Cultivate and Keep Healthy Relationships

What do healthy relationships look like, and why are they important?
All of us form relationships with people, whether they’re with friends, partners, people we see sparsely, or people that we see every day. While we can say that we all form relationships, can we honestly say that they’re healthy?

It’s imperative that we learn how to cultivate healthy relationships in order to maintain friendships, or stay with our partners long-term. However, before we can learn to form and maintain healthy relationships, we must be clear on what they are.
Healthy relationships are largely characterized by respect, sharing, and trust. Additionally, they’re based on
the belief that equality, power, and control are shared between partners. In addition, building healthy patterns
in relationships can establish a solid foundation for the long run. The early months can feel effortless and
exciting, but successful long-term relationships involve ongoing evaluation, effort, and compromise.
Take a moment to think about some of your relationships. Is there one that feels like it weighs you down at
times, instead of adding joy to your life? If so, why not take a step back and reflect on whether the relationship has the characteristics of a healthy one, which are listed below.

• Respect - listening to one another, respecting each other’s right to his/her own feelings, acknowledging each other’s opinions, and listening in a non-judgmental manner. Respect also involves attempting to understand and re-affirm the other’s emotions.
• Trust and support – having a firm belief in the reliability, ability, or strength of one another, and supporting each other’s goals in life, opinions, friends, activities, and interests.
• Honesty and accountability - communicating openly and truthfully, admitting being wrong, and accepting responsibility for mistakes.

• Shared responsibility - making relationship decisions together, and mutually agreeing on the distribution of work. This may mean splitting household duties, or sharing parental responsibilities.
• Negotiation and fairness - being willing to compromise, accept change, and seek mutually satisfying solutions to conflict.
• Non-threatening behaviour - talking and acting in a way that promotes both partners’ feelings of safety in the relationship. Both should feel comfortable and safe in expressing him/herself and engaging in activities.

Now that we know what healthy relationships are, let’s turn our attention to maintaining them. In order to keep our relationships healthy, we need to establish clear boundaries and determine what is acceptable and what is not.
Each of us has boundaries, some of which go unspoken, in many areas of our lives. For instance, we set
boundaries in relation to physical proximity and touch; the words that are acceptable when we are spoken
to; honesty; and emotional intimacy (how expressive we are with our partners). When one or both people in
a relationship have difficulty either setting or maintaining their boundaries, the relationship suffers.
The following may indicate a problem in setting or enforcing these boundaries.

1. Being overwhelmed by a person. In a healthy relationship, everyone needs to make compromises, but that doesn’t mean you should feel like you’re not being yourself. For instance, neither you, nor your partner should have to pretend to like something you don’t, give up seeing your friends, or drop out of activities you love.
2. Letting others describe your reality. If you are unhappy, ask yourself why. Too often, relationships fail because someone loses themselves in the relationship, and become solely dependent on their partner. It is important for you to have a keen sense of yourself, so that the relationship can stay balanced. Your partner is not solely responsible for your emotional state, and it’s important for you to be accountable for your own happiness.
3. Ignoring difficult topics. Occasionally set aside time to check in with each other on the bigger issues like expectations and goals. If a couple ignores difficult topics for too long, their relationship is likely to drift into rocky waters without them noticing.
4. Being fearful of change. Changes in life outside your relationship will affect what you want and need from the relationship. Since change is inevitable, welcoming it as an opportunity to enhance the relationship is more fruitful than trying to keep it from happening.
5. Being non-communicative about feelings. While it is easy to assume that your partner knows your wants and needs, this is often not the case and can be the source of much stress in relationships. A healthier approach is to try to directly express your needs and wishes to your partner, and have them confirm their understanding of what you’ve expressed. 

Once we have established what healthy relationships are, it is in our best interest to form and maintain them.
To do this we need to evaluate their characteristics, and proceed to set and enforce boundaries. As part of a
process, working to set and maintain boundaries will help you form new healthy relationships, help your current ones flourish, and learning to cultivate and keep these relationships will help you lead a happier life.