5 Steps for Building a Healthy Relationship

If you are like most people, you aren’t certain what healthy relationship characteristics are, and you might not even believe healthy and fulfilling relations exist. Have you taken steps towards building a healthy relationship? You strive to be the best version of yourself through eating a healthy diet, exercising, and getting necessary sleep. However, you also need to assess whether any of your relationships are toxic.

Happy New Year

Now is the period to evaluate your life. It’s the beginning of a new year and time to set goals. It’s also a wonderful time to assess and improve your relationships. Evaluation and reflection of your relationships are important when you are polishing your life. 

Some people love to set and achieve goals. For other people, establishing goals is like a modern-day torture device. Americans set goals for their finances, working out, making better decisions, weight loss, decreasing stress, and…on-and-on it goes. Many people reach their goals while more individuals give up their aspirations before the end of January. You must have goals to achieve the life you want.

While you are evaluating your life and goals, examine your relationships. Do they drain your energy or increase it? Are they helpful, supportive, and safe? Do they bring you joy? Here is a blog to help you find your joyful place https://deedeelake.com/your-joyful-place/. 

This is the perfect moment to investigate all of your relationships to see which ones matter and have the potential to be toxic. Some relations have an expiration date, while others are lifelong commitments. You may have a great health routine, but if you have destructive associations, they can destroy the good things in your life. 

Evaluate and improve your relationships just as you do the other aspects of your life. Great ones share common healthy characteristics. Here are five steps to create better connections you can implement right away.

5 Steps to Create Better, Healthy Relationships

1. Decide if your relationship is a priority over other things vying for your attention.
2. Be polite—it’s the trivial things that build up over time.
3. Be kind and loving to your significant one more than to anyone else—they deserve it the most.
4. Invest your time learning how to grow your relationship into one you’ll be proud of years from now.
5. Let go of past wounds and live in the Now! It’s 2022, so anything is possible!

Choose Healthy Living 

You choose how and what to eat. You choose to sleep and exercise. It is possible to choose to create healthy relationships, too. The first step is changing the way you think. Just as it states in the Healthy Living blog Peace of Heart and Mind. “Healthy thinking is vital for healthy living.” A healthy mind is crucial to obtain a strong bond with someone else. When we think negatively of our loved ones, all we can see and focus on is their flaws. See your loved ones through the lens of healthy relationship characteristics and you can see the good, lovely, beautiful in them. 

In the article, Emotional Health, it states, “Oftentimes negative emotions are usually accompanied by an underlying root issue that needs to be identified and yanked out to maintain emotional health.” You can’t experience an extraordinary bond if you aren’t willing to be truthful and do the challenging work to clean uproot issues. The ugly past hurts. In a committed relationship, you owe it to yourself and the one you love to put in the time to discover the root problem that blocks you from achieving the dynamic, loving connection God designed.

Choose how you want to live. When you decide to put your relationships first, you will see them blossom. It is up to you to decide how you will live and exactly what you will accept from others. Most people will respect your decisions, especially when you express and stick to them. Be sure to put time with your sweetie on the top of your to-do list. It’s vital for a healthy relationship.

Polite. Kind. Loving.

Treating others with kindness, love, and politeness creates extraordinary relationships. Being polite is free, and the investment of kindness grows exponentially throughout your life. Loving your partner more than yourself will always be a wise investment. That doesn’t mean for you not to take care of yourself. A healthy lifestyle is important for healthy relationships. 

Keeping our emotions in check is essential. Personally, being of a very enthusiastic nature, this is an area I’ve had to learn the hard way. Donald Miller, author of Business Made Simple has brilliant advice. “The truth is none of us has to be a slave to our emotions. Our emotions do not have to become actions.” Emotional health goes a long way in creating extraordinary relationships. You can learn to control your emotions while still being the passionate person God created you to be.

Invest in Yourself and the Ones you Love

Improving your relationships looks much like other ways you’ve learned things in your life. To get into college, you had to graduate with good grades from high school. From college, you’ve probably learned many other things. You invested your time, energy, and money into learning. The same is true for relationships. You can’t expect to just “know” things. You’ve got to learn and experience them. You give honor and show respect to your loved ones when you invest in them by learning to be the best you can be!

If a person has never experienced a loving, healthy, God-centered life then how can we imagine they will recognize the signs of trouble in their relationships? When we choose to walk beside our neighbors, friends, and loved ones as they grow in their relationships, we can guide them. We can mentor when the troubles are squabbles and not warlike situations. We need to be willing to roll up our sleeves and create dynamic, extraordinary, and loving relations. They don’t just happen. “Happily, ever after is not a fairy tale—it’s a choice.”  Fawn Weaver

Domestic Violence

Often, it is the trivial things that can trigger an argument. It Ephesians 4:36 it says, “In your anger do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (NIV). This is the wisest advice you will ever hear. If you resolve situations before they blow up into something bigger, it is so much easier to sleep and have peace with your loved ones. Forgiveness is for you, not the one you are forgiving.

You may not realize there has been another casualty of the 2020 Pandemic—family relations. Time Magazine reported in DV Pandemic within a Pandemic. “While one in three white women report having experienced domestic violence [during the pandemic], the rates of abuse increased dramatically to about 50% and higher for those marginalized by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, citizenship status, and cognitive physical ability,” says Erika Sussman, executive director of the Center for Survivor Advocacy and Justice (CSAJ), a support and research organization.”

It’s important to notice those around you or if you are in a domestic violence situation, please get help. Bright Horizons is a shelter and advocacy group for people who experienced domestic abuse or sexual violence. They are there to help when you or someone you know needs it. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to grow healthy relationships. 

Healthy Relationship Characteristics

What do healthy relationships look like? Would you know one if you saw it? I know most people think they are as rare as a unicorn. I promise, they do exist. 

Let me leave you with the following list of healthy relationship characteristics. Work every day to implement these characteristics into your life and you will see a beautiful difference all around you.

• Trust
• Honesty
• Humor
• Kindness
• Joy
• Purpose
• Commitment
• Love expressed in many ways

“Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man who makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat.”

 —Joanne Woodward

About the Author

DeeDee Lake, The Connection Expert—speaker, author of Next Step. You’ve Accepted Jesus. Now What? blogger, and columnist—builds relationships one conversation at a time using humor, storytelling, and purposeful communication. The owner of Cherish Relations Retreats, she lives out her faith and passion while writing, speaking, and guiding individuals on how to have extraordinary relationships. www.deedeelake.com

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