The Healthy Relationship

Part of the healing process includes bringing our old issues from childhood to awareness.  It must be recognized that learning about healthy relationships will undoubtedly be an entirely new experience for us, because what we have been taught, since childhood, is completely contrary.  It's like learning to tie your shoes, or ride a bicycle all over again.  It's a wake up call when we realize that everything we've been taught about marriage and relationships is wrong.

This is not easy, of course, and it takes courage and determination on our part to move past the trauma that we have been through, but we will never heal until we face these issues.  It may take years of counseling to diminish the voices from our past, but it is worth it.

We need to understand how events in our childhood have impacted our choice of a partner in adulthood. We need to examine why we keep making the same mistakes again and again in our relationships.

Once we have completed this life task, we are then free to enter into a conscious, mature relationship.

What does a mature relationship look like?

In a healthy, mature relationship:

Both partners acknowledge that their childhood wounds are likely to emerge in the relationship. They make an attempt to understand how these wounds developed and how they influence the relationship.

Each partner owns up to his or her own faults and talks about them freely with the other. Each partner identifies what he or she needs in the relationship, within reason ¬ and the other provides those things unconditionally.

Each partner is seen as a whole, complete person striving to live an individual life as fully as possible. The two partners have equality in the relationship with open dialogue between them.

The partners understand that when they feel uncomfortable, they need to engage in constructive communication. They don't engage in acting out behavior such as withdrawing from their partner or looking outside of the relationship to get their needs for intimacy met.

Both partners agree to avoid blaming or criticizing each other ¬ and they engage in constructive communication instead.

Anger is recognized as an expression of pain, and the partners agree to accept each other's anger and other emotions. However, they also agree not to dump their anger on each other. They recognize that anger must be contained and expressed constructively and respectfully.

The partners in a healthy relationship develop their own strengths rather than relying on the other to provide them. Both partners strive toward wholeness ¬ in themselves and in each other.

It is very important to remember that a good relationship is not about give and take, as we have been led to believe.  It's about give/give.  When each person gives 100%, then each person receives 100%.  That is the only relationship that allows for growth.  If you are involved with someone who is all about himself, and is not willing to give 100%, then he's not right for you.  Don't fall in love with his potential.  There is no potential.  What you see is what you get. Period.