Healthy relationships feel good and bring you up while unhealthy ones don’t feel great and can sometimes make you unhappy. Everyone deserves to be in a healthy, loving relationship and with the right person by your side, a healthy relationship is completely attainable. If you want to be that #relationshipgoals couple, here are five essentials for having a healthy relationship:
Communication
- When starting a new relationship, it’s important to be able to talk about what you both want and expect
- Being on the same page with your partner goes a long way
- Open up to your partner about what’s bothering you, compromising over your disagreements, and complimenting each other are all important
Trust
- All healthy relationships require mutual and unguarded trust between partners
- Don’t ever let your partner use their lack of trust or past experiences as an excuse to control you, question you, or otherwise make you feel as though you need to go out of your to way earn their trust
Support
- Having a supportive partner will make you feel like you have their back
- They will encourage you to spend time with family and friends, work toward your personal goals, and have a life outside of the relationship. They won’t use tactics to manipulate you or put you down
Respect
- Listen to your partner, and try to understand their perspective
- Respect your partner’s choices and opinions
- Be considerate of their privacy and boundaries
- Don’t try to persuade them to change their mind about things that are important to them
- In a healthy relationship, both partners will have mutual respect for one another
Boundaries
- In a healthy relationship, you should feel 100% comfortable communicating those boundaries and know that they will be respected
- If you feel like your partner or friend is using boundaries to control you, like telling you not to hang out with friends or requiring you to share passwords, it’s time to rethink the relationship
