A Reader emailed me yesterday and asked if I could share some information that would define what made a relationship healthy or abusive. I got curious and quickly googled the subject.
I found that basically the following factors were commonly listed;
- Mutual respect
- Trust
- Honesty
- Support
- Fairness/equality
- Separate identities
- Good communication
All good things, but I don’t believe you can diagnose the health of a relationship by ticking boxes. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says about a relationship. It only matters what the people in it feel about it.
If you have to ask if it’s healthy than it isn’t.
photo credit: hyperscholar
You don’t have to have a relationship, so if it doesn’t add to your life, why be in it?
I believe a relationship is healthy when you are happy in it and abusive when you are unhappy in it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you are in a relationship with an abusive Partner, sometimes it’s just the pattern of the way you relate to one another.
Many times people mistakenly attribute things to the other that isn’t actually how they feel, just how they think their Partner feels. Then they behave differently based on that mistaken perception.
You might have noticed that I’m working from a new domain now. The reason for this is that I have updated my philosophy to what I’m now calling Happiness 2.0. This philosophy is based on the idea that it is conflict, in all of it’s forms, that drains us of energy and happiness.
So a healthy relationship is one where conflict, which is inevitable, can be resolved without causing stress and pain. The less stress and pain involved the healthier the relationship. Abusive relationships might take the form of much stress and pain, possibly even physical, because someone doesn’t pass the salt quick enough. Obviously, any more meaningful conflict is going to cause much, much more conflict. And so much more pain.
Ideally a healthy relationship is an outlet for love. You form a relationship because you have a surplus of love that you want to share and focus onto another person. It’s a way to love and be loved. If you enter into a relationship seeking this and it doesn’t match up, you quickly get out.
The only reason to stay was if you needed something. Stick around in this kind of relationship long enough and you’ll soon get disorientated and confused enough to think it might be normal.
What happens in abusive relationships is that two people get together, either running away from something or seeking something. Maybe an abusive parent, another abusive partner, a feeling of loneliness, emptiness or desperation. Then they form an alliance of needs with each other. It’s not an outlet to share love, but a market for transactions.
This is an entirely different foundation for a relationship. An outlet for love starts not from lack of love for yourself, but from an excess. So your self esteem, your happiness and your meaning is not dependent on others because you already have a stable base. Therefore their effect on you is not so strong. You are your own compass, not what they think of you.
In contrast a market for transactions begins with me feeling that I am lacking something that I cannot attain alone. Maybe a feeling of loneliness, insecurity, emptiness or not feeling good enough. So I will go out and find someone to cure me or at the least make me feel better.
Now to get what I’m wanting, I feel I have to trade something I have. Maybe it’s sex, it could be looking after him/her or it might be providing money.
Underpinning this transaction though is always an insecurity. What I am trading is not me (which is unique), it is a product or service, in other words a commodity, so what if he/she finds a better deal elsewhere? So both sides are always frightened that the other may leave them, at least until it gets so bad that no longer care, they just want out anyway.
Sometimes they’ll even run scenarios through their mind of the person having left them. So within their own mind the person is about to leave and they think, right I’ll make them pay for leaving me. And they’ll act to punish the person for something they haven’t yet done.
Now there is another important point to this. People will judge that they are in an abusive relationship and they will demonise the Abuser.
Steve Duck talks about something relevant to this in the value of couples counseling. Studies show that in most cases relationship counseling doesn’t fix a relationship. However what it does is create a story as to why the relationship broke down.
This is important because when the individuals move on to dating other people, instead of prospective dates wondering why no-one wants to be with or stick around with this person, they can say ‘my last relationship broke down because… and now I’ve learned from that’.
In other words it makes them seem like a more viable partner rather than someone that is untrustworthy or that no-one else wants.
In an abusive relationship it’s easy to say my ex beat me, was controlling etc etc, it wasn’t my fault he is a bad person, I was just unlucky. However there is no value in that to you.
If you then go into another relationship with the same mindset that you entered the previous one, you’re going to walk straight into another relationship that doesn’t work for you.
The hardest thing in life is to be completely honest with yourself. It’s easy to blame others, to find scapegoats for what happens to you, but you’ll never grow and so your results will never change.
Now I know there’s going to be people saying, ‘Abuse is wrong and it’s never deserved’.
I agree.
Nothing I am saying is ever condoning abuse. Nor am I saying it’s deserved.
What I am saying is that if you are not a happy, whole person, by which I mean you do not feel worthy and without need of anyone else to complete or fix you, then you are going to walk into these kind of situations and will not feel you have the strength to get out of them before getting hurt.
To do this you have to be honest with yourself and find out how you got into the relationship and what you were seeking that led you to this person.
Demonising the person and holding onto bitterness is really just a way to avoid facing up to the bugs in your own Operating System that caused this situation. I will elaborate on this in another post, but for now all I’ll say is that nothing happens in isolation. There is a sequence of events that lead you to wherever you are in your life.
Not that this in any way makes you to blame or responsible. I don’t believe in blame. I believe when you understand the dynamics of what is happening and what led you to that situation you can prevent it from ever happening again. I see so much more value in this rather than stumbling out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Hoping or wishing will not change anything. You can only change what you understand. To understand the pattern that led to this relationship will bring you the clarity to avoid it ever happening again.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
For me, the start of any relationship has be with yourself, otherwise you will never be able to fully connect to other people, love and be loved by them
So the most common things I find of most use is two essential keys in helping build relationships:
1. Self Knowledge
2. Self Love.
with that small but important peice of knowledge behing you and with you, any relationships, be they good or bad, can be seen for exactly what they are, and life becomes more easier to manage when faced with any abusive issues that may arise
Steve
Good point Steve.
I also think that it is knowledge that leads to love and ignorance that causes fear.
Nothing is more frightening than the unknown. Likewise the more that we invest in others the more we appreciate them.
Rob
To me, a healthy relationship starts off with two healthy people getting together to freely share whatever they CHOOSE to share with each other.
That means that each person is pretty complete within themselves and each is free to share that each other.
Remember that the word freedom is pretty important here.
If I feel that I am dependent on someone else to make me feel whole and complete, I will not have the freedom to CHOOSE if I want to continue to be in that relationship.
I feel that a relationship is abusive when either of the two people feel like they have no choices.
Note that I say that they FEEL like they have no choices.
We always have choices.
We sometimes just don’t like the options that we get to choose from.
Very simply, we get into relationship in order to enhance our lives in one way or another.
A healthy relationship enhances the lives of each person involved.
An abusive relationship enhances the life of one of the people at the cost of the other.
At least that is the way that I see it.
Russ
Interesting you should say that Russ, because when I wrote the 32 Building Blocks of Happiness I said that happiness boiled down to the perception of freedom.
There are many different forms of abuse. Withholding love is one form. For some reason, my husband did not want to have sex with me. As much as I would ask him to talk about it, he would not. I asked him if I had done or said something that made him feel that way toward me. I never did find out why.
Indifference is also a form of abuse. When I called, even though we had caller ID, he refused to answer. When I was ill, or injured, he made sure he was gone for hours and hours, even though I was physically unable to care for myself. Once he was gone for 9 days and he didn’t call me once to check on me or to tell me where he was.
I kept thinking things would get better and I waited i t out for 6 years. Then I finally filed for divorce because there would be days on end I had no idea where he was.
Emotional and mental abuse can be just as harmful as physical abuse.
I think love is much more than all this! When a family is young, and there are kids, jobs and all sorts of things to juggle…we have a tendency to lose our focus. It is impossible to keep the fairy tale love during these sometimes gruelling times. Sometimes we can get so tired and wonder if happiness was ever in our “cards”. During those times of difficulty, we still were committed to each other and our relationship. (so important!!!) After the children were gone, (a bit of a grieving process for me) my husband still stood beside me, and we built back our relationship. (which by the way has been sweeter than anything I have ever known!) It was worth all the toil and time it took to get here! We give up on each other so quickly if we are not “happy” all the time.
I have been in a very abusive relationship for seven years now. Mentally and Physical. Before entering this relationship I thought I wasn’t looking for anything lacking in my life, but looking to enhance my life. I thought that with my life experience that I could bring more life to this person’s life than they had before. In a very short time I came to realize that we both had very different ideas of what we were bringing into this relationship.
The biggest mistake was not communicating what we were both looking for. Had this been a conversation from the start, I know that this would not have lasted this long. I now understand that from the begining both individuals need to understand why they are entering the relationship. But most important to the honesty of what they are looking for. Even after I realized what had not happened in the begining and had tried to get the answers that were so important to try to make this work, they never came.
They never came because this person was not concerned about me, but only concerned about them. And to this day has never changed. My point here is know what you are walking into and take this very slow. The truth will show eventually and hopefully when it does you will have the ability to walk away if is is not right,
To me a abusive relationship is constant complaints and criticism against their partner. I think those people suffer from low self-esteem.
They try to bring their partners down to their insecure levels.
If you get into such a relationship – person with low self-esteem -
run like hell. You cannot help those people because they don’t want to help themselves and they will never ever change.
You will be hurt and if you don’t join them at the bottom but instead get stronger because of the abuse, they will just get worse in their abuse.
Thus you are stuck in the cycle of abuse.
God showed me these pivotal things about a relationship:
1. A good relationship you can be both weak and strong
2. In an abusive relationship you are either weak or strong
Weak – brow beaten
Strong – to keep from being brow beaten
3. Honesty and Trust is vital and when the other is not honest in small things it is definitely time to take a step back and monitor. Emotions are high at pivotal times, especially when one’s heart is on their sleeve and they can react in silly ways, but when push comes to shove are they going to come out with the truth and communicate with you directly and effectively.
4. In an abusive relationship the abusee’s whole identity rests and relies on the abuser’s acceptance and approval, which is very unhealthy because the abuser has not accepted or approved of themselves.
trusting a liar is not the fault of the person trusting
liars decieve even themselves as well as loved ones
that is the major root of all issues
deception………
not the acts as much as deception
in a abusivie relationship first your a victum if you don’t get out then your a volenteer
interseting Rob you respond to the male comments…………….
Hi Casey,
Interesting point you make in both posts.
I haven’t made a point to ignore female comments. However, if you look at the date stamps on the comments I replied to those when the topic was fresh in my mind. When the later posts came I was involved in other topics and either didn’t have time to comment on them.
Or sometimes I get very focused down a different topic and I can’t easily switch to go back to a different topic. And sometimes I see the comments as adding experience to what was just theory and so not needing any comment from me.
The other post you make is I think very sound. Ultimately all problems in life amount to a matter of deception. Over time deception, to yourself or to another’ will always be revealed.
What Makes a Relationship Healthy And When Is It Abusive? Awesome question!
A relationship is a corporation. A corporation can only succeed if everyone puts 110%. A healthy relationship requires more than 110%. When one begins to expect without giving it unconditionally, the relationship becomes abusive. It is abusive because it effects not only the relationship; it is also effects the person that receiving it. Define abusive! The very first thing that came to my mind is: someone hurts someone’s physically or emotionally. Must it be for a long period in order to qualify as abusive? In my mind it does not need to be. The outcome is the same whether 1 day, 2 days, 2 months, or 1 year. Someone is getting hurt.
I think a person is happy or balance in his or her life; one can contribute to a healthy relationship. The outcome of successful relationship will be higher.
On the other hand, if a person is out of balance, he/she will become more insecure and demanding, etc that will contribute to the relationship of Abusive.
i would like to share my problem with u that im also suffering the same situation.whenever my beloved get angry he starts abusing.i cant leave him becoz i love him…
I agree with you Teresia. You will definately loose yourself and your unique identity when you are caught in an unhealthy relationship. Its a tendecy for the partner not carrying the baggage (which may include, lowself-esteem, guilt, disappointment, unaccomplished life goals, unreslove trauma etc,) to be constanly giving up of himself/herself to maintain some degree of functionong in the relationship.
HI
Interesting views above and they all have merit.
I would like to add that I think that there is another view in that for me it boils down to simple ‘respect’. Regardless of relationship ie boss/employee, child/parent, boyfriend/girlfriend, wife/husband, patient/consultant, client/customer, nature/mankind …… just my view …… thanks
Sacha
I agree Sacha. I think that abuse happens where there is no respect. Good point.
Thanks Rob, tho I appear a little ‘late’ with adding comments to this debate – sorry …..
Better late than never, Sacha
cool – thank you