Resources
Healthy Relationships are good for your Health
"In simple terms, the goal of a healthy relationship is for both partners to be enhanced as a result of being in the relationship."
- A study done in 2001 showed that married people are healthier and live longer than their single counterparts.
- Non-married people have significantly higher rates of mortality: 50 percent higher among women and 250 percent higher among men.
- "You have the freedom and encouragement to reach your goals and become the person you want to be."
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Fact of Fiction
What myths were you taught to believe about relationships?
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It’s important to identify and recognize the beliefs we brought into the relationship and determine whether they are truly fact or fiction.
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Many couples aren’t prepared when they arrive at strange destinations, even though life often takes us over bumpy paths and detours.
- Many of us enter relationships with dangerous generalizations, irrational beliefs, and unrealistic expectations that get us into trouble long before commitments are made...
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Different Backgrounds - Different Relationship Expectations?
What do you have a right to expect or not expect in a relationship? Unfortunately that’s somewhat relative, depending on your family or cultural background.
- We learn about relationships from what we see around us, not from books or standards.
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People are both still individual human beings. Being in a relationship does not mean that you and your partner are joined at the hip and share the same organs or brains.
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A healthy relationship should be a means of enhancing and enriching each partner.
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What is Love?
In order to have a compatible relationship, both partners need to be using the same definition of love.
- There are many definitions of love - so there should be an understanding from both partners what those definitions really mean.
- Some examples of meanings of love are one-sided love, familial love, needy "vehicle" love, possessive love, hollow love, and mutually supportive love.
- The success of mutually supportive love is measured by the closeness, mutual happiness, and growth of both partners.
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A Compatible or a Mutually Respectful Relationship - Which One do You Want?
It’s very important to recognize the kind of a relationship that we want and the kind of a relationship that we are in—and make sure that the two match.
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Convenient Relationship: Two people come together for convenience. The union does not need to have any intimacy or real sharing.
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Ruling Relationship: Two people come together in an intimate union in which one partner controls, the other submits. In this situation, one person is the ruler of the relationship.
- Mutually Supportive Relationship: Two people come together in an intimate union with respect, care, support, and sharing of each other’s feelings, needs, interests, and growth as separate individuals.
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Men and Women’s Relationships Have Changed Over Time
Where are you in your relationship?
- Times have changed both for men and women. As technology has changed, so have relationships changed between men and women.
- It’s often difficult to find our own way and establish new standards that better fit the way we live.
- Today’s healthy relationships respect both partners as individual human beings in the relationship.
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GO, CAUTION and STOP for a Healthy Relationship
Have you ever felt confused when your partner did one thing and thought it was OK, but you felt hurt or angered by it?
- If you don’t recognize where you are, how can you get directions to go somewhere else?
- Both partners should receive relationship benefits, to make it worthwhile being in the relationship. If there were no benefits in relationships, then everyone would be happier staying single or just living with a roommate.
- Neither partner should get all of his or her rights at the expense of the other; both partners need to yield so that there is mutual give-and-take.
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The Health of Your Relationship Depends on How Good You Feel About Yourself
No one should have to complete the other person in a healthy relationship, because a healthy relationship is made of two whole individuals.
- We need to have a good relationship with ourselves before we can have a good relationship with someone else.
- When both individuals feel good about themselves, they are better able to help themselves and help each other. They will have more to share and they are better equipped to reach their full potential as human beings.
- Ultimately, relationships are only as good as the individuals in them.
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YIELD for Benefits in a Healthy Relationship
If there were no benefits in relationships, then everyone would be happier staying single or just living with a roommate.
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If you want to make your relationship the best it can be, both partners only need to look at the benefits they are giving to each other.
- In order for both partners to receive benefits, both partners need to give something of themselves. In a healthy relationship, both partners are sensitive to giving each other benefits
- Benefits in a relationship can come in many forms, and include things like love, warmth, understanding, companionship, reliability and respect.
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How Do You Know If Your Relationship Is Healthy?
If there were no benefits in relationships, then everyone would be happier staying single or just living with a roommate.
- One component of a healthy relationship: both partners are treated and respected as separate individuals.
- Healthy relationships do not usually add up to 100%; they are usually more.
- Benefits are the reason people go into relationships. They want to receive “extras” that they can’t get as a single person, such as “love” and “understanding.”
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3 Ways to Positively Solve Conflicts and Keep Your Relationship Healthy
No relationship is perfect. Even in a good relationship, there are always differences—after all, you and your partner are still two different individuals. However, the way you solve your differences is an indication of the health of your relationship.
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The goal of a healthy relationship is for both partners to be enhanced as individuals as a result of being in the relationship.
- Three healthy ways to solve differences are: compromise, accepting differences, and give a gift of happiness, joy or peace.
- Both partners need to feel good about themselves, even when differences arise.
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Healthy Parent-Child Relationships Know the ONE Thing Parents Need To Give To Their Children
A person’s self-worth is shown in one’s self-esteem, self-confidence and self-concept about who he or she is as an individual.
- When a person’s self-worth is not developed or even hurt as a child, it is much harder to make up for it later in life than education or many other childhood needs.
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Children will feel good about themselves, if we support age appropriate expectations of them.
- As children get older, let children make a list of the potential positive results and the negative results of a decision before making it.
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Stress and Relationships - Does Your Relationship Create a Positive or a Negative Atmosphere?
Does your relationship create more stress or help sooth and diminish it? When two people are in a relationship their actions affect each other....
- Partners can help as a listener. Often talking about a stressful situation will help to release it just by being able to talk about it.
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A partner can help create a positive atmosphere through being an optimist and looking at the good side of the situations.
- When you are in a positive relationship, you look to your partner as a source of encouragement for your day and your efforts.
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Do Sweat the Small Stuff, if it all adds up to Big Stuff
How does the small stuff build to big stuff? Why do we continue to tolerate small hurts, until it builds to a point where it is emotionally destructive?
- Emotionally harmful behaviors are often more difficult to identify because you rarely see them listed or named.
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You might also tolerate harmful behaviors because you are too close to the situation to see the big picture.
- You might also tolerate harmful behaviors because you believe you are responsible for making your partner happy and keeping the relationship together.
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Tips to Keep the Holidays Happy and Healthy
Everyone looks forward to the holidays. But in truth, the holidays are often a time of stress on individuals and relationships.
- Don’t expect so much from yourself that you have to be the “Bionic Person” to get everything accomplished.
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You might also tolerate harmful behaviors because you are too close to the situation to see the big picture.
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In a poll conducted by Prevention Magazine and NBC Dateline, 41% of the respondents surveyed rated the holiday season as very stressful, on a par with a job interview.
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