GUIDELINES: What Makes for a Healthy Relationship

Relationships can be destructive as well as constructive, unhealthy as well as healthy. Pia Mellody, who has written much on codependence, puts forward nine characteristics essential to healthy relationships. These characteristics pertain to all kinds of relationships, whether between spouses, parent-child or friends. Here they are with some fleshing out:

1. Each partner views the other realistically. Love is not blind; it sees and chooses to see the truth through its own lenses. The partners do not minimize or deny who the other is, nor do they seek to hide from one another. As Janet Hurley says, “Each of you shows up, pays attention, tells the truth, asks for what you need and want, and lets go of attachment to the outcome.”

2. Each partner assumes responsibility for personal growth. We may and indeed must help each other with our maturing, yet in the last analysis each of us is responsible for ourselves. We cannot grow for the sake or instead of, another. We must each mature for our own sakes, for the well-being of our own lives, apart from any relationship.

3. Each partner is willing and able to behave as an adult. Though there is a child in each of us, with healthy relationships, both persons consistently evidence mature adult emotions. They are not given to tantrums, or childish acting out. The child surfaces occasionally, especially in play, but they nevertheless hear and remain as adults.

4. Each partner can focus on solutions to problems. Problems need first to be shared, then resolved. In healthy relationships both persons do their share in working together toward a solution, rather than continuing to be part of the problem. Both carry out what they agree to do.

5. Each partner can be intimate with and support the other a reasonable amount of time. They fulfill the childhood mandate to “take turns” being supportive of one another. They have a teeter-totter like balance between their respective needs and wants, a two-sided sharing and caring. They have given each other permission not to have to be there for the other every single moment, but also to have spans of down time and private space.

6. Each partner has developed a life of “abundance.” Each has a life independent of the other. They bring more happiness to the relationship than derive it from the relationship, giving to rather than taking from the other. Their togetherness generates, rather than depletes, energy.

7. Each partner can negotiate and accept compromise. Each can both take a stand, yet let go and reach a reasonable middle ground. Neither gets everything they want. They have the humility and desire for peace necessary for compromise, yet they don’t violate their values or standards in the process.

8. Each partner is usually able to enjoy the other despite the differences between them. They can continue to focus on what they like about each other, while at the same time not denying what they don’t like. They neither over nor underrate the differences between them, and have agreed to disagree, while respecting their differences.

9. Each partner can communicate simply and directly. They can utilize the “KISS” system of communication: “Keep It Simple, Sweetie.” It takes risk and work to speak openly and from the heart; but if you will not, you cannot long sustain an intimate, mutually satisfying relationship.