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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 entering 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 moving from a place of wholeness rather than need, they recognize that they can care for themselves. This allows a space where partners can 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 participants time to express their feelings and emotions, so it is vital to listen carefully, ask questions, and let our mates know that we are interested in them and 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 are doing. Being a part of a greater whole requires that each partner have compassion for the other and empathy.
Healthy partnerships are open and honest. They handle problems immediately rather than tabling them for another day. However, it is best to set aside time to resolve conflicts when each party is well-fed and rested.
A healthy lifestyle includes balance. So though it is important to have alone time with one another, it is also essential to include friends, family, work, and hobbies at other times. If you have a balanced and inclusive life, you can open yourself to other creative possibilities for 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 a new relationship or the loss of an old one, a life’s passage, a career change, birth or death, etc. To successfully navigate these transitions is to be sensitive and open to each other’s feelings. By supporting one another’s growth, we can enhance relationships.
In the final analysis, a healthy relationship accepts each other’s differences and similarities. It allows the transcendence of something new to develop that is uniquely yours together.
