What is A Healthy Relationship?
Question: What do healthy relationships and Bigfoot have in common?
Answer: There are reports they both exist, but few people have ever seen either one!
Okay, so maybe the “joke” isn’t so funny, but hopefully the concept is not lost. In reality, there are many healthy relationships in the general population. These are the relationships where there is mutual respect and trust, relationships where there is communication. It doesn’t mean the relationship is perfect, it means both people are willing to putt effort into making the relationship a success.
Fairy Tale Relationships
Many TV sitcoms or situation comedies spend 30 minutes per episode “exploring” the trials and tribulations of relationships. Romance novels and rom-com movies abound. Many of them have a theme of:
• boy meets girl
• something happens
• boy and girl break up
• boy and girl miss each other
• boy and girl get back together
• end of story
Perhaps you have spent time in magazines or online doing quizzes to determine if you have a “good” or “successful” relationship. In the same sources, you can find lists of 10 or 20 characteristics that “all successful relationships have in common”. And the pressure is on! If you have 7 out of 10 responses, then you must have a “good” relationship! 4 out of 10 responses, then you must have a “bad” relationship.
Maybe your ideal or standard of a healthy relationship is based on your parents’ relationship. If your parents seemed to get along well and they spent a lot of leisure time together, your standard for a healthy relationship might be that two people spend a lot of leisure time together.
This is fine until you enter into a relationship with someone who feels their parents had a great relationship and their parents spent a lot of leisure time apart, doing their own separate activities. Neither style of relationship is right or wrong. They are just different perspectives.
Healthy Relationships Come in Different Shapes and Sizes
What is right for one couple may not be right for another couple. What is important is that two people are in honest agreement and that neither has been coerced into the arrangement.
For example, on the front page of a recent tabloid, it was reported that a 54-year-old actor, “Brian”, was dating a 27-year-old married mother, “Naomi.” The actor and Naomi’s 68-year-old husband, “Riley,” reportedly knew each other from several years ago. “Riley” said he knew of the extramarital relationship and was fine with it because he and his wife had an “open relationship”. Apparently, this relationship arrangement worked for the three of them. Presumably, none of the individuals involved felt coerced into the agreement. Many people would find that arrangement totally unacceptable.
Another example of relationships coming in different sizes and shapes is the one in which sex-role stereotypes are “reversed”. The female partner is the one with the profession and career, while the male partner stays home with the children. Again, this works as long as the two people are in agreement, and no one has been coerced into the arrangement. For other couples, this would be totally unacceptable.
Ideals of Healthy Relationships
While there are many characteristics of relationships that are important, ultimately healthy relationships are based on only two: mutual trust and mutual respect.
Trust
1. Does your SO (“significant other”/partner/spouse) “have your back” through thick and thin? How has your SO demonstrated that to you?
– How have you demonstrated to your SO that you have his/her back?
2. Do you feel physically and emotionally safe in the relationship, for example, you don’t worry that during a disagreement your partner is going to throw up his/her hands, and say, “I want a divorce!”
– What do you do to provide your SO with a sense of physical and emotional safety?
3. Do you trust when your SO says they will do something, it will be done? You don’t have to follow-up to see that it was done.
– Can your SO depend on you in the same way?
4. Are you and your SO both able to express a wide range of feelings, be vulnerable, and still be absolutely positive that your faults and weaknesses will never be thrown back in your face?
– Does your SO have that assurance from you as well?
5. Has it ever occurred to you that you should go through your SO’s cell phone or computer history to see what they have been looking at, or who they have been talking to?
– Do you trust your SO has never felt the need to go through your phone or computer history?
Respect
What does respect look like in a healthy relationship? Ask yourself:
1. Do you encourage, appreciate and support your SO’s individuality and way of doing things?
– How does your SO demonstrate to you his/her encouragement, appreciation and support?
2. Do you put effort into your communication? For example, do you both take turns speaking and listening?
– How does your SO demonstrate s/he is putting effort into your communication?
3. No matter how long you have been together, do you both still spend time every day checking in with your SO, soliciting his/her opinion, sharing your hopes and fears?
– How often is your SO checking in with you, sharing opinions, hopes and fears?
4. Do you demonstrate support for your SO? For example, do you avoid at all costs humiliating or degrading your SO, especially when you are around others? Even when your SO may be wrong?
– How does your SO demonstrate this/her support of you?
5. Do you believe enough in your SO’s ability and strengths to step back and let him/her handle things on their own? For example, the baby is crying, do you rush in and “take over” or do you have faith in your significant others parenting ability?
– How does your SO demonstrate his/her faith in your abilities and strengths?
When those two qualities are the foundation of your relationship, everything else is just a detail to be negotiated.
Healthy Relationships Take Effort, Not “Work”
It is not uncommon to hear the phrase, “Relationships take work.” Is it that relationships take “work”, or is it that relationships take effort? Using the word “work” can bring up some fairly strong feelings, for example, drudgery, routine, boredom, frustration, dread.
Maybe you think about a hierarchy where someone is in charge, and it isn’t you! Or maybe you think of any way you can to avoid going to work. None of these thoughts and feelings are relationship enhancing!
Effort is about spending 1 minute picking up a wet bath towel and putting it on the hook to dry instead of leaving it on the floor in the bathroom for someone else to pick up. Effort is spending 30 seconds putting your used drinking glass in the dishwasher instead of leaving it in the sink. Effort is spending 3 seconds saying, “I love you.” Effort is spending 60 seconds making a phone call to ask, “I am on my way home. Is there anything we need?” Effort is spending 45 minutes changing a diaper and feeding the baby at 2 a.m.
Effort means demonstrating your commitment to the relationship every day. Yes, every day. It isn’t “work”; it is just what you do because you care about the other person and you want the relationship to be successful.
And by the way, putting in effort is not a 50%-50% proposition! Whoever first said that phrase clearly doesn’t understand what it takes to have a strong, successful, healthy relationship!! At the very least, relationships are 90%-10%, meaning both people are putting in a 90% effort every day!
Work Toward a Win-win Solution.
The idea of one person being a “winner” usually means someone else is a “loser”. That is a very poor dynamic to set up in an intimate relationship! However, there is another variation. It is possible that both people in a relationship can be “winners”. Let’s look at the four resolutions of any conflict:
Win-Win
Win-Lose
Lose-Win
Lose-Lose
In intimate relationships, when you have a difference of opinion with your partner, if you are not trying to figure out a way for both of you to “win”, a win-win, someone is going to lose. And the relationship will suffer.
Let’s check in with Ed and Rita. This is a very simple example, but hopefully it will illustrate the concept of working toward a win-win solution, and what a win-win solution might look like.
Example:
Ed and Rita have been happily married for many years. They have both decided they want to go out to eat. Then comes the dreaded question, “Where do you want to eat?” Rita says it first.
Ed: “I don’t care. Where do you want to go?”
Rita: “I don’t care; I just don’t want a fast-food place.”
Ed: “Well, I don’t want to go to some fancy place where I have to change my clothes.”
Have you ever been in this type of situation?
Both Ed and Rita initially said they don’t care where they go out to eat, but quickly start qualifying where they don’t want to go. Ed and Rita have a healthy relationship and are always looking for a win-win. If both of them are happy with the decision, it will be a good evening with great conversation!
The example continues:
Rita: “What about that Italian place we went to last month? You liked that place.”
Ed: “Nah, we just went there. How about the barbecue place?”
Rita: “I don’t want to sit at a picnic table! How about the Mexican place? I could go for a margarita!”
Ed: “No, the music is too loud there; I can’t hear myself think! What about the taco stand? That place has great Mexican food! And it is quiet.”
Rita: “I don’t want to sit at a picnic table! How about the casino? They have a really good buffet, and afterward we could spend some time in the casino.”
Ed: “I like that idea! Let’s go there!”
Rita and Ed worked on coming up with a win-win, the ideal resolution. They both agreed to go out to eat. They both offered suggestions. They both said what they didn’t like, and why they didn’t want to go to a particular place to eat. Neither gave up, nor gave in, or said, “Whatever!” They worked it through, to a place they both were excited to go. This is a win-win!
Ed and Rita exemplify mutual trust and respect.
Relationships Are Optional.
In relationships, there are always “deal breakers”, those value differences, crossed boundaries or destructive behaviors that will result in ending an intimate relationship. While every relationship is different, there are some “deal breakers” that may be insurmountable, for example, infidelity, alcohol or substance abuse, domestic abuse, etc.
Once two people have defined “deal breakers” in a relationship, and one or both people have violated the agreement, it may be time to look at ending the relationship.
No one is required to be in an intimate relationship, especially if trust has been broken and respect has been destroyed. Though few and far between, there are couples who have been able to work through deal breakers and go on to have successful relationships. Individual therapy may be useful for the person who committed infidelity or who has a problem with his/her misuse of alcohol or drugs. Couples counseling should never be attempted if there has been domestic abuse in the home.
Summary
Relationships can be rewarding and provide a haven from the world. It is important to remember that relationships take effort; they don’t “just happen”. To keep both people engaged in the relationship, assure both are “winners” in any discussion. Every time. Mutual respect and trust are the foundations of all healthy relationships.
Posted: 9/2020
Revised: 6/2024
Revised: 10/2025
Revised: 10/2026
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All photos and graphics on my website and blogs were taken or created by David Harrington or Kathryn Maietta