[huge_it_share id=”1″]How can you know, reasonably for sure, that you are ready for a healthy relationship? Perhaps people can’t in the sense they can know for sure that any new or beginning relationship will be healthy or not. What a healthy relationship is could be open to many interpretations or definitions, to a point.
Many people may believe they are in a healthy relationship or are capable of giving to a healthy relationships the must-haves from both people in a healthy relationship. Many people are actually defining toxic unhealthy relationships and/or relationship beliefs, qualities or ideals.
Some people, so lonely, so needy, due to pain in their pasts, are looking for anyone to just “love” them without realizing two things:
- What healthy love or “real” love is and what it is absolutely is not
- That they are seeking the fulfillment of their own needs and not as aware consistently of the needs of his/her boy/girlfriend
In trying to access if you are truly ready for a healthy relationship, currently, or not, if you answer no or you doubt a consistent and honest (self-aware) yes to the following questions you may want to think about what you might benefit from working on in a recovery process or a further process of personal growth and development:
- Are you needy?
- Might you want to be with someone believing you have a lot go give without realizing that right now you need more than you could possibly return or give?
- Are you lonely?
- Does your loneliness cause you significant emotional pain?
- Are you more in “love” with the idea of being in “love”?
- Do you believe that being in a relationship would take away any current pain or issues?
- Do you know yourself?
- Do you love yourself in healthy way?
- Do you have healthy self-esteem and self-worth or are you lacking said?
- Do you judge yourself?
- Are you self-critical? That can easily be turned on someone in a relationship.
- Do you know how to effectively communicate your needs and hear someone else’s?
- Do you live in the middle of paradox in life or are you more black and white?
- Are you looking for something to make you feel better or more whole?
- Are you feeling shamed or embarrassed because you are not in a relationship?
- Do you have a history of dramatic, high conflict, on-again, off-again relationships?
- Do you heed or ignore red flags – yours and/or the other persons?
There are many other questions that could be asked. The main point here is that if you do not love and know yourself, if you are not consistent with your words, feelings, and actions, a relationship is more likely to be unhealthy than healthy. Unhealthy relationships are thought by many to be better than no relationship at all. This is the furthest thing from the truth if one is totally honest with him or herself because being alone
a) Doesn’t have to be painful
b) Is not a healthy motivation to get into a relationship
c) A painful and/or toxic and abusive relationship with high conflict is not going to do anything healthy for you. It will only serve as a distraction from the pain or issues that you may need to work through from your past, for yourself, before you try dating and building a relationship.
It is okay to not be ready for a relationship at any age. If you’ve had a painful family experience and/or a couple or more failed and painful relationships in your life, it’s a great growth opportunity to get to know more about the patterns in your life that might make all your best efforts in attempting to have a healthy relationship end up with you in an unhealthy one.
Relationships are definitely on a spectrum. That spectrum spans from abusive toxic and unhealthy relationships at one end to unhealthy relationships to somewhat more to the right and at the far end of the spectrum to the left is where we find truly healthy relationships. Relationships are at their healthiest between two people open to giving and receiving love in emotionally and physically intimate ways that are not ruled by fear, or out-of-balance needs. Each healthy relationship is the coming together of two people who are emotionally mature, open, able to express and share vulnerability without punishment or fear of rejection. Open respectful consistently mutual communication is also a central core ingredient of healthy working relationships.
Popular culture and media, movies, and music, portray largely codependency in relationships which is not healthy for anyone. Schools teach a lot but have no courses in life or relationship skills. A painful and/or rejection, abusive wounding past, must be worked through or it will just repeat itself in unhealthy relationship after another.
Sometimes, while people are getting to know themselves and/or in therapy, it is healthiest to take things one step at a time. It is important to learn how to be vulnerable, open, consistent, mutual, emotionally mature, a middle-ground thinker, and a somewhat independent person sure of self and with confidence and esteem in order to be able to build a healthy interdependent relationship with another.
There was a time in my life when I tried to have a few relationships over the course of the first 20 years of my adult life wherein I kept being shown by myself and then partners – or we showed and taught each other that we weren’t ready for a healthy relationship. I know that I went and got the help I needed. I worked hard to become a
Counter to the messages everywhere in most cultures taking the time to be ready and capable of healthy relating and building a solid mutual foundation for a healthy relationship is the healthiest way for each individual to approach accessing his or her readiness and ability to effectively be a strong half of a healthy relationship. Being on your own, in the meantime, is being king to you and gives you the opportunity to work on what might well be the very things or traits, distorted beliefs that can lead to considerable pain and relational difficulty in any relationship.
Until and unless you can be your best friend to be a best friend to someone else as well it might be very difficult if possible at all to be in a healthy vibrant relationship. Learn to love yourself, esteem yourself and believe in yourself after taking a totally honest personal inventory to gain the self-awareness of what you need to know more about in order to be ready for a healthy love relationship.
© A.J. Mahari, December 17, 2014 – All rights reserved.
