How to Cultivate Consistently Healthy Relationships

Human beings are fundamentally relational – we need consistently healthy relationships. We often derive our sense of identity, confidence, and safety from our relationships with other people, and this is both a natural thing and a potentially problematic thing at the same time.

If our relationships are healthy and we have a secure sense of ourselves, we can relate to others and to ourselves in a way that is meaningful and creates flourishing. However, if our relationships are not healthy or we have fundamental issues in our self-understanding, that can cause serious problems in our lives.

If you seek approval from others to the point that you distort your own value system, that is not good for you or your relationships. Because we are so deeply relational, it’s far too easy not only for dysfunction to take root but for it to spread because we’re not sealed off from one another.

How to cultivate healthy relationships.

Is there a way to cultivate consistently healthy relationships or are we doomed to have dysfunction within our lives? Below or a few ways to help us develop our relationships into healthy spaces not only for ourselves but for the people with whom we relate.

Create and maintain healthy boundaries.

Every relationship that seeks to be healthy needs healthy boundaries. Boundaries are the way that we create distinction between ourselves and other people; they announce that this is where I end, and this is where you begin.

Having a very clear sense of ourselves, who we are, what our specific needs are, and being able to distinguish them from the needs of other people are very important elements in maintaining healthy relationships.

Dysfunctions, such as codependency, develop when two people do not have a very clear sense of who they are, or they far too easily blur the lines between their needs and the needs of others. For healthy relationships the people who are within those relationships have to have clear identities of their own.

To create and maintain healthy boundaries, you have to have some sense of your needs and your personality. There are many different kinds of boundaries you can create that are helpful for ensuring that you needs are met and that your individuality is not violated.

Within a romantic or intimate relationship, you can create boundaries regarding issues as diverse as privacy, how you use social media, how you spend your free time, how you engage in conversations or have arguments, how you spend money or deal with money issues in the relationship, sexual boundaries, and so much more.

When you create these boundaries, this is a way for your romantic partner for instance to know what it is you need and to know how best to honor that. When you let the other person know what you need, you are alerting them to how they can best love you and care for you.

Setting boundaries is also a good way to protect yourself from going in a direction that ends up violating your values. Instead of thinking of boundaries and something that stifles a relationship, boundaries actually help a relationship to thrive because the people in that relationship know how to love one another and they know that the other person is indeed just that — another person.

If and when your boundaries need to be asserted, you can decide how to proceed at that point, whether by asserting the consequence is that you stated when you first outlined the boundary or by choosing to rework the boundary where needed.

For instance, you may set a boundary that you will leave the room if the other person starts yelling at you. You will need to follow through with this boundary every time the other person starts yelling for them to understand you are serious about the boundary.

Be open to rebuke and change.

None of us is perfect. Being aware of that one fact can make a world of difference in a relationship. Whether it is a relationship between a parent and child, siblings, colleagues, neighbors, spouses, or any other relationship, knowing that neither you nor the other person is perfect is invaluable truth in helping you to cultivate healthy relationships.

When we know that we’re imperfect we know that we will make mistakes. One of the things that can undermine a relationship is not that people make mistakes, but that they don’t admit it.

Not owning up to our mistakes and wanting to be seen as right all the time can cause bitterness and resentment in relationships. If we own up to our imperfections and we recognize that we do make mistakes, that openness to change will make for a relationship that can grow stronger.

Additionally, when we know our own weaknesses, we’re able to empathize with the weaknesses of others. We’re able to create space for them to grow just as we need to grow. Healthy relationships are those in which we are willing to allow others and ourselves to fail, but also create room to get back up again.

Be willing to apologize and forgive.

Along with recognizing the fact of our imperfections and our inability to get everything right, one of the key ingredients to cultivating healthy relationships is to harness the power of a good apology and being able to forgive. An apology is one of the most meaningful things we can do when we mess up.

Not only is a sincere apology something that is born out of deep reflection and in awareness of a failure, but it is also an expression of commitment to the relationship and the desire to do better in future.

When you apologize you are saying that you know that you were wrong in what you said or did, you are aware of how your actions impacted the other person, and that you know that your actions are not acceptable. Not only does this help in healing their relationship and promoting its health, but this is how we grow as people.

Along with this willingness and ability to apologize is the willingness and ability to forgive when other people do things that hurt us. Being able to forgive other people is not easy.

After all, our natural inclination might be to make them feel our pain and to wield a certain kind of power over them because of their indiscretion. This natural inclination will harden our hearts, and we risk making bitterness and resentment a permanent fixture in our relationships.

While forgiveness isn’t easy, it is a necessary part of any healthy relationship. Thankfully, for the believer our ability to forgive others flows from how we have been abundantly and graciously forgiven by our Heavenly father.

We are able to pass on the gift of being forgiven to others because we have ourselves been forgiven. As Desmond Tutu once said, “Without forgiveness there is no future,” and that counts as much for personal relationships as it does for a nation.

Measure your expectations.

In a relationship, one of the things that can cause aggravation, frustration, and anger as well as disappointment is that people don’t meet our expectations. These expectations may be legitimate, such as when one spouse expects the other spouse to keep their vows and not have either an emotional or physical affair with someone else.

Other expectations which we sometimes need to manage include things from everyday life such as chores or the kinds of behavior we expect from family members. In some cases, we need to communicate our expectations clearly, and this circles back a little bit to the point about boundaries.

For instance, if you’re a stay-at-home mom and you spend the whole day talking to little people, you may have expectations and the desire for meaningful conversation with your husband when he gets home from work. You want an adult conversation, and as much as you have missed your husband, you may expect that he has missed you just as much and wants to immediately jump into a conversation with you as soon as he gets home.

That expectation may be shattered. Perhaps he doesn’t want to get into a conversation as soon as he gets home; he’d rather take half an hour to decompress first before he’s ready to talk. That is a conversation that you need to have and an expectation that you may need to manage.

Or you may be a husband who desires to have sex with his wife regularly, but if she is exhausted on most days you may have to shift your expectations of lovemaking every night towards something more realistic. Or if you are friends with someone, you can’t expect that they will come and pick you up at a moment’s notice. After all, they do have a life of their own.

When you manage your expectations of the other person, not only does it shield you from undue disappointment, but it also helps you to protect the other person and allow them to flourish. Our expectations, as meaningful as they are to us, may be stifling for others, and so we need to measure those expectations and have frank conversations about those expectations.

In this way we can cultivate relationships where we are having our needs met, but we’re also seeking to meet the needs of the other person.

Healthy relationships are gifts that require consistent work and investments of ourselves. If you need more help to cultivate consistently healthy relationships, you can receive customized help from a Christian counselor, who will offer valuable insight and perspective based on biblical principles.