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Thanksgiving 2007 »

Striving for Healthy Relationships

I thought I would re-circle on my family posts as I have had some time to think. My family life is a wound, but also the reason why I am who I am. There is no reason to talk about the family issue any more, but rather to be forward looking into finding and sustaining healthy relationships in the future.

I believe a healthy relationship (meaning with family or significant others) should live by the following:

  • Hard topics should be able to be openly discussed in a manner where all ideas can freely be brought to the table and analyzed
  • Daily comments of love should be expressed
  • Words should be carefully chosen
  • Conversation should consist of two people discussing, not one person doing all the listening
  • Time and hobbies should be willingly sacrificed for another member of the family / relationship
  • Bad days or hurt feelings should be addressed
  • Creating transparent lives can help establish trust
  • Focusing on honesty is vital
  • Crucial facts (birthday, degree of study, history) should be remembered
  • Quality time should be spent on a regular basis
  • Weaknesses and worries should be addressed by the other person with compliments and praise, helping the other overcome these fears
  • Time apart is a necessity
  • The “little things” truly are important (i.e. notes, a simple thank you, etc)

I would really appreciate any thoughts from you readers. How do you sustain healthy relationships? What have you found to be helpful?

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 10:28 pm and is filed under communications, family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    I think you nailed it with the honesty, trust, and transparency comments. Everything else can be dealt with, those three are sort of the rock it all stands on or hits and sinks, imho...
    (A certain degree of self control, as well as an acceptance of the limitations or boundaries of the interaction parameters is also useful...)
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    Another good post - well done.


    Trust is a big one for me. Making time for the other person/people is important.

    In the lifestyle I live (at present), going out of the way to send an email/text/IM/call to friends is hugely important - that falls into the category of remembering crucial facts. Even if it's just to remind them you haven't forgotten about them.



    I suppose the answer is: go out of your way for your friends. I'm not sure I've got the payback in return (from being like this all the time anyway, I don't know any other way) but I do know the other person appreciates it!
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    why is it that all this wisdom comes once a relationship has ended? These are great ideas but once in a relationship- things tend to get all comfy and thoughts like these are all forgotten.- my best relationship has ended- we grew apart but one thing that kept it so good for so long was that instead of fight or debate we would hold a discussion taking on the other persons point of view. i.e. if i was mad at him for being late for an event- he would tell me how he felt (my feelings as he preceived them) and I would say how selfish I was (his actions as I preceived them). we would both start laughing and it would end with great "making up"
 
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