Top Ten Characteristics of a Healthy Relationship

This is not one of my expansion blogs we need to do for end of course, but it is actually an expansion of our last assignment, "Top Ten Characteristics of a Healthy Relationship". I was trying to think about what to write for this Last Blog and kept coming back to what actually IS important for Healthy Couples to know. For those enjoying, I may well keep blogging here, because it’s fun and I like to write. As long as you like to read them, it will work.

At any rate, here’s what I’ve learned and I believe is important.

1. Gary Chapman’s five emotional love languages. I think that how you express love and caring, and how your partner does can have a huge affect on a relationship. If your language is say, Words of Affirmation and you are needing to hear them, and your partner believes that just being together, or doing things is the way to show love, confusion could arise.

How many couples get together at the end of the day where one of them thinks, great, I just cleaned the whole house, now they want to touch me? It could easily bring about misunderstandings. Which brings me to my next point.

2. Encoding and Decoding. How a couple does this is so important. Here’s the idea: On one hand we have the senders private intentions, what are they really truly thinking? And then there’s the senders public ones. Then we get the receiver, the listener. Which is private. What are they hearing? Because there’s a whole lot of interference in between what the sender meant, and what they said. Also in what they said and what the listener actually heard, if you see my point. If what a person says and what they mean are not interpreted the same way, problems are going to arise. Coming home to a partner sitting on the couch with tv and saying “You look relaxed, I’m so tired” might mean, it is so nice to come home to you at the end of a long day. But if the other hears “Well, there you are doing nothing while I’ve been working all day, didn’t you do anything???” That’s a problem.

Another example might be I have a friend who is very defensive. I know her love style, anxious/fearful, so I try and be patient, but whatever I say, she reacts defensively. It’s all about her. When I say “I bought some new blue shoes I really like” she is hearing “You don’t have blue shoes, why not?” I can be wearing, so to speak.

3. How people change their attachment styles. To be a part of a healthy couple a person should know their attachment style. If a person finds themselves as one of the unhealthy ones, they’re going to need to change. Which is possible. This requires taking a really good look at oneself. Not everyone can do this, and much blame gets put on the other person. Changing an attachment style is work. Healthy couples work at it. One of the things I’ve been working on the last few years is I used to think I knew why the other person did a thing, or didn’t. It was all about me. As in they didn’t call back, they must hate me. I know, I know, that’s an extreme one, but it makes my point. A healthy couple, or person, isn’t jumping to I hate you. They are far more secure than that, and would likely ask the other, why didn’t you call me back? Knowing that it most likely had nothing to do with them.

4. Couples who are working well together do look at themselves. I know I sort of said this in the last example, but to elaborate: Healthy people clean up their side of the street. They ask, what is my part in this? What is my fear? Why am I reacting this way? They don’t put it onto someone else, and try and control things they other person does, or blame them. Healthy couples look at themselves first. Healthy couples know that what the other person does is not something they can control. They know that the little irritations are just that: Little irritations. If a person is stomping around unhappy, angry, fearful and unhappy, it’s not because of the fact that your partner stayed out late, or didn’t pick up his towel off the floor. It’s because there’s something wrong with you. Deal with your own mess before you decide it’s all about the other person.

5. Sometimes people don’t act the way we want them to. Sometimes we get mad because of something they did. Saying honestly to oneself “I’m upset because of their actions” And figuring it out from there, is far more healthy than saying “I hate you, you did this because you don’t care about me” Healthy couples acknowledge this, and separate the actions from the love, and work on the specific problem. Specific problems can be discussed. And sometimes, when we’re part of a couple, we have to know and understand that people are people and people are going to do stupid things. How you handle these things, without letting the Four Horseman in, will determine the success or failure of your coupleness.

6. Speaking of arguments, healthy couples know how to have them. They are going to happen. How a couple argues can determine the success or failure of the relationship. Once a couple gets the four horsemen clipping and clopping around, things are going to deteriorate quickly. Using I-statements, letting things go, having great make-up sex all work. Healthy couples know this. They know that winning isn’t important. Life isn’t a battle and you don’t have to win. Kind of like drowning. Once you stop struggling. Ok, bad example, but the idea is once you cease fighting anything and everything, your life is going to get a whole lot better. That doesn’t mean you aren’t going to argue, but arguments have a beginning, a middle and an end, and it’s good to keep the thought in your head while you’re having them that the other person probably has just as good and valid a point as you do. Will it matter in a year? If not, let it go. Don’t sweat the small stuff.

7. Healthy Couples aren’t in early recovery from substance abuse. This is going out on a limb, but it is important to me. If one partner, or both have a substance abuse disorder, they are going to have a special set of problems. How they deal with these, and their own recovery is going to determine not only the success or failure of the relationship but also possibly if they live or die. Being in recovery takes a lot of work and being healthy again takes a long time. The first danger sign I see in people in early recovery is when they start talking about the new love of their life. You don’t at this point have the skills to cope with a relationship. You’re just learning to cope with general life with about alcohol or drugs. A new person to love you isn’t going to solve that. Relationships are tricky. You have to be grown up and be secure. Being in a relationship while in recovery is going to be hard. Wait for it.

I suspect we could apply this to mental illness as well, or any physical illness. Both of those would require much work. Possibly we could include trauma. It might be fair them to say healthy couples have tools and coping mechanisms in place to deal with traumatic events.

8. Healthy Couple remember that this person chose them out of all the possible people in the world. When a person decides to enter a relationship with another, that person first sends them through a set of filters. The second person has also sent the first through the filters, which are completely different filters. And these two people have both made it through ALL of each other’s filters and decided to be together. Out of a gazillion million and one possible people on the planet. They chose each other!

That’s amazing right there, if you think about it. So, I would say healthy couples are grateful and they show it. Let’s add unselfish in there too, healthy couples spend much time thinking about and asking themselves: How I am I helping the other? Am I showing them I’m grateful they’re here and with me? I should add people can go too far into unhealthy and become doormats, but I’m speaking of a healthy gratitude respect here. Healthy couples love and care for each other and show it.

9. Healthy couples are healthy people. I know, obvious and too simple? True, but it’s also important. People who take care of themselves physically, eat the right foods, work out and practice all kinds of self-care are more likely to be a pat of a healthy relationship. If a person is ignoring taking care of themselves, it’s very possible, if not probable, that they aren’t going to do such a great job with anyone else.

10. At the risk of sounding like a textbook I’m going to say they have serious knowledge and skills across five areas: Caring, interdependence, mutuality and trust with each other. They are intimate. Not just sexually, though that is part of it. They’re intimate with each other across the board. They know each other and care deeply about the other and aren’t afraid to let the other in on knowing that. They trust the person both in day-to-day matters and to be a part of the couple. They have that sharing of feelings, actions and such mutually. They work together as a unit, knowing they are stronger together and depend on each other. 

There was a man named Karl who did a project called the Legacy Project, which was nifty. He distilled this project into a book called “30 Lessons for Living” It was tried and true advice form the wisest Americans, very old people who had been together a very long time. He found there were a few things they all said, over and over.

Marry someone a lot like you.

Friendship is as important as Romantic love.

Don’t keep score.

Talk to each other.

If you’re having trouble talking to each other, get out of the house.

Find a way to blow off steam then engage with your partner.

Watch out for teasing.

Let the other person have their say too.

Let go.

Don’t commit just to your partner, commit to the marriage itself.

And there you have it. I’ll keep you posted on my own Romantic life. I have high hopes for it. And you know what? I’ll rock this.