Confused about where the line between unhealthy and healthy romantic relationships is?
Are you questioning the state of your own relationship or the relationship of someone close to you? This article will give you a lot of clarity!
If you’re like most people, you weren’t put through a thorough, well-researched education on how to create healthy relationships when you went to school. I certainly didn’t!
So unless you were fortunate enough to grow up with amazing relationship role models, odds are that you’re now actively having to figure these things out yourself as an adult.
In this article, you’re getting the distilled knowledge from a massive amount of reading, thinking, personal experimenting and helping my former clients and students create healthy relationships in their own lives.
With this seven-step checklist, you’ll be able to go from confusion to clarity regarding what makes a relationship unhealthy, and how to make it healthy instead.
Let’s go!
In unhealthy relationships, it’s very common to think that feeling love should be enough for the relationship to work. However, a healthy relationship is built on much, much more than feeling love and attraction for each other.
In healthy relationships, there’s a shared understanding that the relationship is not only based on love but also on both people’s relationship skills.
These skills include things like:
- Handling your difficult feelings in a skilful and responsible way
- Expressing your truth with wise & warm honesty
- Knowing how to rekindle the romantic and sexual flame
In unhealthy relationships, there’s often a tendency to define the other person and the other person’s behaviours.
This can show up in a lot of different ways. You might be told something like “You’re such an idiot!”, or you might get the disguised definition: “What’s wrong with you?”.
Whether it’s expressed as words, body language, or actions, the message is clear: The other person supposedly has a god-like perspective on you and your inner life, and they’re not afraid to tell you what you’re like. In really bad cases, they’ll hold onto their definitions of you even after you correct them. For example: “So you say you didn’t mean it that way, but I know you actually did!”.
Getting defined by another person can be extremely subtle or blatant, and it generally feels terrible. Usually, these definitions are negative, cold and harsh.
However, even getting defined in a more neutral way can feel really weird, intrusive and unpleasant, when someone thinks they own the truth about you. Avoid people who do this at all costs!
In healthy relationships, you see the opposite behaviour: Both partners are curious, open and warm with each other. They actually want to know the other person as they really are and are equally open about themselves, all the while being warm and kind.
In unhealthy romantic relationships, there’s no end to the excuses for the bad stuff that happens. Often, one person is directly or indirectly told that they need to accept bad behaviour in order to be a good partner.
However, there’s a huge difference between understanding the origins of behaviour and putting up with it. You can understand all kinds of behaviour, but that does not mean that you need to put up with experiencing more of it in your life. That’s your personal choice to make.
In healthy romantic relationships, both people take 100% responsibility for their own behaviour. They can be understanding when either one fucks up, and allow mistakes to happen, as long as both take responsibility for making sure that they keep making fresh new mistakes, instead of repeating the same old ones again and again.
Embracing this kind of growth mindset in your relationship is a game-changer, and when both do it, it makes the relationship exponentially happier!
Unhealthy relationships are generally overflowing with self-deception, also known as being delusional (ie. delulu).
You might be seeing your partner as who wish they were instead of as who they really are. You might be making excuses for them left and right. Or you might be waiting for that magic thing to happen that will bring out who they actually are. Whatever flavour your self-deception has, it’s harming you, and in the long-term, your partner too.
In healthy relationships, you can easily be truly honest with yourself about who your partner is, how they’re treating you, and what they do with their time and energy, and you can feel at peace. If you’re in a really great relationship, you’ll even feel deeply proud and blessed.
Of course, when we’re crazy in love in an unhealthy relationship (emphasis on the word CRAZY), we might feel extremely fortunate to be with our partner. The key is to dig deep and get properly honest with yourself, looking under the rug at all the bad things you’ve put up with.
In unhealthy romantic relationships, there’s often a flavour of entitlement and expectations of the other person. You might see yourself as having the right to certain things from your partner. This is seen as very normal, and in my view, it’s very unhealthy. Expectations are basically another way to define the other. It’s saying “You should be this certain way. Otherwise, you’re bad.” Expectations like this are usually not consensually agreed upon, instead, they tend to be rather unconscious.
In healthy romantic relationships, expectations and entitlement are replaced by healthy personal standards and unconditional love. This means that you set the standards for what you want to experience in your own life, and in your relationship, and you agree on shared standards with your partner. Then you abide by your standards as well as you can and work on loving yourself and your partner as you are. It’s saying “This is the standard we both agree upon, that feels exciting for us. If we can’t live up to it we may need to rethink things.”
Many unhealthy relationships start with CRAZY chemistry. Perhaps you’ve been there. You’ve fallen crazy in love, and experienced the highest of highs and lowest of lows in true whiplash fashion, leaving you exhausted, exhilarated and perhaps totally devastated.
This kind of illogical attraction followed by high-speed over-commitment, that’s not anchored in anything real, is a huge blinking neon warning sign pointing at unconscious attachment wounds being activated. Another word for this is primal panic - as in the desperate desire of a child to belong, be loved and be accepted. If you’re in this situation, you will likely benefit massively from finding a good trauma therapist (such as an Internal Family Systems therapist) who can help you.
Although a healthy relationship can start with massive attraction, commitment and trust are built and earned over time as you get to know each other. You don’t just jump into living together or getting married without getting to know each other properly first. All along, it feels as if you’re building something real, and not being crazy.
Lastly, unhealthy relationships are often characterised by massive amounts of confusion! When you’re being defined by the other, treated poorly, experiencing a roller coaster of emotions, and hand-crafting the most intricate excuses for it all, your brain is completely overwhelmed. Calm and peace of mind are far, far away.
In healthy romantic relationships, there’s a sense of simplicity, clarity and ease. When things are really great, there’s also passion, excitement and lots of fun. Creating a healthy relationship is not necessarily easy, but it’s simple.
My hope is that what you’ve learnt in this article will help you have a smoother journey in your relationship(s)!
Creating healthy romantic relationships is a proper hero’s journey, with so many exciting possibilities for personal growth. Making use of these possibilities for growth was the smartest thing I’ve ever done, and I wish the same for you!
Take a moment to get the full benefit of having read the article by reflecting on the following questions:
- How did it feel to read this article?
- Did you learn something new?
- Did something make you feel tense?
- Is there anything in your own romantic life that you want to do differently based on what you’ve learnt?
In case it wasn’t clear by now, I’ll emphasize the following:
You can’t do it alone. As they say, it takes two to tango.
If you’re currently with someone who’s not truly committed to doing what it takes to create a healthy relationship, you can start by levelling up your own standards. Ultimately, to have a healthy romantic relationship, you need and deserve a partner who’s 1000% on board with you to create a healthy, beautiful, and fun relationship together. And it's not only possible but pretty much inevitable, as you level up your own romantic mindset and skills!
Wishing you lots and lots of healthy love,
Yours,
Sara