Loving relationships is what makes living worthwhile. The best moments in our lives are those which we spend with the people we love.
Relationships brim our lives with smiles, laughter, and happiness. But joy isn’t the only emotion that relationships make us experience.
What makes a healthy relationship differs from couple to couple, but it turns out there are two key ways to safeguard your bond.
1. Trust- Trust is one of the most important factors in a relationship.
Trust has to be learned as well as be earned. For many people, trust doesn’t come easy because they are afraid of being hurt.
But, in a good relationship, you can soon begin to realize that hey, you really can trust this person, and that is a great feeling to have.
If you don't trust the person you are with, then it is probably not a healthy, stable relationship and you most likely feel insecure about it.
Trust grows stronger over time and can definitely be built - a lack of trust early on in the relationship just means there is work to do.
2. Compromise- Relationships are all about given and take.
Being open to the needs of your partner and learning how to compromise is one of the first things that you learn in a good relationship.
Far from being a weakness, it takes strength to sometimes forgo what you want for the benefit of someone else.
There’s a complexity to compromising. With gender roles ever evolving it’s important to recognize it’s not about who wears the pants.
It’s about balance.
Compromise is an inherent part of a relationship. You will have to sacrifice in a relationship.
That’s the nature of relationships. If you want your way all of the time, stay solo. It’s about finding a healthy balance in compromise.
Both people in a relationship must understand that necessity of compromise and sacrifice in a relationship to make it work.
3. Respect- It should the first priority of any relationship-
Remember why you got attracted to them in the first place. Don’t try to change them to fit your imaginary picture of a partner. That would be boring and predictable.
Regardless of sounding like a cliché, love can be binding especially when it comes to self-worth.
No amount of love is worth giving up who you are and the respect you deserve. Love is not a justification for disrespect or abuse.
Partners must be respectful of each other and who they are for a healthy relationship to grow.
4. Happiness- Okay to be fair, you can't be happy all the time.
Everyone wants to be happy, and I think happiness is really important. And to, be fair, you won't be happy all the time. In fact, it's normal to go long periods of time when you're unhappy, especially if you're dealing with a crisis.
But when you add up the total of happy times versus unhappy times, happy times should come out on top. Otherwise, you're just mucking through a relationship that isn't satisfying.
And I don't mean you should be feeling joy all the time necessarily, but you should be content. You deserve contentedness.
Not all people who love each other can be happy together. It's sad, but it's OK.
You can find happiness and you can survive a hard breakup. Especially if it makes room for something great.
5. Loyalty- This one is up there with trust.
If you don't have the loyalty to stay faithful to your partner and the relationship then why are you in a relationship at all?
Loyalty acts as a building block in relationships for other values such as those on this list.
You have to actually want to be in a relationship and commit to it in order for it to work.
6. Your Sense Of Self-
You were a "you" before you were a "we," and you should continue to be a "you" when you get in a relationship. There's no amount of love that's worth giving up the essence of who you are.
If you get into a relationship and you ultimately lose yourself, you forget your own interests, you give up on your goals, and you just aren't the you that you want to be, that's a problem.
You can work with your partner to get back to yourself. It's not necessarily a deal breaker.
But, again, no amount of love is worth giving up the fundamental truths of who you are.
7. Your Independence-Some couples eat, sleep, breathe and live together - and that is okay!
However, it is important to have individual time and space away from your significant other every now and again.
Even if you two have similar hobbies or genuinely enjoy spending as much time as possible with one another, you should never put aside your own identity for anyone.
You have to be free. Being free to do the things you want to do, to be yourself, to go places, to have your own thoughts and feelings, and to have a say in how your life goes, is not just important in a relationship. It's essential.
8. Safety- If you don't feel safe with your significant other then you are not in the right relationship.
Are you safe in your relationship?
If the answer is "no," then it doesn't matter even a little bit how much you love the person.
The love may make it harder to leave, and harder to stay away, and that's a real struggle.
But love itself won't make a partner who is abusing you stop.
Love won't save you from injury or death.
No amount of love is worth your life. And FYI, abuse is never ever your fault, and if you need someone to talk to or to help you make an escape plan, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Cool na...
Nothing is more important than your own safety and security. Love makes it hard, but it is not worth it if you are being abused in any way.
If you are not safe then how can you possibly be happy?
9. Communication- It is key in any relationship to define boundaries.
You need it to express feelings, needs, and expectations. You need it to solve conflicts and you even need it when it comes to intimacy.
Without good communication, how can anything in the relationship be clear and the rest of these values be strengthened?
Communication is the gasoline in love's engine. I don't really think there can be real, lasting love without good communication.
You need communication in a relationship to set boundaries, express your love, fix problems, express your needs, and even to have good sex.
Communication is basically everything. So if you're with someone you can't communicate with, or don't communicate well with, you have to be able to fix that, or no amount of love will give you a happy, healthy relationship.
10. Partnership- Along with having individual space, you both also need to be strong as a couple.
You are not a mother or a nurse or a maid (although you may play these roles occasionally), you are an equal partner in the relationship and if you are not being treated as such then that is an issue.
You both are individuals who need to come together as a team to maintain an equal playing field.
There's nothing better than being with someone who is a true partner in crime. You're meant to be partners.
You may play these roles occasionally, but on the whole, you're not a parent, babysitter, secretary, maid, or nurse.
You're a whole person who needs to be dating another whole person. And you both need to come together as a team.
If you're not a team and you don't have equality, it can make you unhappy enough to spoil the relationship, whether there's great love or not.
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