So here's the thing, the term "healthy relationship" can be very subjective. Everyone has a different idea on what "healthy" means to them in terms of what they're expecting of a relationship baseline. For the context of this article, let's view the idea of a healthy relationship as opposing to toxic. A relationship or marriage that leaves your cup feeling satiated and wanting desert rather than feeling empty. Not like your meal could be better if it had an added element to it. A relationship that can function in a state of homeostasis. Not never having disagreements, but when you do, you can easily bounce back to the baseline that is joy, love and intimacy. We aren't designed to be in a consistent parallel to our partner, that's why we are all created differently with unique traits and gifts. We were designed to be complimentary to each other. Here are some key factors that contributes to creating the foundation to a healthy, long lasting relationship.
Communication. We know that communication is amongst the top tier of making it work for any relationship. (Work, marital, friends, partners.) This is just the cold hard truth of human nature. We have to get better at communicating with people. Listen to understand and not to respond. This is not a natural act. Western culture is conditioned to listen to argue or defend, but, a quality of great communicators is not just making the point effectively, it's also having a tongue skilled in such a way that they can communicate the same message in many dialects (figuratively) to reach a wide array of listeners with understanding. Not just that, that are keen listeners to hearing what their audience wants, open to understanding the needs without criticism, with humility and empathy. Their body language plays a very harmonious tune to speech. It's very unlikely for a great communicator to need to use offensive jargon or aggressive body language to get a point across.
Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
A side note on communication is verbalizing to your partner how much you appreciate them being present in your life. There's something that tugs at the heart when you feel valued and appreciated for just being there and being you. Knowing that your partner loves your company. Not what you bring, not loving the expectations of having a partner but just your sheer existence in their life makes them feel joy.
Trust. Having a foundation of trust in a relationship goes a long way. Trust is believing in the best in people until proven otherwise. Trust is NOT your bias from your previous relationship of trauma or from your parents divorce due to infidelity. Trust is not assuming that every man has a wandering eye and every woman is a gold digger. Trust is not feeling comfort in searching through your partners phone while they're sleep and finding no signs of cheating. It's simply blind faith that your partner is a good faithful person, that honors your relationship with or without your presence. You trusting your partner is not telling him, he's not allowed to have female friends, it's telling him, you can have whatever friends you want and I trust that you know your boundaries of what's appropriate. Allowing your partner to find his confidence in your foundation to say, I do have female friends but more importantly, I have you. I don't need to speak with them or chill in private, maybe we can just hang out all together if need be. When was the last time you shared a phone with your partner? Would you feel the same comfort to have your phone around your partner without a password lock on it? Reflect on this as a gauge of the strength of trust in your relationship.
Understanding of the love language. A love language is the specific way a person likes to give and receive love. Love language is unique to every individual and sometimes can be more than one type of love language. There are five different types of love language: words of affirmation, acts of love, physical touch, receiving gifts and quality time. Although the assumption might be that in order to make a relationship work, you have to have matching love languages, this couldn't be further from the truth. Just as your wouldn't expect to have everything in common with your partner, you shouldn't expect to have the same love language. Rather, go into the relationship with the expectation that theirs may be different than yours and talk about it with your partner up front to make sure you can acclimate to meet each others needs. Be open to knowing that the way you prefer to show love, can make them uncomfortable. For instance, some people don't like PDA, or public display of affection and others are very affectionate and love to show their love in this way. This opposing love language can create a very uncomfortable experience for the partner who doesn't enjoy physical touch. Another misconstrued idea is that this doesn't change. Your love language can change depending on what season in life your in. For instance, your wife used to enjoy receiving gifts as her love language, but has recently become a mother. Now she has less concern with the jewelry you bought her, when she is exhausted from the baby, hungry and the dishes are piled up. In this season, her love language might have transitioned into acts of service and there is nothing she would appreciate more than for you to clean the dishes and make her a meal or order dinner.
Expectations. Release your expectations and experience the "wooh". We don't realize what kills the joy in a lot of relationships is when expectations are not met. Try entering the relationship with no expectations of your partner, so when things are done, or not, you are either pleasantly surprised or not disappointed. I know there will be a lot of kick back off this because it sounds like I'm saying to not have any standards so your not disappointed. However, that's not what I'm saying. A simple example is, don't expect your partner to know that your hungry and wanted him to order Chinese for dinner if there was no clear indicator for them to know that. Makes sense? If you then stated to your partner, "hey, I'm hungry, I'm thinking maybe you can order some Chinese?" In that case, there's a clear expectation that after you acknowledged that you were hungry and asked to get Chinese, your waiting for him to order dinner. This can be used in more complex situations like, wanting to get married, wanting to have children, career goals, whose paying for dinner. Discuss these things and don't expect that your on the same page without it being explicitly said. Although it's so special and romantic to be taken on a date with the expectation that it's covered (which it should be if it's a date), this isn't 100% the age we're living in anymore and there's nothing wrong with a, "your treat?", just to confirm that the bill is not being split. Another example is this: a newly wed couple move in together for the first time and after a few weeks of living together the wife realizes that her husband hasn't cooked dinner or washed a dish once. When confronting her husband for a little more shared management of the household, he responds, "your the wife, this is your role to manage the household and I've never cooked before." So there's a disconnect in role expectations that leaves both parties discontent. The message here is don't expect something of your partner that hasn't already been shown as a baseline for their character or behavior and just talk about anything you would like establish for the baseline of your relationship.
Intimacy. Practice intimacy: it doesn't actually come natural to everyone. Webster's dictionary defines intimacy as close familiarity or friendship; closeness. This is important to define because intimacy does not translate to sex. It can lead to sex, with a partner, but does not mean sex. Intimacy can be holding hands in bed, cuddling, talking for hours, caressing, or exchanging massages. None of these have to be with the intention to lead to sex, but, sex is important and we'll get to that shortly. Have you ever had your partner gently outline your body with there fingers while just talking in bed together, faces close together? Not your breasts or genitals, but from your ears, down your neck, your collar bone, to shoulders and arms. This is an intimate exchange with no intention to "perform". Although, you'd be surprised to find you may still get aroused from the bond of emotional intimacy. However, not everyone knows how to do this. Many men and women think being intimate is just having sex and this lack of understanding can leave you still feeling unsatisfied with your relationships sex life. As far as actual sex goes, there's a meeting ground. Talk to your partner about having a mutual landing on that meeting ground.
Change. Expect to experience the evolution of your partner. The only constant we can ever expect in our lives, is change. Time changes all things and this goes for your partner as well. If you look back on who you were just 5 years ago, that person is just a fraction of who you are now. You've experienced so much in just 5 years, imagine how much you'll evolve in a lifetime. When we're in relationships for the long haul, or thinking of how we envision our spouses 10 or even 20 years from now, know that they will not be the same as the day you said "I do." Conflicts will arise when you expect your partner to remain who they were when you met and realize that they've evolved. You may or may not love all the traits they've developed in time, but do expect to experience the evolution of your partner and enjoy the ride. Look forward to seeing how they can blossom and take the journey together. See it as refreshing that you can go through seasons of starting a new relationship with the same partner, marriage is not mundane. You can learn new things from and with your partner with time.
Privacy. You can't sit with us! Keep your relationship private. Privacy is a part of intimacy. Keep that close bond with your partner by keeping your relationship to a party of 2 and not 6. When you have conflicts, arguments, don't call your 4 girlfriends and gossip about how your husband never takes out the garbage or lost his job. When you get into a disagreement with your wife or girlfriend, don't call your Mom and tell her how your a victim and your girlfriend is crazy. What this does is invites people into your relationship to have unsolicited opinions and those whispers in your ear will lead you astray. No one should or will know your spouse better than you. You should have the PhD in your spouse, if you need to talk about it or let out steam, talk to God and go for a walk. The best advice will come to you from Him. You shouldn't create the opportunity for someone to have judgement on your spouse that you later have to defend.
Acknowledgement or praise. "Stroke the ego." Have you seen the funny videos on social media of husbands doing house chores and announcing it to there wives? Then when you read the comments, it's flooded with woman blasting them for needing praise or acknowledgement for doing what they already do on a daily basis. "Husbands need an award for cleaning, why should we stroke their ego for something they should already be doing." I've seen things like this. This is just my opinion, but, is it such a bad thing sometimes to just acknowledge an act of service? Yes, it might be frustrating to always be the one doing dishes, but realistically, if your partner did the dishes one night out of the whole week, did it not take the load off your shoulders? Even for one night. So if you said, "thank you, I really appreciate that you did the dishes, I've been so tired." He might just feel so appreciated, that he'd want to do it more often. There, problem solved. For the sake of this point, I'm referring to married couples. You chose your spouse, because you love them. When you love someone, you shouldn't be resistant to give praise on even the little accolades, you should want to build them up, want to make them confident. You are a reflection of each other, a partnership for life. So what's wrong with an occasional stroke of the ego to make your partner feel special? The world comes with it's own hardships on a day to day once you leave your doorstep, so make the home somewhere to share wins together. Make it inviting, a home your spouse (husband or wife) is eager to come to at the end of the day, where there is love, understanding, joy and a supporter. Nobody looks forward to going home to a nagging spouse after being in traffic for hours to a job your working your butt off for with a boss who maybe sucks. Or even if the job is great and your about to get a promotion but when you go home, your married life sucks and your spouse doesn't appreciate anything you do.
Building a healthy foundation to your relationship is something you do together, a 50-50 experience to the shared journey of your lifetime. At the end of the day, every single person is looking for one thing. Love. So when you come into the relationship with that mutual goal, to love and be loved, these points should be practiced on a daily with eagerness and will become a seamless baseline to your relationship. I encourage you to check in with your partner, read this post together and use it as a conversation opener. Are your expectations of your relationship aligned with each other?
Comments