Healthy relationships: the expert named 7 important signs

 Toxic or great? Our expert, Natalia Bezgina, told us what are the main signs to recognize that everything is just wonderful with your loved one.

Healthy psychological relationships - fiction or fact? There are so many people around in pairs, but only a few are happy in them. It is they who can call their union happy and healthy. Can you build these and how do you save them? What affects it?

How to recognize healthy psychological relationships and what to do with “sick”, unhealthy ones, if you got into such?

Why do we get into unhealthy alliances

The causes of unhealthy relationships lie in childhood, first experience or early childhood. Everyone has experience of trauma or psychological discomfort. Often the experience of the parental family was painful and negative for the child, left an imprint on his behavior in adulthood.

It is much more difficult for you to build a healthy relationship with a partner if you had a parental example in front of your eyes, in which there was no happiness, mutual understanding.

The key to a healthy relationship

Is it possible to build and live in healthy relationships if you had a painful example in your parental family? Yes, this is due to the growth of the individual.

A person becomes an adult precisely when he decides to build his interaction with the opposite sex, without relying on his parents, on their experience and advice. He does it for himself and leans on his partner. What does he want to see in a relationship? What is he ready to give to his beloved? What can you expect from a partner?

A man becomes psychologically mature when he builds a relationship with a woman, not relying on the experience of communicating with his mother. He sees the desires, strengths and weaknesses, the actions of a woman and does not fit into the canvas of parent-child communication. He does not compare his woman and mother.

A woman builds a healthy relationship in this way when she stops replacing communication with a parent, but sees, feels and understands a man. Without thinking, without drawing premature conclusions, for example, "because her parents had it."

7 signs of a healthy union

What criteria can you use to understand that you have a psychologically healthy relationship:

1. There is dialogue and communication

There are no taboo topics in the couple. You can easily talk about everything, including childhood, sexuality, past experiences and feelings. You can tell your partner everything you think, feel, share plans, dreams, talk about your desires for yourself and each other.

You can say in the moment what exactly you feel after his words or deed, without postponing for later, without accumulating resentment. Sometimes in a couple it is customary to talk about desires:

• regarding children: which school to send to study, what to give for the New Year;
• life: whether to buy a new washing machine, whether to change the machine;
• pets: whether to get a cat, undergo a veterinary examination for a dog;
• work, career: discuss work moments, gossip.

But the partners never talked about their own childhood - which upset, frightened and delighted. And in vain: great potential is laid in childhood. Human feelings that have arisen for the first time are of great importance, and in a healthy union you want the partner to share these emotions. It makes people emotionally closer to each other.

It is through childhood that it is easier to understand an adult. What he loved, what he dreamed of. What did you want to achieve and what did you fear? When a partner talks about this secret, it means that there is real trust. He reveals the most important and is not afraid to be hurt.

You should pay attention to the topic of sexuality. If this topic is closed, this is a sign of an unhealthy relationship. Intimate life is an indicator of what is happening between a man and a woman. If they calmly trust their friend experiences, share desires, talk about this topic, then there is a fairly strong connection between them. Fear of accusations, ridicule, silence and  resentment  are indicators that there is no trust in communication between partners, there is vulnerability, and psychological pain is hidden behind it.

One or both partners are in a state of constant tension, ready to defend themselves at any moment. You know how to argue, respecting personal boundaries, without insults, while maintaining your own dignity and the dignity of your partner.

Reasoned disputes (clarification, argumentation of one's position, choice of action) are a normal clarification in the relationship of each other's position. In such a couple, the ability to express their true opinion is maintained, to have a point of view and share it without a threat to the union.

If the relationship between a man and a woman is threatened by the expression of one's position regarding any event or choice, the opinion of one family member is considered more valuable than another, then these relations are built on an unequal position, they have a lot of self-deception, little value of the partner and the connection itself. Thus, healthy relationships can be recognized by healthy communication.

2. Combination of compatibility and autonomy (I + I = We)

Codependent relationships are often confused with love. In healthy people, the value of the couple is high, but autonomy is also present. What is the experience of autonomy? The ability to have money, time, friends, interests that fill the life of one partner does not have to concern the second.

The personality of one person cannot be absolutely identical to the personality of another. Some interests may overlap, but there is room for your own. Communication will be healthy if the couple has both common interests and personal, while the partner does not require to separate them or spend all the time and energy on one thing. There can be mutual friends and personal, as well as hobbies, own money.

3. No talking about your partner behind your back.

When a friend, girlfriend, mom, dad know “everything” about your partner, and this is being discussed, it’s time to think about what kind of relationship it is. What happens between two people that requires the active intervention of a round dance of people?

4. Healthy personal boundaries

In healthy relationships, personal boundaries are respected. They respect desires, aspirations, personal time, money earned, energy expended. They try not to violate the boundaries and be careful with words.

In unhealthy people:

• partner's time is easily assigned: run, do it, bring it, take it away, finish it, fix it, do it for me;
• the list of duties and responsibility for implementation is often shifted;
• the partner's money is not respected: what I have earned is common, what I have earned is mine. The value of money earned by a partner is much lower than their own;
• there is no value of personal space or things when a family member does not have his own place in which he can relax, be alone with himself;
• there are insults, neglect, ridicule of behavior, appearance or values.

5. The relationship building process doesn't stop even after you move in together.

A healthy union is the constant maintenance of contact, filling and improvement of relationships with each other. This is intimacy: emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual.

If, after making a decision to live together, lead a common life, people stop thinking about filling relationships, stop caring about it, plunge into routine, stop seeing the value in proximity, then this connection is immature.

Her goal was not about intimacy, but about closing some of her own fears, stereotypes, or acquiring banal convenience. Psychologically healthy relationships become deeper with the passing years, people understand each other better, learn to appreciate and feel.

In them, no one wants to change either physically or emotionally. They have an acceptance of a partner with his strengths and weaknesses. The unhealthy are aimed at subjugation, appropriation, influence on another person.

6. Both partners feel alive, energetic

Being in a psychologically healthy relationship means not remembering past experiences, not comparing anyone, not trying to change to someone else's template. It often happens that a woman or a man finds a new partner to discuss previous or past experiences.

This connection does not heal, does not help, but uses the partner for temporary self-justification for the previous loss.In a psychologically healthy relationship, there is a place for the partner's past: his past loves, years of marriage and children from previous marriages.

But to find a place means to accept that the person with whom you are now building love also had some kind of life before you, and not to reproach or, on the contrary, compare yourself with the former all the  time . Find pros and cons. The past has already disappeared, it does not exist, only memory remains, and it can embellish or show events more difficult than they really were.

7. Both partners develop, grow personally

Something new appears in their life that was not there before. Growing up together is much easier and more interesting, because there is someone to rely on, consult, and trust. Therefore, as a rule, psychologically healthy couples grow faster in income, status, and achieve joint well-being.

In a couple where the relationship is unhealthy, there is no monetary growth for both partners.He is either behind one partner: after a divorce, the second partner is left with nothing, or neither of the spouses has the opportunity to earn. They pour a lot of energy not into building a business and a home, but into enduring, avoiding conflicts, and self-regulation.

Growth occurs not only at the expense of one partner, but when both are invested, complementing each other, and not pulling the blanket over themselves. In mature relationships, there is no desire to prove their worth, because everyone understands their uniqueness and the unique combination that they create together.

It is by these seven signs that you can determine what kind of relationship you are in: psychologically healthy, mature or sickly and immature, and they need to grow, change.