Relationships are like plants. You can’t just bring home a plant, put it on a shelf and hope it will grow strong and healthy. You have to nurture it, provide adequate lighting and water to make it healthy.
Healthy
relationships encourage individuality and freedom, and provide room for
personal growth.
We are all different and there is no one way to a healthy relationship, but there are certain qualities that are very key. These include:
We are all different and there is no one way to a healthy relationship, but there are certain qualities that are very key. These include:
- Respecting individuality, embracing differences, and allowing each person to “be themselves”
- Discussing things, allowing for differences of opinion, and compromising equally
- Expressing and listening to each other’s feelings, needs, and desires
- Trusting and being honest with yourself and your partner,
- Resolving conflicts in a rational, peaceful, and mutually agreed-upon way
- Engaging in a way that eliminates controlling, manipulative, or emotional and/or physical abuse
Other characteristics of a healthy relationship:
· *
Each person has individual rights
· *
Open communication
· *
Trust
·
* Equality in decision making
· *
Respect for each person’s sexual boundaries
· *
Willingness to honestly discuss problem
· * Commitment
· *
Fun
· * Always using non-violent approaches to resolving
conflict
Let’s
take a look at some things that literally turns healthy relationships into
unhealthy ones.
There is no way to build a lasting, healthy relationship on a foundation of dishonesty.
Honesty must be at the core
of a relationship; there is no substitute for it.
It is fashionable in our
day to treatise over unpleasant truth.
We deceive those we love, rationalizing that keeping secrets is
really for their good.
Dishonesty is a very hard
habit to break and addiction to this will definitely deteriorate the
relationship.
Forgiveness is a miraculous gift between two people. A relationship flourishes when we are willing to forgive past hurts and disappointments.
Refusing to forgive is like carrying around a junk bag full of hurts of the past. Every time someone makes a mistake, we toss it into the bag and carry it with us forever.
There are no junk bags in healthy relationships. Out of love, the partners take the hurt and disappointment of the past and burn it up in the flames of forgiveness.
When we unlock others from a past they cannot correct, we free them to become all they can become, and we free our relationships to become all they can becomes as well.
(3)Comparison:
This goes for all sorts of comparisons. Comparing your partner with your ex, your best friend, your childhood crushes, or your present relationship with previous ones is a deadly trait.
You fail to fully appreciate what’s amazing about your relationship because you’re preoccupied with the things you lack. Focus on the good stuff, and really, just dwell on that.
(4)Self interest:
In a healthy relationship, each person finds joy in sharing in the other person’s growth, in playing a role in completing the other.In an unhealthy relationship the focus is on completing oneself.
This selfish dynamic is at the heart of co-dependency.
Too many people fling half a person into a relationship, expecting that it will be completed by the other. It never works. No one can ever meet such expectations...
when the responsibility, resources and inputs are done by a person and not the two, then the relationship has become unhealthy.
(5)Failing to share activities:
It is important to take our partner’s passions and interests into account and to engage in activities that we really share.
Love doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Taking your time to relate is essential to sustaining intimacy.
Consistently doing things that our partner perceives as loving will also help keep the spark alive in your relationship.
(6)How You Handle Stress:
This is an important part in your relationship and can break or make you stronger. When stress enters your relationship, the key is how to handle it.
If you keep it to yourself, it can have a negative impact on you and your relationship. Make sure that whatever it is that you’re going through, you involve your partner and talk it out.
(7)Lack of communication:
This is a big sign when things are going bad in a relationship. If one or both of you avoid big discussions, then you don’t need a anyone to tell you that the relationship isn’t going to last.
If you really value your partner, you will take the first step in communicating problems, wants, desires or issues.
Now you must have known that even the healthiest of relationships can start to turn bad overtime if those factors listed above are not carefully considered.
Most relationships deteriorate and go progressively downhill when things become too predictable
Signs you get when you are in an unhealthy relationship:
·
Your tries
to control or manipulate you
·
Excessive
sexual jealousy
·
You can’t
trust your partner and you wonder what he/she is doing when they are not with
you
·
This person
does not like you to be close to other people
·
You feel
scared or uncomfortable around this person
·
Insults
·
Possessive
behaviour
It's never too late to start over. If you weren't happy with yesterday, try something different today. Don't stay stuck. Do better.
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