A Healthy Relationship

Do not expect anyone to be responsible for your happiness. Accept yourself. Respect yourself. Love yourself first. Take good care of yourself.

Make and keep clear agreements. Respect the difference between yourself and your partner. Don’t expect he or she agrees with you on everything. Reach mutual agreement or plan, and then commit to it.

Use communication to establish a common ground to understand different points of view and to create a mutual, collaborative agreement or plan. You can either choose to be right, or you can have a successful relationship. You can’t always have both. Most people argue to be “right” about something.

Approach your relationship as a learning experience. Each one has important information for you to learn. Let go of a relationship that no longer serves us. A truly healthy relationship will consist of both partners who are interested in learning and expanding a relationship so that it continues to improve.

Tell the unarguable truth. Be truthful to yourself and your partner if you want true love. Many people are taught to lie to protect someone’s feelings, either their own or those of their partner. Lies create disconnection between you and your relationship, even if your partner never finds out about it.

Do not do anything for your partner if it comes with an expectation of reciprocation. The things you do for your partner must always be done because you chose to do them and you wanted to do them. Do not hold your “good deeds” over their head at a later time. Keeping score in a relationship will never work: a person is less likely to notice and value all the contributions of their partner as much as their own.

Forgive one another. Forgiveness is a decision of letting go the past and focusing on the present. It’s about taking control of your current situation. Talk about the issue and try to reach a mutual agreement on how to handle the situation in the future and then commit to it. If you can’t reach an agreement, it’s a bad sign.

Review your expectations. Try to be as clear as you can about any expectations – including acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and attitudes, especially attitudes towards money. Make sure you don’t expect your partner to fulfil every need in your life. One person cannot be everything to you.

Be Responsible. Here’s a new definition: Responsible means that you have the ability to respond. Respond to the real problem, to your true needs. It does not mean you are to blame. There is tremendous power in claiming your creation. If you’ve been snippy to your partner, own up to it, and get curious about why you are jealous and how you might do it differently next time.

Appreciate yourself and your partner. In the midst of an argument, it can be difficult to find something to appreciate. Start by generating appreciation in moments of non-stress, and that way when you need to be able to do it during a stressful conversation, it will be easier. Be sensitively aware so you don’t have to be sugar-coating anything.

Admit your mistakes and say sorry. Right after a misunderstanding or argument, tell your partner to give you some time to think of the wrong and right things that you and he/she did.

Spend some quality time together- No matter how busy you two are, there is always an excitement when you do something together, when you share your precious time.