Your Answers To These 9 Questions Will Let You Know How Healthy Your Relationship Really Is
How healthy is my relationship? It’s an important question and a good one to ask yourself regularly.
Long-term relationships start strong but without regular tending they can weaken over time. Much like managing your apps on your phone or keeping your status fresh on Facebook, it is important to always be checking your relationship for updates.
Healthy relationships are important to a healthy life so yourself regularly How healthy is my relationship?
So, what questions do you need to ask? Let me suggest the following:
1. Can you talk about anything?
Being able to talk about anything is the key to a healthy relationship.
Can you tell your partner when you don’t like something that he does? Or that seeing his mother EVERY Sunday is more than you would like? Or that you really don’t like extra sausage on your pizza? Or that that thing he likes to do in bed is just a little bit much for you?
Being able to be honest with your partner about everything in your life and relationship is a key to keeping it healthy.
2. Do you enjoy the sex?
Having a healthy sex life is an important part of every healthy relationship.
If your sex life is something that you just put up with, don’t really enjoy, or even dread, then it’s time to act.
Talk to your partner about how you feel and figure out together how to make things work for both of you.
3. Do you like each other’s friends and family?
Liking each other’s friends and family is another really important part of a healthy relationship.
Like it or not, when someone becomes part of a couple their partner’s previous relationships come along too. And if you don’t get along with his friends and family it can cause a huge rift. He will want to spend time with all of you and if he is forced to choose he will resent it.
So check in to see if you are both on board with liking each other’s friends. It’s important that you do.
4. Do you respect each other?
Of course it’s important to like and love the person with whom you are in a relationship. What is even more important is that you respect them.
If you are in a relationship with someone who you can’t respect, for whatever reason, who you regularly are critical of and treat with contempt then you are not in a healthy relationship.
Respecting the person you are with, respecting the choices that they make, the values they uphold, the way they are in the world, is an essential part of being happy together.
5. Do you laugh and have fun together?
Laughter is the number one aphrodisiac that I know of. People who can laugh together, often, will stay more attached, emotionally and physically, than those who don’t.
Do you and your partner laugh together and have fun together? Do you laugh often, even in times of stress? Do you like to do the same things? The things that make you happy? Do you have inside jokes that only you share?
Make sure that you and your partner enjoy life together. You will be glad you did!
6. Do you want to spend time together?
This is a big one. Do you and your partner actually make an effort to spend time together? Or do you make excuses to not have to do so?
A client of mine would come up with every excuse in the world to not spend time with her husband and volunteering at the kid’s school was a great way to do that.
Guess what! He found someone else, someone who wanted to spend time with him.
7. Do you feel good about yourself?
Feeling good about yourself is key to a healthy relationship.
If you don’t feel good about who you are in the world, if you don’t feel like you need someone to ‘complete you,’ if you know that you will be just fine alone, then you are in a place to have a healthy relationship.
People who are needy or clingy or fraught with insecurities do not make good partners. So take care of yourself and be all that you can be so that you can be a contributing half of a healthy relationship.
8. Do you have plans for the future together?
People in healthy relationships share their plans for the future.
They think about tomorrow, next week, next month and even next year.
They do so because they are invested in being together and part of being together is making plans for the future.
If either one of you isn’t interested in talking about the future then you are not in a relationship that has one.
9. Do you know each other’s love language?
Gary Chapman’s book The 5 Love Languages speaks to the belief that everyone has a way that they express and receive love and that everyone’s language is different. And, often, people express love in the ways that THEY want to be loved as opposed to in ways their partners want to be loved.
We might feel loved when we get a piece of jewelry but our partner might feel loved when we do a chore for them. So if we give them a piece of jewelry they won’t feel loved, even if we might, but if we take out the trash then all is good.
Does that make sense? Check out The 5 Love Languages here for more information. Everyone just wants to be loved.
So how did you do on my questionnaire?
Can you answer the question How healthy is my relationship? in an affirmative way?
If yes, YAY!
If no, make an effort to tweak the things that seem a bit off and see if you can bring your relationship around to a healthier place.
Make an effort to communicate. Make sure your sex life is good. Enjoy life and each other’s friends and families. Respect each other and plan together. And read more about the 5 Love Languages. They always help!
So get to work NOW! Make your relationship a healthy one.