Importance of Healthy Relationships to Your Overall Well-Being
As human beings, relationships are essential to healthy living. Good health is not limited to physical wellness, it also consists of good emotional health. Hence, it is important to ensure healthy relationships in the same way you pursue a healthy lifestyle choice. Relationships from simple acquaintances to romances or from spouses to colleagues can either enrich you or drain you. Healthy relationships as opposed to unhealthy ones, improve self esteem, as well as emotional, physical and mental health.
A healthy relationship is one which has at least the following qualities:
Mutual respect
Trust
Honesty
Good communication
Respect for each other’s privacy
Support and encouragement of each other’s goals
Encouragement of external friendships
Respect for each other’s likes and needs.
On the other hand, unhealthy relationships are more often than not based on ideas of power and control. It should be noted that there is no perfect relationship and thus, once in a while, even in a healthy relationship, there might be a display of at least one of the characteristics of an unhealthy relationship. However, unhealthy relationships will exhibit the following qualities more frequently, leading to stress and pressure. Some signs of an unhealthy relationship are:
Manipulation or control of the other individual.
Lack of respect.
Discouragement of external friendships or relationships.
Lack of privacy and absence of boundaries.
Use of violence or threat of violence.
For a larger part of the time, a good relationship makes you feel secure, loved, valued, respected, happy, and free to be yourself. If you are in a relationship that makes you feel fearful, humiliated, stalked, controlled or lowers your self-worth or self-esteem, then it is best to put an end to such negative relationship.
Healthy relationships are vital to a person’s physical, emotional and mental wellbeing and some of the benefits of a healthy relationship are:
Better healing: emotional support from another person goes a long way in helping a person recover from an illness or a medical procedure.
Healthier lifestyle and self improvement: being in a healthy relationship encourages an overall healthy lifestyle. For instance, if your spouse or friend embraces healthy lifestyle choices, such as regularly exercising, you are more likely to do the same. In the same way, your decision to embrace a more healthy lifestyle and work toward self improvement will most likely be supported by those you have healthy relationships with, as they will encourage you to seek ways to improve yourself.
Less stress: people in healthy relationships and who have quality friendships tend to handle stress a lot better than those in negative relationships. This is because, those who you are in healthy relationships with, tend to act as support systems and sources of encouragement in difficult times.
Those in healthy relationships are less likely to act out in violence towards others.
Healthy relationships are vital to our complete well-being and as such, it is better to avoid relationships which not only tend to drain or belittle you, but also leave you afraid.
