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The Four Pillars of a Healthy Relationship
A healthy relationship is based on four words: love, commitment, obligation, and responsibility.
Before one can enter into a healthy relationship, one must first know themselves, acknowledge and recognize their patterns, and consciously override the impulse to connect with someone who sets off red flags. For example, you may be attracted to the bad boy, but a healthy person deliberately chooses not to go there.
When one is moving from a place of wholeness rather than need, they recognize that they can take care of themselves. This allows a space in which partners are free to care for one another. Of course communication is essential and can only occur successfully in an environment of openness and empathy. Then, emotional support is available for one another, as partners check in with each other, from time to time, to see how they are feeling, and what they are feeling.
A good dialogue allows each participant time to express their feelings and emotions; so it is important to listen carefully, asking questions and letting our mate know that we are interested in them, as well as their thoughts and feelings.
Intimacy requires time in, as well as time out. Check in with your mate and ask them, on occasion how they feel, and how they are doing. Being a part of a greater whole, requires that each partner have not only compassion for the other, but also empathy.
Healthy partnerships are open and honest. They handle problems immediately rather than tabling them for another time, another day. However, it is best to set aside a time to resolve conflicts, when each party is well-fed and rested.
A healthy lifestyle is one that includes balance. So though it is important to have alone time with one another, it is also important to include at other times friends, family, work, and hobbies. If you have a balanced and inclusive life, you can open yourself to other creative possibilities for both you and your partner together and individually. Then neither party feels that they have sacrificed or given up anything for the other, but rather that their relationship is large enough, to contain both of them.
All relationships evolve and change. Therefore, it is important to grow with one another, and to be aware of each other’s changes. Transitions are the markers that define us, whether it is a new relationship or the loss of an old one, a life’s passage, or a career change, birth or death, etc. To navigate these transitions, together, successfully, is to be sensitive and open to each other’s feelings. By supporting one another’s growth, we can enhance relationship.
In the final analysis, a healthy relationship is one that is accepting of each other’s differences, as well as similarities, and allows the transcendence of something new to develop, that is uniquely yours together.
