26
What is Relational Health?
Relational Health is being open to creating healthy relationships with everyone in your life from your spouse to your baby-sitter.
Healthy Relationships
We all have relationships with many people in our lives and all of these relationships are different. Whether it is with friends, family, significant others, partners, acquaintances or anyone else, it is important to know how to have healthy relationships with the people in our lives. Healthy relationships increase our selfesteem, improve mental and emotional health, and help us have fuller lives.
This section focuses mostly on significant others, partners, girlfriends, boyfriends, and intimate relationships. However, most everything found here can be applied to any relationship.
Your relationships will benefit you when you learn how to communicate with your partners in a healthy way. Learn general tips on communicating, how to work out disagreements, and how to talk about sex with your partner. Check out some good feeling words to use when you’re talking with people. Dating and interpersonal relationships can be confusing and take time and commitment to master.
The Question we should all ask is “Am I in a Healthy Relationship”?
Sometimes it feels impossible to find someone who’s right for you and who thinks you’re right for him or her! So when it happens, you’re usually so psyched that you may miss some important clues into the type of person you have just encountered.
27
Be In Good Health
Living A Life of Happiness, Wholeness and Wellness!
It’s totally normal to look at the world through rose-colored glasses in the early stages of a relationship. But for some people, those rosecolored glasses turn into blinders that keep them from seeing that a relationship isn’t as healthy as it should be and maybe it’s time to leave.
Have you ever asked yourself this question, what makes a Healthy Relationship? Hopefully, you and your significant other are treating each other fabulously. Not sure if that’s the case? Take a step back from the dizzying sensation of being swept off your feet and think about whether your relationship has these qualities: Mutual respect - Does he or she get how great you are and why? The key is that your spouse or significant other should be into you for who you are - for your great sense of humor, your love of reality TV, etc. Does your partner listen when you say you’re not comfortable doing something and then back off right away? Respect in a relationship means that each person values whom the other is and understands - and would never challenge the other person’s boundaries.
Trust - You’re talking with a guy from work, and your significant other walks by. Does he completely lose his cool or keep walking because he knows you’d never cheat on him? It’s OK to get a little jealous sometimes - jealousy is a natural emotion. But how a person reacts when he or she feels jealous is what matters. There’s no way you can have a healthy relationship if you don’t trust each other.
Honesty - This one goes hand-in-hand with trust because it’s tough to trust someone who isn’t being honest with you. Have you ever caught your significant other in a major lie? Like they told you that they had to work on Friday night but it turned out they were at the movies with their friends? The next time they say they have to work, 28
you’ll have a lot more trouble believing them and the trust will be on shaky ground.
Support - It’s not just in bad times that your partner should support you. Some people are great when your whole world is falling apart but can’t take being there when things are going right (and vice versa). In a healthy relationship, your significant other is there with a shoulder to cry on when you find out your parents are getting divorced and to celebrate with you when you accomplish one of your goals.
Fairness/equality - You need to have give-and-take relationship, too.
Do you take turns choosing which new movie to see? As a couple, do you hang out with your partner’s friends as often as you hang out with yours? It’s not like you have to keep a running count and make sure things are exactly even, of course. But you’ll know if it isn’t a pretty fair balance. Things get bad really fast when a relationship turns into a power struggle, when one person is fighting to get his or her way all the time. Compromise in a relationship is a necessity.
You must know that sometimes you will have to concede to win at the end, by making your spouse or significant other happy and putting their needs first.
Separate identities - In a healthy relationship, everyone needs to make compromises. But that doesn’t mean you should feel like you’re losing out on being yourself. When you started going out, you both had your own lives - your own families, friends, interests, hobbies, etc. - and that shouldn’t change. Neither of you should have to pretend to like something you don’t, give up seeing your friends, nor drop out of activities you love. And you also should feel free to keep developing new talents or interests, making new friends, and moving forward.
29
Be In Good Health
Living A Life of Happiness, Wholeness and Wellness!
Good communication - You’ve probably heard lots of stuff about how men and women don’t seem to speak the same language. We all know how many different meanings the little phrase “no, nothing’s wrong” can have, depending on who’s saying it! Men are from Mars and Women are truly from Venus, at least I feel that way. Men and Women speak a totally different language, but what’s important is to get clarity if you’re not sure what he or she means. Speak honestly and openly so that the miscommunication is avoided in the first place. Never keep your feelings bottled up because you’re afraid it’s not what your significant other wants to hear or because you worry about sounding silly. And if you need some time to think things through before you’re ready to talk about it, take as much time as you need to and know that the right person will give you some space to do just that if you ask for it.
Just as there are healthy relationships, there are unhealthy ones as well. A relationship is unhealthy when it involves mean, disrespectful, controlling, or abusive behavior. Some people live in homes with parents who fight a lot or abuse each other - emotionally or physically. For some people who have grown up around this kind of behavior it can almost seem normal or OK. It’s not! Many of us learn from watching and imitating the people close to us. So someone who has lived around violent or abusive disrespectful behavior may not have learned how to treat others with kindness and respect or how to expect the same treatment.
Qualities like kindness and respect are absolute requirements for a healthy relationship. Someone who doesn’t yet have this part down may need to work on it with a trained therapist before he or she is ready for a committed relationship. Meanwhile, even though you may feel bad or feel for someone who’s been mistreated, you need to take care of yourself - it’s not healthy to stay in a relationship that involves abusive behavior of any kind whatsoever.
30
If you are in such a relationship, you need to get the help and support you need to get out. You deserve to be treated like a Queen or King and nothing less. When you value yourself you make others value you as well. Relationships don’t just get bad all at once; there are signs along the way, that the relationship is headed or trouble.
There are warning signs that will let you know that your relationship is an unhealthy one. Here’s some scary news: In one survey, 20% of American girls reported having been hit, slapped, or forced into sexual activity by their partners. This stuff happens to guys, too - they are just less likely to report it. And 40% of all teens said they know someone at school who experienced dating violence.
So if you think there’s no way it could happen to you or someone you know, think again.
Ask yourself, does my spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend:
•
Get angry when I don’t drop everything for him or her?
•
Criticize the way you look or dress?
•
Do they say you’ll never be able to find anyone else who would date you?
•
Keep me from seeing friends or from talking to any other guys or girls?
•
Want me to quit an activity, even though I love it?
•
Ever raise a hand when angry, like he or she is about to hit me?
•
Try to force me to go further sexually than I want to?
31
Be In Good Health
Living A Life of Happiness, Wholeness and Wellness!
These aren’t the only questions you can ask yourself. If you can think of any way in which your spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend is trying to control you, make you feel bad about yourself, isolate you from the rest of your world, or - this is a big one - harm you physically or sexually, then it’s time to get out, fast. Let a trusted friend or family member know what’s going on and make sure you’re safe. It can be tempting to make excuses or misinterpret violence as an expression of love. But even if you know that the person hurting you loves you, it is not healthy. No one deserves to be hit, shoved, or forced into anything he or she doesn’t want to do.
Physical, verbal or emotional abuse under no circumstances ever means LOVE, you must remember that you are too important and special to be treated any kind of way.
Ever heard about how it’s hard for someone to love you when you don’t love yourself? It’s a big relationship roadblock when one or both people struggle with self-esteem problems. Your spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend isn’t there to make you feel good about yourself if you can’t do that on your own. You will need constant validation from your spouse and that’s not healthy. Focus on being happy with yourself, and don’t take on the responsibility of worrying about someone else’s happiness. Only you can control what does or does not make you happy.
What if you feel that your spouse, girlfriend or boyfriend needs too much from you? If the relationship feels like a burden or a drag instead of a joy, it may be time to think about whether it’s a healthy match for you. Someone who’s not happy or secure may have trouble being a healthy relationship partner.
Relationships can be one of the best and most challenging parts of your life. They can be full of fun, romance, excitement, intense feelings, and occasional heartache, too. Whether you’re 32
single or in a relationship, remember that it’s good to be choosy about whom you get close to. If you’re still waiting, take your time and get to know plenty of people. Think about the qualities you value in a friendship and see how they match up with the ingredients of a healthy relationship. Work on developing those good qualities in yourself, they make you a lot more attractive to others. And if you’re already part of a pair, make sure the relationship you’re in brings out the best in both of you. The best thing you can do is work on you so when Mr. or Mrs. Right comes along, you will have already processed your own emotional and relationship baggage. Love and being loved is the greatest gift, it comes with a lot of responsibility, ups and down and twist and turns. Remember when you love someone love them with all that you have but don’t love them to death.
My story: I have been in numerous relationships throughout my lifetime. Some of them were healthy and some were very toxic. I found it to be extremely important to find the balance between what I truly wanted and needed. Sometimes what I wanted was not what was best for me. You have to search long and hard for the characteristics your soul mate must possess and what you are flexible about. I struggled with am I good enough for him and I questioned my value a lot of the times. I would sometimes secondguess my choice in choosing my mates and sometimes I chose men who I knew were not good for me. I realized that I didn’t like myself so I chose men to would exacerbate the issue by making me feel unworthy of love and happiness. I learned over the years that being in healthy relationships is very important to your total wellbeing and stability. Relationships with the others in your life are just as important as your intimate relationships. Life is about building and nurturing relationships whether they are parental, 33
Be In Good Health
Living A Life of Happiness, Wholeness and Wellness!
business, social or otherwise. It is important to invest time into building healthy,
thriving, fulfilling relationships. I think I got it right this time, it’s your turn, now enjoy the ride!
34