Healthy Relationships
Qualities of a Healthy Relationship
Evaluate Your Relationship
Managing Conflict
Effective Communication
Relationship Spoilers
Qualities of a Healthy Relationship
Being in love with someone is not just about having warm, fuzzy feelings for him or her. We tend to think of love as a feeling when it really is a relationship. It is easier to describe a good love relationship than it is to define what love is. So let’s talk about what has to be present in a love relationship in order to make it a good one:
- EXCLUSIVITY- Exclusivity in a love relationship means someone is your “one and only,” and that you are their “one and only.” Each lover would be very upset and feel betrayed if the other person had the same sort of relationship with another person.
- ENJOYMENT- If two people have a love relationship, they enjoy each other’s company. In fact, they enjoy being together so much that they look for opportunities to be together. And when they cannot be together, they wish they were. They like each other and have fun together.
- ADVOCATE/CHAMPION- Each person in a love relationship advocates or champions the other’s interests. This means you know each other well enough to know each other’s interests. You encourage and protect each other’s interests. You put each other’s interests first often enough to let each other know that he/she is very special, and, if you violate the other’s interests, you have a very good reason for doing so.
- GIVING THE UTMOST- In a love relationship, couples give to each other in many ways and at many times. Friends also give to each other in times of need, but couples are prepared to go beyond the giving of friendship. Friends are not generally expected to make the kinds of sacrifices for each other that couples do. It has an “I’ll be there for you no matter what” sort of tone.
- ACCEPTANCE & AUTHENTICITY- Each person accepts the other as they are without being inclined to make the other over. I want this person just as he or she is. Furthermore, I know that I can safely be myself with this person. There is no need for masks, facades, playing a role, or otherwise inhibiting expressions of who I really am. For acceptance to be meaningful, each has to know who the other is as fully as possible.
- RESPECT- This means you trust your lover’s judgments and decisions even when you do not fully understand them. You take it that he/she has a good reason for what he/she is doing, even when you do not know what they are. It also means that you give the other person the freedom to exercise his/her judgment, and that you do not degrade his/her decisions even though you may not fully agree with them.
- UNDERSTANDING- Understanding goes with respect. It means that you not only know the facts about the other person, but also why he/she does what he/she does.
- FASCINATION- Fascination means we want to be with the other person even when we should be engaged in other activities. We want to be with them, see them, touch them, talk to them, etc.
- INTIMACY- This means a deep level of sharing in which you build a history together. Sharing can include both doing activities together and confiding in each other. You end up with a person who knows you better than anyone else in the world. Intimacy can include sexual intimacy, but is not limited to that.
- COMMITMENT- Being in love involves a permanent commitment based on the certainty that this is the right person to spend my life loving and being loved by. Notice how strange how it would sound to say, “I will be in love with you for six months.”
Evaluate Your Relationship
- Can we be ourselves with each other?
- Can we accept and cherish each other just the way we are - without reservations?
- Do we enjoy each other’s company?
- Do we respect and understand each other even when we disagree?
- Do we bring out the best in each other?
- Do we act in each other’s best interests?
- Do we know and understand each other well enough to know how each other thinks, how each other tend to react to things, and what things are important to each other?
- Are we prepared to give the utmost to each other if needed?
- Can we trust each other with our lives, our children, and everything else that is dear to us?
- Is this person so fascinating that I can imagine spending a lifetime getting to know him or her?
- Can I imagine myself with this person 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now?
Managing Conflict
Conflicts are a normal and natural part of any relationship. The only exception seems to be the infatuation period of a new romantic relationship when you both seem to magically want the same things all of the time. Unfortunately, this period does not last forever. Eventually you will disagree. One of you will want something the other one does not, and resentment arises when you do not get what you want. Resentment causes distance in the relationship. So, what are some things you can do to keep the normal conflict from creating irreconcilable differences?
- Deal with one problem at a time.
- Focus on issues in the present, not the past. Don’t dredge up old grievances.
- Adopt a win-win strategy. There is a problem to be solved, not a victory to be won.
- Be clear and specific both in your complaints and in your requests for change.
- Suggest some possible solutions to the problems you present. Also brainstorm with your partner for other potential solutions. Try to come up with as many solutions as possible, and then do a cost-benefit analysis of these alternatives.
- Be reasonable and realistic in your statements.
- Check out your assumptions no matter how “obvious” they might be to you or how “certain” you are about your partner’s views.
- Legitimize and decriminalize: Legitimizing is an attempt to understand why your partner did what he or she did. It is an attempt to understand why it made sense to do that specific thing at that time. Decriminalizing means giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. You absolve your partner of the intent to hurt you by his or her actions. “I know that hurting me was not your intent, but when you…”
- Ask yourself whether conflict is the result of miscommunication and misunderstanding. Are you misreading or misinterpreting the behavior of the other person?
- Choose an appropriate time and place to be open and honest about your feelings and needs. Don’t choose public places where embarrassment is probable.
- Use tact and timing. Don’t bring up important issues when there is neither time nor energy to resolve them. Request a time that will work for both of you.
- Don’t use unfair or dirty tactics. This means no bullying, ridiculing, name-calling, accusing, blaming withholding, mimicking, or exaggerating.
- Show respect for your partner.
- Don’t nag, whine, preach, or lecture. These behaviors will only erode your relationship.
- Avoid arguing over the “truth” or “who is right.” People have feelings that need to be heard and accepted. These feelings are neither true nor false.
- Listen, listen, listen
From “Passage to Intimacy” by Lori H. Gordon, Ph.D. and “Love is Never Enough” by Aaron Beck, M.D.
Effective Communication
Effective communication is an essential component to healthy relationships. Communication with others involves expressing ourselves and responding to someone else.
Expressing Ourselves
- When you are stating an opinion, making an observation, or expressing a feeling, the most appropriate format to use is called an “I-statement.”
- You may even already be using them. I-statements allow us to state things in positive terms, to express ourselves directly and honestly, and to take responsibility for what we think, feel, and need while avoiding blaming or accusing others.
- In contrast, “You-statements” blame the other person, put him/her on the defensive, and often cause communication to be blocked.
- To simplify things, we can use a kind of “formula” for I-statements: “I feel/think/want (express the feeling/thought/desire)… When (state the behavior causing it)… Because (identify the reason)…” The nice thing about this formula is that we can decide how much of it we want to use. It can just be the first on, or the first two lines, or all three.
Responding to Others
- When other people are expressing themselves, it is not appropriate to use I-statements when responding. A more effective technique is called “reflection.”
- Reflection is saying back, in your own words, the content and/or feeling of what the other person just said.
- Reflection does not question, challenge, argue, approve, or disapprove. We can use an even simpler formula for reflection: “Sounds like you’re feeling/thinking/wanting (express the emotion, thought, desire you hear…) because (state the reason you heard for it…”
- Reflection requires us to listen very carefully to what the other person is actually saying. Yet we also do NOT have to be right in identifying the emotion or reason we hear because the speaker will automatically clarify it for us (and sometimes for him/her in the process).
- What we need to remember is that when we use reflection, the other person is going to continue talking about what he/she is experiencing, so we need to make sure that we have the time to listen.
*** When we first begin using I-statements and reflection, it can feel artificial. It doesn’t take long for them to become automatic. Experiment with them and you may find that your discussions with other people become much more productive and satisfying.***
Retrieved and Adapted from the Virtual Pamphlet Collection: Counseling Services, University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire
Relationship Spoilers
We will live happily ever after: This is one of the first ways relationships go wrong, and it stems from the belief that love is easy, that we will live happily ever after, that these warm, fuzzy feelings will never fade. Love is not a feeling, it is a relationship. That relationship can include those warm, fuzzy feelings, but it can also include other feelings like frustration, anger, and sadness.
Unspoken expectations: We all enter relationships with unspoken expectations, and sometimes it is not until those expectations are not met that we realize that we even have them. Negotiating the differences in the expectations that each of you bring to the relationship makes up much of the work involved in young relationships. These differences can range from how you squeeze the toothpaste tube to how you resolve conflicts to how you celebrate holidays.
Not seeing the other person as separate from ourselves: This involves assuming that the way I think and feel is the only way to think and feel about something. We don’t allow others to think or feel differently from us. In extreme cases, we literally cannot see things from another’s point of view. And we see our loved one as extensions of ourselves.
If you disagree with me, that is a rejection of me: Maybe I am threatened if you disagree with me because my self-esteem depends on your approval of me? And if you are an extension of me, how dare you think or feel differently? Furthermore, disagreements might mean we lose those warm, fuzzy loving feelings. Where did the love go?
How conflict is handled: When conflict occurs, we usually go into a protective mode because we don’t want to experience emotional pain. We become afraid that we might lose that person’s love. We can become compliant, indifferent or seek to control them. Becoming compliant means we give up our point of view and agree with the other person. Indifferent means that we withdraw from the other person. Trying to control the other person and get them to agree with us can involve lectures, anger, belittling, etc.
Negative feedback loop: This is when the mode of fighting in a relationship becomes so predictable that there is a recognizable pattern. The movie, The Story Of Us , showed this sort of relationship in which the fighting always ends in a stalemate and is never resolved.
Erosion: This can be a beach metaphor where the sand is constantly eroding from the foundation of a building. In a relationship, erosion occurs when couples do not give enough time to the relationship. Not focusing on each other enough of the time in order to keep each other feeling special and the relationship feeling alive is erosion. No major conflicts are present, just lots of distance.
Calamities: Calamities are the major blows to a relationship that the relationship may not survive. This can include the death of a child or infidelity. It is sort of like the hurricanes we have around here. Our barrier islands take hard hits sometimes. The islands survive, but will not ever look the same again even as they rebuild.
Balancing of opposites: This refers to opposite fighting patterns. One partner will like to blow up and the other will like to retreat. Usually this ends up with each partner blowing up or retreating more than they normally would. This can also refer to differences in parenting styles, sexual frequency, etc.
Reacting to each other in the same way we reacted to our opposite sex parent: Sometimes our partners remind us of our opposite sex parent, and in those cases we tend to overlay an image of our parent onto our partner and react to them as if they were really that parent. Our unfinished business with our parents interferes with our current partner.