Healthy Relationships and How to Maintain Them
Healthy relationships involve honesty, trust, respect and open communication between partners, and they take effort and compromise from both people.
There is no imbalance of power and each partner can respect the other’s need for independence and can make their own decisions without fear of retribution or retaliation but there is also shared decision making.
10 signs of a healthy relationship:
You respect each other
You trust one another
You communicate well as a couple
You’re both committed to the relationship
You’re kind to each other
You enjoy each other’s company
You support each other’s goals
You make decisions together
The differences between independence and interdependence:
Independence can be defined as a condition where someone is capable of existing on its own without having to rely on others to sustain themselves while interdependence, are two people that are mutually dependent on each other while also having a sense of independence.
When dependence becomes unhealthy is when you put aside your own well-being to maintain a relationship with another person.
The idea of “Holding Hands Through Life’s Challenges”
It is okay if your relationship is going through a rough patch, most couples have areas of struggle but if both people are equally committed & you are working to stop patterns of behavior you can get get your relationship back to a healthy place. It’s when something happens over and over again that one partner may become resentful. It is important to talk about this as it may be coming up for you & see if and what the solutions are.
The difference between solvable problems versus perpetual problem is that a perpetual issue is one that a couple returns to over and over again (such as one person wanting kids or a difference in political views) something that is an example of a solvable issue are chores not being allocated in a way that feels like partnership.
If your relationship is abusive in anyway, contact your support system and figure out the safest way to leave. You cannot make an abusive relationship work and that is the only time that there is a very clear cut answer on terminating the relationship.
Some ways you can tend to your relationship is to express love physically, you can express appreciation and admiration, you can offer your partner emotional support, you can prioritize quality time/having alone time together. You can truly work on accepting one another and maintaining honesty. Another important factor is to constantly be working on communication with each other. What is clear for one person may not be clear for another. Try to consistently practice compassionate curiosity about what your partner is saying and why they are expressing it to you.
