How to Foster Healthy Relationships with Significant Others

Healthy relationships are a primary goal for most people. Healthy relationships, not only with your partner, but also with your friends, family members, colleagues and others are often the key to a happy and fulfilling life. Since healthy relationships are so integral to our overall happiness, what can we do to foster healthy relationships? How do you know if your relationship with your significant other is a healthy one? In other words, what constitutes a truly healthy relationship? And how do you know if/when you and your partner might be in need of relationship counseling? This article takes a look at all of these healthy relationships questions and more.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• An interest in learning more about what goes into healthy relationships and when relationship counseling might be needed.

1. Healthy relationships start with trust, respect and kindness. These are the foundational building blocks of all healthy relationships. When you and your partner repeatedly demonstrate your love for each other with small and large acts of fidelity, kindness and respect, you are continually feeding and fortifying the loving bond that you have created together. In essence, we can't start a love relationship and then put ourselves on "auto pilot." Think of love and healthy relationships as living, breathing organisms that need to be continually cared for and nourished.

2. Healthy relationships involve not taking each other for granted and expressing your appreciation for one another on an ongoing basis. This means saying things like "Thank you," and "I appreciate your help," and "Your love and support mean the world to me." Sometimes we forget to express these small kindnesses, and such forgetting can be detrimental to our love relationships. Mindfulness and attentiveness are key components of all loving, healthy relationships.

3. Conversely, excessive criticism and the passing of harsh judgments are both toxic forces that have no place in healthy relationships. Relationship counseling may be in order if you and/or your partner have been engaging heavily in either or both of these relationship harming behaviors.

4. When asked in a recent interview about how they had stayed happily married for over twenty years in Hollywood, actor Kevin Bacon (with wife Kyra Sedgwick standing nearby)said simply : "Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty." Not bad advice about maintaining healthy relationships when you think about it.

5. Make each other a top priority by scheduling date nights, keeping the physical aspects of your love alive, showing your affection throughout the day (little stolen kisses and hugs, etc.) and keep communicating at all costs. Strong communication is at the heart of all healthy relationships.

Tips & Warnings

• Speaking of relationship counseling, it can sometimes be the key to revitalizing a relationship that has gotten into serious trouble for any reason. Relationship counseling can also be helpful in the case of generally healthy relationships which have one or two areas that are in need of some work.