healthy marriage

Is Your Relationship Healthy?

Have you ever wondered whether your relationship will ever get better and contemplated whether maybe there are some more serious problems in your relationship that “normal” relationships don’t have? And maybe when you’ve tried to express your concerns to someone they have tried to reassure you by telling you things like:

  • Marriage is hard

  • All relationships have difficulties

  • It takes two

  • Relationships are 50/50 (or 100/100)

  • Conflict creates closeness

. . .  Or a myriad of other cliches that we’ve all been told by people who want you to make it work.

Those mantras might seem encouraging, but they can make it easy to dismiss the dysfunction (and destruction) that might be occurring in your relationship.

  • For some people, it isn’t just that their relationship is “hard” – it’s seemingly impossible

  • It isn’t that you have “difficulties” – you have tension every minute of every day

  • “It takes two” means that you better step up and do better

  • Your “half” of the relationship includes taking responsibility for his moods, failures, and happiness

  • And “conflict” never ends

When you try everything and nothing gets better, it may be time to consider the possibility that you do not have a “normal” relationship. When there are some vital components lacking in a relationship, it won’t ever be “normal” or healthy.

You can’t have a healthy relationship with an unhealthy partner.

So what’s the big deal if you have a “normal” healthy relationship or not? “Just deal with what you’ve got” some might say. But just like with physical health, if you aren’t healthy, you’re likely to die faster. Same with an unhealthy relationship. It will destroy you. And you will have nothing to offer to God or others.

How can you know if your relationship is healthy?

Healthy people don’t make the relationship all about themselves – but they also know how to not make it all about the other person, either. There’s balance. Dysfunction is always about imbalance – particularly, an imbalance of power.

The best way to recognize counterfeit money isn’t to learn what counterfeit money looks like – it’s to know what real money looks like so you can recognize counterfeit money when you see it. In the same way, we can learn how to recognize an unhealthy relationship by knowing what a healthy one looks like.

Here’s what a healthy relationship looks like:

1. Freedom

You feel the freedom to express your opinion knowing that your partner will take it seriously, validate it, and make what’s important to you important to them (and you give your spouse that freedom, too). Disagreements won’t feel like a competition where you are vying just to be heard or where you have to have a better argument and somehow you still can’t win.

2. Perspective

You are listened to and heard (and you do the same for your spouse). There isn’t a comeback to refute everything that is said. You feel heard and that your opinion is seen as valuable. If your spouse can’t explain your perspective to you (or vice versa) or reflect back how you feel, something is wrong.

3. Reality

Healthy people accept and adapt to reality; unhealthy people expect reality to adapt to them. Reality involves facts, not what “should” be or what “needs” to happen. If you feel like you have to work hard to see your spouse’s perspective just to make things make sense, you aren’t living in reality but have entered into a fantasy of what “should” be in which reality has to adapt to someone else’s whims.

4. Responsibility

Your spouse admits when you are right (and vice versa) and can use your perspective to make shifts in how (s)he thinks about things. If (s)he blames and accuses you for things and can’t take responsibility for helping produce an amicable outcome, something is wrong.

5. Results

The results speak for themselves. A discussion or disagreement should end with both of you feeling good about the result. If someone is bitter, resentful, or feeling victorious, there’s a power differential, and that’s unhealthy.

 

Unhealthy relationships experience:

1. Bondage instead of freedom

You consistently force yourself to back down to keep the peace.

2. Invalidation instead of perspective

Your spouse doesn’t really care what you have to say.

3. Twists instead of reality

There are a hundred turns and tactics used just to win.

4. Blaming instead of responsibility

Everything gets turned back onto you, making you responsible for everything.

5. Resentment instead of good results

It doesn’t feel resolved.

 

If your relationship is unhealthy, here’s how you can start moving toward health:

1. Refuse to give up your right to have an opinion. State it and don’t get drawn into circular arguments. Decide what your stance is going to be and repeat it. Do not respond to every attack and rabbit trail.

2. Validate your own perspective if your spouse won’t. Tell your spouse that your perspective is valid.

3. Don’t engage in a discussion that involves demands that you think like your spouse does. End it and spend your time thinking of a logical boundary and consequence instead.

4. Set a boundary that defines what you are responsible for and what your spouse is responsible for. Take responsibility for your part and let your spouse know that is as far as you will go.

5. A discussion or disagreement that leaves you feeling resentful, angry, sad, defeated, or bitter indicates that you didn’t protect yourself. Decide what boundary of yours was violated (see below) and how you will recover that boundary and implement consequences as a result of it being crossed.


 Examples of boundaries that might be violated:

  • Your right to financial freedom (to the extent that your spending does not present a real threat to your family’s financial situation)

  • Your right to make decisions independent of your partner (provided that your decisions do not present a real threat to your family’s wellbeing)

  • Your right to do what you believe is in your best interest or the best interest of your children

  • Your right to disagree with your partner

  • Your right to say “no”

  • Your right to say “yes”

  • Your right to your opinion

  • Your right to your feelings

  • Your responsibility to allow others the freedom to make choices without rescuing them, fixing things for them, or making excuses for them

  • Your responsibility to make decisions that reflect your right to personal power and authority

  • Your responsibility to protect yourself and your children

  • Your responsibility to provide for yourself and your children

  • Your right to protect your personal space

  • Your right to pursue your goals and dreams

  • Your responsibility to do what it takes to keep yourself safe, sane, and secure


Not every unhealthy person or relationship has the capacity to be made healthy. Continue to move toward health for yourself, and, as Ephesians 4: 15 says, “you will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

Looking for a resource to help you get emotionally healthy so you can have satisfying relationships? Check out my guide to healing or…