What Does It Take to Have a Healthy Relationship?

What Does It Take to Have a Healthy Relationship? The early stages of a relationship are an exciting period when we feel lust, love and exchange heightened positive energy.  During this time, important neuro-transmitters and hormones such as norepinephrine, dopamine and oxytocin come into play.

The early stages of a relationship is an exciting period when we feel lust, love and exchange heighten positive energy.

What Does It Take to Have a Healthy Relationship? The early stages of a relationship are an exciting period when we feel lust, love and exchange heightened positive energy.  During this time, important neuro-transmitters and hormones such as norepinephrine, dopamine and oxytocin come into play.

Norepinephrine is a chemical that acts as both a stress hormone and neurotransmitter that affects us by increasing heart-rate, alertness and arousal.  Source: Everyday Health

Dopamine is a chemical that connects information between neurons and helps us to see rewards and act to move toward them.  It makes us feel like we are winning a prize when we are with our love interest.  Source: Psychology Today

Oxytocin is often called the love hormone or the cuddle hormone since it’s released when we make physical, or even eye contact, with someone. Source: Live Science

Oxytocin is often called the love hormone or the cuddle hormone since it’s released when we make physical or even make eye contact with someone.

But after the initial stages of romance settles and we decide to make a commitment with our love interest, here are five important things we need to have for a healthy long-term relationship (not in any particular order).

Importance of Respect

Love is powerful but what is even more important is respect.  It is paramount to have respect that will cause us to give each other space to make decisions and support one another.  It’s not love if there is no respect as it leads to toxic behaviors such as putting each other down and ignoring each other’s wishes.  Without respect, love is unable to survive.  It also begins with having self-respect.

Sun Warrior Sunscreen

Try our light-weight & non-greasy Sun Warrior Sunscreen

Free of harmful chemicals that 80% of other brands use

LEARN MORE

Effective Communication

Relationships are unable to grow without effective communication.  It is how we communicate that will help us to share, resolve conflicts and clear up misunderstandings to build a stronger bond.  Active listening is a vital contribution to effective communication by paying attention and processing what the other person has to say.  During conflict, negative emotions are involved that make us feel uncomfortable and too often we are only listening to respond back to win the argument.  Therefore, we need active listening to help us understand each other. When doing so, we can approach one another and feel comfortable sharing thoughts and feelings.

Mutual Trust

Mutual trust is crucial to relationship satisfaction and success.

Since trust is fragile, relationship experts will be the first to tell us that mutual trust is crucial to relationship satisfaction and success.  Trusting our partner means we can rely on them to meet us halfway.

If we fail to trust our significant other, we will suffer by feeling anxious and hurt.  These negative feelings will lead to resentment and prevent us from building a healthy relationship.  Regardless of how much we can love someone, without trust it will lead us to suffer.

Like Verses Love

To be in a long term healthy relationship, we need to like the person we love.  The concept may sound strange but the disconnect can occur with family members.  For example, you love your brother but you don’t always like him.  To stay in a relationship, we need to like them to continue to create fun memories and exchange warm pleasantry on a regular basis such as a sincere smile.

A healthy long term relationship can be incredibly rewarding.  And to achieve and maintain the healthy connection, it’s paramount to have respect, trust, and effective communication with the person we like and love.