to that. Many of us have been one or the other or both. I think you know when you’re on the side of you feel controlled. Somebody is not happy with you and happy with your behavior. They’re disappointed in you, they want you to be something or do something different than you’re doing. You know about it and they let you know about it in some either in subtle or direct way. It doesn’t feel good.

Most of the time, you want to avoid that conversation, you want to avoid that person. Or maybe in a worst case, you change or view, your outlook, or your behavior for somebody else, which temporarily maybe you can do, but it never really lasts, because if you don’t want to do something that’s not actually good for you, it just isn’t sustainable. Then the other person gets to feel good about your change and then is constantly disappointed.
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Video Transcription

Fear of Being Alone & Its Impact on Relationships

When you fall in love, there are many powerful forces and many of them are incredibly beautiful. Love is one of the most amazing things that will ever happen in our lives for those of us that have the grace to experience it.

There are some elements that drive us to choose people, to stay in relationships, and sometimes even make poor choices in partners. One of them I find is the fear of being alone. It happens on many different levels; sometimes subtle, sometimes very powerful for people. But if you have a little bit of that inkling, that fear of being alone, it’s most likely affecting your decision especially when it comes to love. It’s really important to examine this area.
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Video Transcription

Parenting & How to Keep the Marriage Alive

Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’m here to talk about parenting and keeping your marriage intact. It’s a challenging time for most people, and I have some great suggestions that I think will help your relationship.

The first one is staying connected. It’s a tough one. It’s all about the baby – and it should be all about the baby. It’s the time in our lives when we’re raising a child and we’re focusing on the child and we put all our resources into it. There are some small and yet very powerful ways, though, to stay connected.

One of them is date night. Of course, it’s cliché. But for those who take it seriously and go every week or every month, whatever your ritual is, keep it important and get enough babysitters to back up anybody who cancels. Go sometimes even if you’re tired. Go to a movie or whatever it might be. Give yourself that time and make it important and really protect that time.
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How to Avoid Bad Relationship Habits

Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist. I’m here to talk about those bad relationship habits. Many of us fall into them and I have some great ideas about how not to.

The first thing is taking each other for granted. It happens to the best of relationships. You stop sharing those little things that you used to share. Remember when you were dating and you sent a lot of text to each other “Hey, that was a treat this morning. Thanks.” Or “I had such a good time last night” or “I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight.” Even those seemingly mundane things that each one of you does, you used to say, “Wow, thanks. That’s great.” You stop doing that over time. These are the things to pick back up. Do these on a regular basis, and your relationship will feel good in a lot of ways.

Another that happens often enough is people stop talking. When you have a difficult conversation or a difficult subject, sometimes people avoid having those conversations. My recommendation is to have a monthly meeting. And I mean it: a monthly meeting. Maybe an hour long. You don’t want to make this something more arduous than it needs to be, but for an hour talk about sex, money, the needs that you have that are not being met and maybe the ones that are being met, how you are happy, and maybe future goals that you have. Mix it up. But have that conversation on a regular basis and you’re sure to have a better relationship.
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By Sevin Philips, MFT

1. Respect is more important than love
2. Checking in about the Relationship
3. Not taking each other for granted
4. Protecting quality time
5. Letting go of the small stuff
6. Making amends, owning your behavior
7. Working on your sex life
8. Actively create a future together

Video Transcription

Hello, my name is Sevin Philips. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist and I’ve been working with couples for many years. During this time, I have found 8 key principles that really help in creating a healthy, long-lasting relationship.

If you’re dating or you’re new in a relationship, these principles are excellent for developing a foundation for the relationship you want.

And if you’ve been in a relationship for a while, even if you’re having challenges in that relationship, these are the principles to practice together to make it better.

The first principle is respect is more important than love. We all know that love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It’s the thing that drew us together in the beginning. But what happens over time is if we’re disrespectful – we’re bickering, we’re defensive, we cut each other off, we start name calling, whatever the disrespect is – we erode our love over time.
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East Bay, Berkeley Relationship Counseling Center (Couples Counseling Therapy)

Do you keep ending up with people who are not good for you? Yes, it’s true the person you are picking is behaving poorly.  Since we cannot change someone else’s behavior, we must examine our own patterns in picking the wrong person. In doing this, we can begin to conceptualize healthy relationships and hold that as our new standard.

Unhealthy Relationships:

1. We mistake love for physical attraction, neediness and the need to rescue or be rescued. (Examine how your desperation effects your perception)
2. We choose emotionally and physically unavailable people in relationships. (Examine your fear of intimacy)
3. We pick people who treat us poorly by being punishing, critical, controlling or demeaning. (Examine your low self-esteem.)
4. We lose interest in our own personal interests and activities and become enmeshed with the one person and their interests.  (Examine your boundaries.)
5. We stay in and return to unhealthy relationships. (Examine your fear of loneliness.)
6. We begin sexual relationships or become emotionally attached without really knowing someone.  (Examine your boundaries.)
7. We fantasize about who we think someone is and then are crushed when they fall short of that fantasy.  (Examine what is reality vs. fantasy)

Healthy Relationships:

1. When something is wrong we can talk about it.
2. We encourage each other to be better people.
3. Having separate interests and friends isn’t a threat.
4. We can be vulnerable about feelings with some degree of safety.
5. We can handle difficult situations as a team.
6. We both are dedicated to spending quality time with each other.
7. Trust builds through our growing capacity to be honest with one another.

Remember unhealthy patterns are necessary to learn and grow!

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