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.

photo credit: avlxyz

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’.

photo credit: Benimoto

 

 

 

 

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.

Tags: Relationship Stress //