4 Qualities of a Healthy Relationship
Orlando Therapist Discusses the Qualities of a Healthy Relationship
Feeling overwhelmed in your relationship? You want closeness and connection, but there seems to be some invisible forcefield preventing you from experiencing the closeness that you so deeply crave? Do you often wonder, “Is it me or my partner?” Or in moments of desperation, do you want to throw in the towel completely, thinking, “Maybe I’m just not meant to be in a relationship!?”
As an anxiety therapist and relationship counselor, I help people navigate the murky waters out of overwhelming and confusing relationship patterns into healthy and thriving relationships.
In this blog series on relationships, I define traits of unhealthy people, traits of healthy people, traits of healthy relationships, unhealthy communication patterns, and how to stop all the madness and step into healthy relationships, romantic or otherwise.
Now, let’s talk about how two healthy people come together to create a healthy relationship. In this article I provide four behaviors of securely attached adults.
Attachment Style
The four qualities I will describe are based on developing a secure attachment style. We develop our template for relating to others from our first relationships (think parent-child). How we value and trust ourselves coupled with how we value and trust others, emerges out of our attachments style. All of this typically originates in our first relationships with our primary caregivers. This way of relating is called our attachment style. Oftentimes, people that struggle in relationships have one of three insecure attachment styles. I’ve written more on attachment styles here: Baffled by Your Relationship Patterns? Allow Me to Shed Some Light.
Insecure Attachment
If we had consistent and reliable parents that allowed us to experience our feelings as valid and ourselves as worthy, then we likely have secure attachment. Secure attachment sets us up to pick healthy partners and to have securely attached adult relationships.
If on the other hand, we experience inconsistent parenting styles where we doubted ourselves or the availability of our parents to be there for us, then we likely emerged out of childhood with an insecure attachment style. Having an insecure attachment style as an adult tends to stress the relationship in ways that doesn’t allow for healthy growth of the relationship or each individual in the relationship.
The good news is that if you emerged from childhood with an insecure attachment style, you can work towards what is called earned secure attachment and that is what this article is about.
Having an insecure attachment style can make relationships confusing and overwhelming, I get it. The purpose of this post is to provide the insecurely attached folks a map out of the murky waters toward earned secure attachment.
Before I go into the qualities of an earned secure attachment in an adult relationship, it’s important to first discuss responsibility. As an adult, you are always responsible for you and your feelings. Your partner is responsible for their feelings. In adult relationships, each partner has the freedom to say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘yes, but later.’ It’s also important to note that earned secure attachment is a continuous process, a capacity within the relationship, not a rigid set of rules.
Earned Secure Attachment
Ability to Seek and Receive Care
When you are stressed and need support, you can reach out to your partner with ease and receive the care that is offered. You view your needs as valid, important, and worthy of being met. You don’t view your need for care as burdensome to your partner or too taxing on the relationship. Your relationship makes space for your individual needs and you trust that your partner you will be open to supporting you. You trust that they will likely be available and will be there without any strings attached, score keeping, or indebtedness. You have the confidence in yourself and your partner to be there which enables you to clearly and directly request help.
Ability to Give Care
Having the ability to give care means that you can show up for your partner in a loving and supportive way. This means you can be sensitive to their needs and offer support when they ask for it. You can give care without feeling manipulated or obligated. You can bear witness to your partner’s vulnerabilities without feeling threatened by them. You can also trust that your partner will ask for support when they need it; rather than having to assume responsibility for their needs. When you give support or care to your partner, it is free of score keeping or indebtedness.
Ability to Negotiate Needs
Having the ability to negotiate needs is important because no two people are going to have identical needs, desires, and preferences all of the time. Individual needs, desires, and preferences fluctuate moment by moment depending on stress, sleep, and many other factors. Having the ability to negotiate makes space for each partner’s fluctuating needs. It is a continuous process. The ability to negotiate requires the capacity to see each person’s needs and preferences as equally valid and worthwhile, not placing the overall needs of self or others above or below in priority or importance. Having the ability to negotiate these needs depends on trusting that the relationship can withstand the negotiation process, that working these things out won’t stress the relationship in such a way that it can’t sustain the negotiation process. This quality provides the capacity to go toward what needs to be negotiated rather than avoid it.
Ability to be Authentic Self
The ability to experience you and your partner as two separate autonomous people allows each of you to be your authentic and dynamic selves. You can have closeness without feeling like the relationship will engulf you and you trust the healthy differentiation that is needed for each person’s individual personal growth doesn’t threaten the relationship. You can have differing needs, desires, and preferences from each other and honor them rather than feel threatened by them. Neither person is forced into a fixed way of being in the relationship, as the partnerships holds space for each person’s fluctuating needs.
Are you noticing the theme throughout? It’s trust: trust in yourself as a worthy person with individual needs, trust that the other can and will show up for you, and trust that both parties can and will express their needs.
Sometimes the inability to express these qualities is a function of your current relationship and sometimes it is a result of the relationship template that was born out of your family of origin (parents). In either case, these four healthy behaviors are something to strive for if you want a long term healthy relationship that has the flexibility to support the evolving needs of both individuals.
Want more support?
Self-help blogs are great, but sometimes you need a little more support. We get it. If you resonate with this article, but need a little more support implementing things, reach out to us by clicking this link. We are are here to help.
Wanting to dive deeper into your relationship patterns? Check out each post in my Relationship Series:
Anxiety Therapy Orlando with Valentine’s Gifts to Soothe the Senses
Orlando Trauma Therapist Shares: What's Behind "Daddy Issues"
How to Validate Your Partner for Better Communication
Don't feel emotionally connected?: 31 signs your partner is emotionally immature
10 Traits of Emotionally Healthy People
Trauma Triangle: Making Sense of the Chaos
Trauma Triangle: Moving from Chaos to Clarity
Interested in Attachment Styles?
Baffled by Your Relationship Patterns? Allow Me to Shed Some Light.
Resources for This Article
Truth, lies, and intimacy: An attachment perspective
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Mindful Living Counseling Orlando is a trauma healing center. Our Orlando Therapy Services include anxiety therapy, trauma counseling, eating disorder recovery, teen counseling, and healing from toxic relationships. At Mindful Living Counseling Orlando, we use a down-to-earth approach infused with cutting-edge therapies that go beyond traditional talk therapy so clients can heal at the root level and experience lasting change. Feel free to access one of our Guided Meditations to help you feel settled and calm now.
