SIGNS OF HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP
Healthy relationships bring out the best in you and make you feel good about yourself
- Comfortable Pace: In a healthy relationship, you’re not rushed or pressured in a way that makes you feel overwhelmed.
- Trust: Confidence that your partner won’t do anything to hurt you or ruin the relationship.
- Honesty: You can be truthful and candid without fearing how the other person will respond.
- Independence: You have space to be yourself outside of the relationship. Having independence means being free to do you and giving your partner that same freedom.
- Respect: You value one another’s beliefs and opinions, and love one another for who you are as a person.
- Equality: The relationship feels balanced and everyone puts the same effort into the success of the relationship.
- Kindness: You are caring and empathetic to one another, and provide comfort and support.
- Taking Responsibility: Owning your actions and words.
- Healthy Conflict: Openly and respectfully discussing issues and confronting disagreements non-judgmentally. No one should belittle or yell during an argument.
- Fun: You enjoy spending time together and you bring out the best in each other. No relationship is fun 100% of the time, but the good times should definitely outweigh the bad.
SIGNS OF UNHEALTHY RELATIONSHIP
- Intensity: When someone expresses very extreme feelings and over-the-top behaviour that feels overwhelming.
- Possessiveness: Jealousy is a normal human emotion, it becomes unhealthy when it causes someone to control or lash out at you. This means getting upset when you text or hang out with people they feel threatened by, wrongly accusing you of flirting or cheating, or even going so far as to stalk you. Possessiveness is often excused as being overprotective or having really strong feelings for someone.
- Manipulation: When someone tries to control your decisions, actions or emotions. Manipulation is often hard to spot, because it can be expressed in subtle or passive-aggressive ways.
- Isolation: When someone keeps you away from friends, family, or other people.
- Sabotage: When someone purposely ruins your reputation, achievements, or success.
- Belittling: When someone does and says things to make you feel bad about yourself.
- Guilting: When someone makes you feel responsible for their actions or makes you feel like it’s your job to keep them happy. They might also pressure you to do something that you’re not comfortable with by claiming that it’s important to them or that it’ll hurt their feelings if you don’t do it.
- Volatility: When someone has a really strong, unpredictable reaction that makes you feel scared, confused or intimidated.
- Deflecting Responsibility: When someone repeatedly makes excuses for their unhealthy behaviour.
- Betrayal: When someone is disloyal or acts in an intentionally dishonest way.
If you are seeing unhealthy signs in your relationship, it’s important to not ignore them and understand they can escalate to abuse.
