9 Ways To Have A Healthy Relationship When Nobody Taught You How
How I built a healthy, long-term relationship despite growing up in a dysfunctional family.
Dean Drobot via Shutterstock When my father had an affair and my parents divorced, my father married a woman who did her best to destroy my delicate teenage self-esteem. My dad chose her side every time. At the same time, my mother got together with a man who was already married. These dysfunctional dynamics led to me having no idea how to navigate relationships.
Throughout high school, I went through a series of boys and allowed them to use me and cast me off, not believing I deserved better. I equated physical attraction with love. Once I went to college, I was better but still self-sabotaged. I was a disaster at relationships.
Today, I am happy to say I am in an amazing, healthy relationship. Why? Because I finally learned the recipe for what is needed in a relationship that works.
Here are 9 ways to have a healthy relationship when nobody taught you how
1. Don’t equate actions with love
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“If they loved me, they would,” have you used those words before? I am guessing yes. We all have.
A client asked her husband to check out some windows she wanted to use in their house project. He said he would stop by the store on the way home from work. He forgot. He worked late and was distracted. He just forgot. Her reaction was because he didn’t stop like he had promised, he didn’t love her. How could he?
The reality is her husband did love her. Madly. He simply forgot to stop and look at the windows on the way home. He made a mistake (frustrating I know but we all do it) and promised to make up for it. She couldn’t get over what he did and sulked about it for days.
I am unhappy to say this couple ultimately divorced. She focused so much on the things he didn’t do for her that she ignored the things he did do, and it gradually eroded their marriage.
So, try to remember someone’s actions aren't always equated to their love for you. I am sure you have let someone down, but did it mean you didn’t love them? I am guessing not.
2. Believe that you deserve to be loved
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This one is easier said than done.
People who haven’t been taught how to be in a healthy relationship are often people who weren’t taught how to feel loved. A child’s very first relationship is with their parent. If their parent is distracted, the child will not be given the love and attention they need.
Do you believe you deserve to be loved? Do you let in partners who want to love you or push them away in favor of partners who treat you poorly? Do you worry your partner will leave you because you aren’t good enough? Do you get clingy and needy if you don't get the attention you need?
If you don’t feel like you deserve to be loved, seek professional help, either a life coach or a therapist. Understanding you are deserving of love, which we all are, will help you find and keep a healthy relationship.
3. Don’t be passive-aggressive
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There is no bigger barrier to a healthy relationship than passive-aggression.
Passive aggression is “indirect resistance to the demands of others and avoidance of a confrontation.” In other words, not directly saying what you mean but instead being indirect, often in an aggressive way.
When my husband was always late for dinner, instead of telling him how much I wished he could get home for dinner, I told him he was “rendering himself obsolete.” He might have understood if I had told him directly what I was feeling, but because I said it in an unkind way, it only shut him down and prevented further conversation.
Ultimately, years of passive-aggression and being unable to address an issue directly, led to a significant amount of contempt between us and destroyed our marriage, as supported by a 2013 study.
4. Stay faithful
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It seems like this should go without saying but I will say it anyway. Stay faithful.
A client's therapist said having an affair was filling a need that was absent in her marriage. Because she was having the need filled, she wasn’t addressing what was missing and she and her husband were never allowed to make their marriage strong.
Furthermore, if you are unfaithful and caught, you will destroy trust in your relationship, and the trust might never be rebuilt.
Having an affair will only make you feel horrible about yourself. If you feel horrible about yourself, you will not be a good relationship partner.
5. Don’t self-sabotage
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Many people who have not been taught how to be in a healthy relationship self-sabotage. The Journal of Relationships Research demonstrates how even if their relationship is going well, they do what they can to damage it.
Why do people self-sabotage? They do so because they don’t believe themselves worthy of happiness. They do it so they can leave and not be left. They do it so they won’t get hurt, even if they ultimately are hurt. They do so because they can’t help themselves.
Do you self-sabotage in your relationship? Do you do something you know will weaken your relationship and maybe reinforce the belief you aren’t worthy of love? Is this a repeated pattern you do in your life outside of relationships?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, get some professional help. Learn how to find a way to make choices to your benefit, not ones to make your life worse.
6. Don’t equate physical attention with love
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For me, the biggest side effect of not being taught how to be in a healthy relationship was I equated men wanting me with love. I believed if I had a physical relationship with someone they would love me.
As a result, I gave myself too freely of my body. I would hook up with men when I was drinking. If I felt his feelings for me faltering, I used physicality to try to pull him close.
Science shares one of the major reasons why equating physical attention with love doesn’t work, as evidenced in a study on the mechanisms of social connection. As a result, you feel loved, even if you aren’t being loved. Research on women's mate selection shows how women know that after they are physically satisfied by someone, they will find themselves more emotionally tied than they did before.
7. Don’t ignore red flags
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The key to an unhappy relationship is ignoring red flags.
What is a red flag? A red flag is a little thing you see that hints this person might be the wrong one for you.
Red flags are usually small. You don’t like the way the person treats the barista. They prioritize their friends over you. They work more than they should. They have a history of being not great in relationships.
Red flags can also be big. They have just gotten over a relationship. They don’t treat you well. They have a bad relationship with their family. They are too controlling.
Unfortunately, we so want to be in a relationship, so we tend to ignore those red flags. We figure if we love our person enough, they will change. We rationalize the red flags to be unimportant. We simply refuse to believe they exist.
If you ignore red flags, stop right now!!! The things that bug you now will only bug you more as your relationship builds. They could even be things that ultimately cause you a tremendous amount of pain.
8. Don’t stay longer than you should
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This is an offshoot of ignoring red flags, and staying in a relationship even though you know it’s not a healthy one.
I have a client who so wants to be in a relationship that she is willing to put up with being treated horribly by her partner. He emotionally and verbally abuses her. He doesn’t show up when he says he will. He treats her with contempt and derision. He belittles her. Despite all of this, she stays. She hopes if she loves him enough, he will change and they will be happy.
Another thing people do is stay in a relationship because they believe things will go back to the way they were in the beginning. Things were good then, with love and hope, and people believed if they stayed, they could get back to that place.
Unfortunately, things will never go back to the way they were in the beginning, even in healthy relationships.
So, don’t waste any more time than you should stay in a relationship that isn’t working. I can promise you, eventually it will end and you will have wasted time you could have spent finding someone who loves you.
9. Communicate always
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This is the buzzword for every healthy relationship, whether familial, romantic, or collegial, make sure you say what needs to be said and you do so in a way you will be heard.
When an issue arises in a relationship, it mustn’t be swept under the rug but should be addressed immediately. If someone is struggling, it’s important to be honest with their partner so they can understand what is going on. If someone is disappointed or feeling let down or unloved or unseen, expressing how one feels to one’s partner is essential to keeping a relationship healthy.
Unfortunately, communication is the key to a healthy relationship and something people struggle with. As a result, they are passive-aggressive with their partner or, worse, say nothing is going on. Both of these things only alienate a partner and send a relationship into a deep dive from which it might not recover.
It might seem easy to write off one’s inability to have a healthy relationship by blaming it on one’s parents. I know I did. But, we can break the pattern we learned early in life by developing and using life skills to help us in every relationship.
You can do it!
Mitzi Bockmann is an NYC-based Certified Life Coach and mental health advocate who works exclusively with women to help them be all they want to be. Mitzi's bylines have appeared in MSN, Prevention, Huffington Post, and Psych Central, among many others.