Teen dating violence expert Mike outlines seven keys to healthy relationships: trust without constant checking, maintaining independence, honest communication, enjoying time together, handling conflicts respectfully, equal decision-making, and mutual attraction in intimate relationships.
Today's question is, Mike, what are important components of a healthy relationship? Well, I love this question. I'll tell you what, people of all ages struggle with this at times. So often teenagers are told what not to do that we forget to tell them what to do. Here are ways to be in a healthy, wonderful, caring relationship, respectful relationship. So here are some quick components of a healthy relationship. It's trusting. Somebody does not need to ask you a million times what you're doing all day because they trust you. You're living your life, they're living their life, and that's part number 2 of a healthy relationship. You have independent lives. You share one relationship but 2 lives, right? So you share this one relationship, but you have other relationships that are independent from that. That's a healthy relationship. A healthy relationship also has honesty, which means I don't Hide. I don't try to either lie to you about how I'm feeling, or I also don't try to hide concerns I have. I want to discuss those with you. So we have open verbal communication. Notice the words I use there. We're talking. Open verbal communication. That's another really healthy sign that we can talk about anything. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy to talk about. It doesn't mean that sometimes it won't hurt to have the conversations. But they're healthy and they're open, they're honest, and they're done in a respectful manner. These are signs of healthy relationships. Healthy relationships that you're having fun in this relationship, you enjoy it. When you're around this person, you love the energy that it brings into your life. Of course, it's not going to be perfect. It's not going to always have that perfect energy. There's going to be disagreements, there may be arguments. That will happen, but overall, overall, That you really enjoy what this brings to your life and where the energy is, where your energy is. Now, let me back up a moment. When I said there'll be arguments or disagreements, yeah, let's be clear. Healthy relationships have those respectfully. They don't control each other. They don't manipulate each other, right? They honor each other. And it— that doesn't mean they don't get upset. They don't get angry. Those things happen. That's part of being human. But in the end, we're respectful, right? And we don't do harm to the other person. These are signs of healthy relationships. The other one is that you have equal say. The two of you have equal say. You're not just going to the movie that one wants to go to all the time. You have equal say. These are just a few of the many signs of a healthy relationship. And of course, if you're talking about an intimate, sexually intimate relationship, we need to talk about something people forget a lot of times, that you have an attraction to each other. One of the cruelest things I know people do is they'll say, Well, they're really into me, I'm really not into them, but I don't want to hurt their feelings so I keep dating them. That is hurting their feelings. That's mean. That's living a lie. They deserve to be with somebody who wants them as much as they want you, right? And you deserve for it to be mutual. That's a healthy relationship. These are all different signs of a healthy relationship, and that's today's question.
