Signs of a Healthy Relationship

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you’re listening to The Love, Happiness and Success podcast.

That beautiful song is called One Of These Days. It’s by Bedouine. I thought it was the perfect song for our show today because she does such a gorgeous job of capturing the hope of somebody who really wants a relationship to work and believes that it can, and also an awareness of the realities of a relationship — and also to add another layer of complexity, her intention to create the kind of relationship that she wants to have with her partner. 

That is perfect for us because we’re going to be talking about all of those things on today’s show. In today’s episode, I am going to be helping you identify some realities of your relationship. In particular, what are things that signify that you have a healthy, strong relationship with a lot of potential and a lot of opportunities? Even if it’s not perfect all the time, what’s a keeper? 

On the other side of that, what is really danger/warning signs for a relationship, and things that might be going on in your relationship that indicate there probably are bigger problems that are worth taking seriously. I wanted to offer this because so many people that we talked to in my practice or right into the show, their number one concern are their relationships and what’s going on in their relationship. 

A lot of times it’s, “What do I do with this? How do I solve this problem? Or, is this a solvable problem? Is this a sign that maybe this relationship isn’t what I want it to be, and maybe it isn’t ever going to be what I want it to be? Then, on the other side, I think some people really, relationships are a mixed bag — all of them are. All relationships have some conflict and have some turbulence, and it can be really confusing because some people really in great and fundamentally solid relationships still wonder, “Is this okay?” 

That’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode of The Love, Happiness and Success podcast. If this is your first time tuning into the podcast — first of all, hello and thank you for being here. I’m so glad you’re here. This show if you haven’t listened before, this is all about you and my efforts to help you have better relationships, feel good about yourself and your life, and also do more good things in the world. This is all about empowerment. 

In every episode of this show, I am attempting to step into the gap between where you are and where you want to be to help you just get direction and guidance that will help move you forward. What my sort of place is and why I’m presumptuous enough to think that I might be helpful to you — I am a marriage counselor, a therapist, and a life coach. By trade, I am the founder and clinical director of Growing Self Counseling and Coaching. 

I spend a lot of time talking to people just like you — the therapy or counseling room across from me on my couch about stuff that’s going on in their lives, things they can do to fix it. And you too deserve the benefit of good advice and some professional recommendations that can help you move forward. On this show every week, I’m attempting to answer the questions that you are telling me are important to you. 

People get in touch with me and with us all the time with things that are on their mind — things about relationships, or personal issues that are coming up, or how to deal with different things. If you would like to do that, you are so welcome to. The easiest ways to get in touch, you can cruise over to our website — growingself.com. 

We have a very active kind of comment/question community on those posts on our blog and podcast page. You can also send a general email to us — hello@growingself.com, and also a great way to connect is through Facebook — facebook.com/drlisabobby. Let me know what’s on your mind and you just might hear your question answered on an upcoming episode.

Again, today, I am here to support you with your relationship. We’re going to be talking about how to assess the strength and the health of your primary relationship that you have with your partner. This is really intended to be about your primary romantic relationship with your partner, your spouse. But I think that a lot of what we’re talking about really applies to any kind of relationship in your life and how healthy it is. 

As you’re listening to this, you might consider how do my relationships with some of my friends feel when I apply these criteria to them, or even with family members  — so that you can decide, “Are there areas of my life — relationships in my life — that could maybe use some extra TLC and/or maybe worth working at to improve? Or even do I set boundaries with some people if it’s consistently not feeling good, and the evidence is indicating that it’s probably not going to get better? So you can listen for that. 

But before we jump into the criteria — how healthy is your relationship, things to look for — let me first tell you why this is so important. Because I think that this really matters and it’s something for you to just keep in back of your mind as you’re listening to the rest of this. 

Many people who come into our practice for help, they’re coming in because they are really in distress about their relationships. Either they’re coming in the context of couples counseling, or even individuals — they’re coming in because they’re worried about their relationships, and they want to talk about their relationships. 

What I see is that many people coming in, they feel genuinely confused about their relationships, and how they’re going. Sometimes, best-case scenario, it’s for seeing a couple and it’s for couples counseling, and they’re both in agreement that, “We have so many strengths and our relationship and so many things we want to build on, and we care about each other so much that we really want to invest in our relationship and make it the best it can be. We’re here to get your help and just tweaking a few things and getting back on the same page, and making sure that this is just really feeling good for both of us.” 

They’re very proactive, and they’re very focused on wellness. They’re almost using couples counseling as a preventative kind of thing — coming in at the first sign of trouble. That is the absolutely best-case scenario. We love working with and helping those clients. We do great work. 

Now, there are two other types of couples or people that come in with concerns about their relationships. Sometimes, there is just a general lack of awareness about what is healthy and normal in a relationship or a marriage, and what’s not. That can create huge problems, and actually cause issues in a relationship. Let me explain. 

Because I know that sounds really dramatic to say that a lack of awareness or almost education about healthy relationships can cause problems. But I’m not really talking in a hyperbolic fashion here. It’s really because I sit with people who maybe have just had their families shattered by a divorce, or it’s impossible to not sit with a couple that’s like breaking up because of relationship issues and not walk away from that feeling really sobered by the experience. 

Or, also working with people who come in, and they look back at the last 10 years of their lives and it has been a string of failed relationships that never even made it that far to marriage, but just over and over again with these patterns where they’re feeling dissatisfied. They’re ending relationships or they’re connecting with people that aren’t good for them, and the relationships sputter out. 

That is really sad for a lot of people and it creates consequences that impact them, potentially for their whole lives is around the way they’re handling their relationships. This is really big stuff. As I’ve mentioned before in articles and other shows, I think it’s ridiculous that we spend so much of our lives learning in school about everything else. 

We learn about Math, we learn about Science and Literature, but we get zero education about how to have a happy, healthy, functional relationship with another person. Nobody tells you explicitly how to do that. The ironic tragedy, of course, is that the quality of your relationships has much more to do with the overall quality of your life than your ability to write a coherent paragraph around Lord of the Flies or something like that. This is really important stuff. 

Again, this is why I’ve been working so hard in other podcasts, and then the work in my group. Also, on this podcast today again is to try to fill that gap and give you information that can really help you and help you avoid the fate of some of the people who do ultimately show up for help in a space where it’s pretty far gone — and they’ve been struggling for a long time. 

This podcast is one way of doing that, and other kinds of educational things that we’re doing is to try to correct this educational imbalance. We’re overeducated with regards to so many things in life, and not educated enough I think when it comes to life skills around — again, relationships or how we manage ourselves as people. That’s what I’m doing here. 

Also, I created a little tool to help you get clarity about your relationship and how healthy it is. I actually created a quiz that is available on my website. You might consider taking this quiz before I launch into all of the information that I’m going to be giving you today because if you listen to everything first, and have an idea of what your answers should be, it may impact your results if you take the quiz before learning about what it all means. 

If you are interested in getting a score on a measurement that can help you assess the relative strengths and “growth areas” of different parts of your relationship, I will invite you to pause this podcast for a second and come take the quiz. It’s at growingself.com/relationship-quiz, relationship-quiz, and take the quiz. Then, come back to this podcast when you’re done, and we will talk about what it means. However, obviously, don’t do this if it’s not a good time or if you’re driving or something. But you can still just listen and take the quiz later. 

Or, if you want to get really some interesting data, you might send your partner the quiz and see what their answers are. That could be very illuminating. It could potentially launch some really productive conversations between the two of you. That is something to consider as well. If you have the time and energy, take the quiz. But otherwise, I’m going to continue on here. 

First of all, let me explain the dangers on two different extremes of what can happen when people really don’t understand what normal healthy relationships look like and feel like, and why it can be so problematic on both sides of this spectrum. On the one hand, when people have unrealistic expectations about what good authentic relationships look like or feel like, they can perceive that they’re good, happy, healthy, solid relationship is actually having problems when there aren’t problems. 

It’s so that they begin to believe that something is wrong with their relationship when it isn’t. Then, that belief, in turn, creates actual problems in a relationship. They may overreact to small issues or they might catastrophize and feel really hopeless about the relationship, become disillusioned with a relationship, or perhaps even become really critical or overly demanding of their partner, and the partner starts to feel diminished and like they can never make them happy. Then, that actually does cause real problems over time. 

You might be thinking to yourself, “That’s silly. Who would believe that there’s an actual relationship problem when there isn’t one? It doesn’t make sense.” But think about it for a second, because most people, again, in the broader societal context of zero relationship education — where do we learn about our relationships? We learn about it from the movies and television, or we learn from whatever we saw our parents doing, typically, or the people around us doing. 

On one extreme, we have what the media shows us about the relationship ideal, which often has very little basis in reality. Most rom-com certainly, and many other movies, they end when two people have just become over all kinds of obstacles and discovered how much they love each other, and they’re the pinnacle of their romantic bliss. Then, the movie fades out, and they’re in love forever. 

It doesn’t continue on and follow that rom-com couple for the next five years through the evolution of what happens next in the months and the years that follow after the excitement of a courtship. It doesn’t portray a realistic picture of what a normal marriage looks like, and what is normal and expected for people as they transition into having a family or dealing with the ups and downs that life brings. People —  we move, we change jobs, we have stuff to deal with, and our relationships can change and evolve in response to all of that. We don’t have good models for that.

Then, on the other side, the other models that we do have are our parents, our family of origin, and the people around us. A lot of us had parents who did not know what they were doing when it came to relationships either. Being a child of divorce, or seeing your parents rotate through a couple of different partners as you were growing up, or even having parents who as so many do, found a kind of stable happiness where maybe they’re not really engaging with each other, communicating well or enjoying their relationship, but they’re able to have enduring partnership nonetheless. But maybe not one that any of us would aspire to. 

For all of these reasons, we didn’t learn how to do relationships. Either we have this romantic ideal for what relationships should be, and also if we saw our parents fighting with each other, and then they got divorced. A lot of people take that as fighting means divorce or unhappiness. There’s a lot of fear if people do see things happening in their own relationship that are reminiscent of things that they experienced in their family of origin that their parents weren’t able to successfully deal with or overcome. 

Then, when they have normal conflict or disagreement or transitional times in their own marriage, it can become very easy and understandable, honestly, that they might take that to mean that they’re about to get divorced, or that something really terrible is about to happen in their relationship because that’s what they saw happen play out in the lives of other people, and they don’t know how else to navigate through it. 

Again, very understandable, but I hope that helps you understand why some people who have good healthy relationships can almost like misread the signals like the normal relationship turbulence and come away from that thinking that there’s something really wrong when. Maybe, there isn’t. 

Part of my hope for today’s podcast is to help you understand if maybe you lean that way, what is normal so that when you have normal ups and downs in your relationship, or maybe you and your partner do have a fight, you might think back to what we talked about today and say, “You know what? This is okay. We are okay, we can get through this.” And hopefully, have some tools to help you get through that in a productive way instead of getting scared. That is one thing we’re going to be talking about today. 

Then, the other side of the spectrum that is at least as problematic if not more so, is the sad side where people are not aware of relationship issues, and what are things that they really do need to be paying attention to and actively working to correct because there are things that people experience in day-to-day relationships that from a marriage counselor’s perspective, it’s like, “Buddy, your relationship is about to drive off a cliff six months from now. Do you not see this?” 

It’s so hard because if people aren’t paying attention to those signals, or if they’re ignoring the warning signs, or minimizing them or blowing them off, or saying, “Oh, this isn’t a big deal. My partner just needs to get over that. This isn’t anything.” Or maybe, they avoid difficult conversations, or they get defensive, or just essentially refusing to acknowledge the issues that their partner is trying to bring up. 

These are the people who wind up getting blindsided by a divorce or a breakup. When I say “blindsided”, I’m using my air quotes right now because as we autopsy of these relationships, there were all kinds of signs that this was coming, but they didn’t know. They didn’t understand that the whole time, they were wanting to avoid or not deal with, or not participate in finding solutions to their problems. 

Their partner’s needs and feelings were going unmet for a long time. Their partners were month by month, year by year really emotionally distancing themselves and losing respect for them, and losing hope for the relationship. In those cases, what we too frequently see is that for years, sometimes one person wasn’t taking the problem seriously and their partner was really fighting for their relationship in a lot of ways. 

Over time, the partner who had been complaining and saying, “Hey, we need to work on this”, will eventually stop. They’ll give up hoping that change is possible. Then, they decide eventually that it’s time to go. 

Then, the person who hadn’t realized how big of a deal these issues actually were, or who thought they could handle it on their own and that things will just get better — those are the people who are like hysterically calling us for next day marriage counseling appointment because their partner is like packing their car and begging their about-to-be ex to go to marriage counseling with them. Sometimes, it’s too late. 

The other side there, I also hope to offer today some realistic information that you could use, or even if you are with a person who isn’t taking things seriously, put this information in front of them to perhaps help them understand that some of the things that are going on really are problematic and that you guys need to work together to improve it because it’s not sustainable, the way that it’s going. That’s my other hope and intention for today. 

So, it’s just to help you stay out of trouble, basically, on both sides of this. Let’s now run down some of the basic foundational things that are either solid and in a good place, and the other stuff that can happen from time to time is just noise. If they’re not in a good place, that fighting and conflict is really indicative of a much larger problem. 

In general, there are five different categories or domains of relationship health that we look at. One of them can be thought of — academically, it’s referred to as attachment, but I think of it as emotional safety. That is the number one most important thing is how safe does your relationship feel to you. By safe, I’m not in addition to physical safety. Things like trust and commitment, and just feeling generally loved and respected by your partner. That all falls into the emotional safety domain. 

The second really important domain that ties in with emotional safety is communication. How do you guys communicate with each other? And when there are problems, how do you solve those problems? Looking at communication can give you also a lot of information about how healthy a relationship is overall. 

Another tremendously important aspect of relationship health is around your sense of teamwork, or the kind of functional partnership that you have with each other — the nuts and bolts of how you do things together day-to-day, and how good that is currently feeling for both of you. 

When that isn’t a good space, or if you have good processes in place to help you work through those issues as a couple, your relationship is really very strong. Also, if you are having fights all the time about teamwork, and who’s doing what, and how that’s supposed to happen — that is also something to pay attention to. It can be easy to blow off is just potato-potato stuff, but over time, it can really take a toll. We’re going to be talking about that. 

Another incredibly important domain of relationship is the level of positive engagement and enjoyment that you have with each other because even if there is other stuff going on that might feel challenging in other domains of your relationship, if you’re still genuinely enjoying each other’s company and feeling good with each other, and finding and intentionally cultivating those experiences to share — that is another huge point of resilience for your partnership. We’ll be talking more about that. 

Lastly, but not leastly, we are also going to be talking about the aspect of your relationship that has to do with your shared life — like how do you support each other’s hopes and dreams, and have also a set of shared meaning and value. The sense that you guys are both working together for something that’s bigger than both of you — that is also a huge strength for a couple. Without it, the foundation of a couple can really be damaged. We’ll be touching on that too.

Those are our five basic domains. Let’s just start by talking about the first one. The first domain is emotional safety. If you have solid emotional safety in your relationship, in my opinion as a marriage counselor, almost everything else is a solvable problem. If your basic sense of emotional safety feels more fragile or doesn’t feel as strong, it is going to cascade down and negatively impact so many other aspects of your relationship. We’re going to be talking about this one first and at most length. 

If you are getting the sense that your partnership is struggling in a major way as you’re listening to this, I would advise you to focus on building up this area of your relationship first because other things will begin to fall into place if you guys have emotional safety together. 

Okay, what do I mean by emotional safety? Emotional safety is this sense, this basic sense, this felt sense of being loved and respected by your partner. It is beyond somebody saying, “I love you” or doing nice things for you. It’s really feeling that your feelings, and needs, and rights are important to your partner. They show you that in lots of different ways that you fundamentally know that they are committed to you, they’re not threatening to abandon you if you do something that upsets them, you don’t feel judged by them. 

You feel safe with them. You can be yourself and they like you. They like who you are. You also trust them to not hurt you physically, of course, but also in other ways. There are lots of different ways to hurt in a relationship and to damage trust and relationship. How does your partner respond to you when you come to them with — I don’t know. 

Maybe, you’re going through a hard time emotionally, do you feel cared for by them in those moments? Do you feel like they’re emotionally available for you? If there is a problem that you need to solve in your relationship, is it okay to say that and say, “I wonder if we could work on this.” Or, do they say, “Babe, what’s going on?” Or, do they start screaming at you and throw a chair out the window? Or, do they get immediately angry and refuse to talk, and slam the door and walk out? 

That is not emotional safety. That is a lot of real insecurity emotionally. Emotional safety is really about the basic trust in, “I’m loved, I’m cared for, I’m respected”, and that you’re with somebody who is able to conduct themselves in such a way that they can manage their emotions so they’re not scary or they’re not rejecting. They are also able to be responsive to you — they can listen to you, they can talk to you, they can meet your needs and just basic ways, or work with you to solve problems. 

It’s just you don’t feel like you’re walking on eggshells all the time, or that if you’re about to do something wrong, there will be consequences — those things are the opposite of emotional safety. With that in mind, I would like to say that all couples fight, all couples have conflict — spoken or unspoken. It can show up in a lot of different ways. You didn’t marry yourself, you’re not partnered with yourself. It is natural, and normal, and expected that as people are coming together and trying to do a relationship together, there are going to be times when you don’t see eye to eye or that one of you hurts the other person’s feelings — that maybe that wasn’t intentional, or maybe it was intentional.

But these are just sort of normal things that can happen across the lifespan of a relationship. The fact that those things might be happening doesn’t really mean that much. What matters much more is that, in general, even though you do get into it with each other from time to time — that most of the time, when you do have conflict, it is done in a way that isn’t scary. It’s not threatening to you or your relationship. Also, the kind of unspoken truth that you’re both aware of while conflict is happening is that: 

“We’re going to get through this. It’s going to be fine. We are not seeing eye to eye right now. We need to make some changes in the way we do things and we are willing to work with each other to create that. Fundamentally, at the end of the day, I know that you love me and care about me, and don’t want to hurt me or want me to be in any kind of pain. And I feel the same way about you.” 

If that sort of emotional safety is present, the other stuff is turbulence that can be worked through. Consider how your relationship feels when it comes to emotional safety. Again, if you want item by item, “Are these things happening? Check ‘yes’ or ‘no’.” The quiz might be helpful for you to differentiate what is indicative of emotional safety and what isn’t. Again, you might want to check that out at the relationship quiz — growingself.com/relationship-quiz. 

Okay. Now, let’s talk about the next domain which is the communication domain. Communication refers to a lot of different things. It does refer to the way that you talk to each other. But communication also refers to the way that you behave towards each other and what you show each other both verbally and nonverbally. Healthy communication has two aspects. 

First of all, there’s a lot of positive communication in a healthy relationship. There are words of affirmation like, “Oh, hey! I’m happy to see you and I love you, and you look nice today.” Or, “You smell good”, or whatever it is. Or, “Wow! This is a great dinner. Thank you.” Words of kindness, and appreciation, and positivity. 

Also, caring is communicated through things like curiosity, “How is your day? What’s going on with you?” Communicating like, “I care about you and I want to be your friend. I want to know what’s going on with your life.” Positive communication — just enjoying each other, and some people are more verbal than others. 

If you’re — I hate to gender stereotype because there are plenty of women who tend to be more introverted, and are partnered with men who are just dying to talk about stuff, believe it or not. In many relationships, it can also be true that the woman — the female partner if it’s a heterosexual relationship — might desire that more kind of verbal communication, positive communication than their male partners. 

When I’m talking about communication, that kind of verbal engagement can be a piece of that. But also, we need to recognize and value the other ways that our partners might show us they care about us through the things that they do for us through physical communication. Certainly, physical affection and sexuality can be a part of this too. 

Also, just the thoughtful gestures that people can make — doing the dishes without saying anything can be part of it because they know you’ve had a hard day or spending 45 minutes helping you find your car keys because you’re stressed out and don’t know where they are. All of these things can be meaningful forms of communication that say, “I care about you. You’re important to me. I’m here for you.” In healthy relationships, there’s a lot of that going on. 

The other side of good communication is that, while all couples have disagreements, and all couples have misunderstandings, and all couples have growth moments where something isn’t working for one or both of them and they need to work through it — that communication, while it can be passionate, or heated, or, “No, you really don’t understand. This is really important to me.” 

That even though it can get intense emotionally sometimes, it is also done fairly respectfully. There’s not name-calling, it’s not screaming, and being scary and hostile — going back to that idea of emotional safety — and it’s not rejecting. It’s not defensiveness, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy. I don’t want to talk about that. That’s stupid.” That is really just as hostile and destructive as somebody who’s very critical and attacking. 

Or, again, going back to that emotional unsafety idea that you’re walking on eggshells, or that you can’t bring up things that are important to you, that it isn’t safe to talk openly about potential problems without it turning into a big fight or a big catastrophe. Those would be evidence that in the communication domain. There are more serious problems happening where as long as everybody is like on best behavior and says “please” and “thank you”, and “pass the salt”. 

It doesn’t bring up any big deal if you guys can have a good time, but you can’t talk about other more authentic things. Those are indications that you really need to take a look at what’s happening in the communication in your relationship and work on improving that because those are problems that are going to get bigger over time, particularly if those communication problems result in one or both of you feeling fundamentally uncared for, or emotionally unsafe with each other. 

Now, again, with communication, all couples fight, and those conflicts can get heated and passionate — but in a healthy relationship, that happens. But the difference between a healthy relationship is that in a healthy relationship, two people can have a disagreement. They can be upset with each other. They can feel frustrated and, “No, you’re not understanding me.” 

But what happens too is that they are able to either stay in the ring with each other and have that eventually become a productive conversation where they learn something new about the other person, or where they’re able to identify some improvement that can prevent that misunderstanding or that hurt from happening again in the future, and then are willing to follow through. There’s a certain sense that their conflict is productive in a healthy relationship. 

Whereas in an unhealthy relationship, even though the beginning stages of an argument might look exactly the same, there isn’t that ultimate resolution. It’s like a big fight, and somebody slams the door, and the other person drives off. Whatever that fight was about doesn’t really get resolved on a deeper level. That is evidence of, again, a much bigger problem if communication doesn’t allow the two of you to ultimately come back together again, and find a solution. 

The goal here is not to avoid conflict or not to ever be frustrated with each other. That happens in healthy relationships. But the difference, again, is that it’s not productive at the end in an unhealthy relationship. Okay, hope that makes sense. 

When it comes to the teamwork domain of a relationship — again, this also ties into communication and to emotional safety. But teamwork refers to the way that you guys do things together as a couple. 

All couples, over time, in order to be happy and healthy and satisfied with each other, need to come together and create a preferably explicit set of agreements around, “This is how we do things as a couple.” It could be tied to housework, “I do the cooking, you do the dishes. You mow the lawn, I clean the bathrooms”, “We are intimate with each other on Tuesdays and Saturdays because that’s the only realistic times we really have to be together.” 

Or, we don’t make plans with each other’s family before first consulting the other person. There are all kinds of little — I hate to use the word “rules to live by”, but they kind of are. Not rules, but really guidelines around, “This is what I know you need in order to feel like our relationship is in balance. There is a balanced division of labor that we both feel good about. Neither of us is feeling resentful at the other for maybe carrying more than their share of the burden for keeping the wheels on this bus that we’re doing together. 

Also, agreements and understandings around, “This is how we do show each other love. This is the time that we connect together as a couple. I’m going to set boundaries around this time because this is our time to be together. We do Family Day on Saturday, so I’m not going to book myself up with a mani-pedi with my girlfriend on Saturday because I know that you’re counting on that time to hang out with me. This is our time.” 

It’s all dozens of these really small little agreements in a healthy relationship. The health of a relationship fundamentally, I think in many ways, it can be assessed by — how many of those agreements do you have? Are they working for both of you? In couples that are really distressed or when communication isn’t good enough to allow two people to continue a conversation long enough to come into a compromise around, “Okay, I’m going to do my yoga class on Sundays, and that’ll be your time to hang out with the kids. You can go do your thing on Saturdays, and I’ll do the kids.” 

Couples who are fighting all the time and who don’t have good communication, it turns into a crap-show argument around attacks and defensiveness so that they cannot arrive at a productive conclusion where they’re like, “Okay, I know what my job is.” Again, the presence or absence of those agreements can indicate one of two things. If you have a lot of these that are working really well, I think that’s a really positive indicator that your relationship is fundamentally happy and healthy. 

I would say that any conflicts that you might be having are just opportunities for you guys to arrive at new agreements that there may be areas of your relationship that have not been agreed upon yet. It may be, as happens with many couples, that life changes. As couples go through transitional periods — maybe you have a child, maybe one person takes a new job, maybe you move to a new community — for whatever reason, the agreements that you had in the past no longer totally applied to your life as it is currently. 

All conflict means is that you guys need to come together and figure out this stuff. Again, that is normal, healthy work that all couples need to do. If you’re having those kinds of conflicts, that doesn’t mean that anything bad is happening. If you do not have a lot of these agreements around your partnership, if one of you is persistently feeling resentful towards the other, and if you are not able to have productive conversations that help you come to resolution, that to me would be a strong indicator that you have serious work to do. 

If you leave these undone, or if you ignore them, what will happen is that the resentments will continue to pile up — and that it will become harder and harder to talk about this stuff productively without it turning into a big yucky fight. Take a look at what’s happening with regards to your teamwork. 

Now, the next important domain of relationship health goes back to your enjoyment of each other. To say very clearly, healthy couples that have a lot of strength and resilience, they enjoy each other’s company in just basic ways. That does not necessarily mean that they are superficially — air quote again — “compatible”, or that they share a lot of common interests, or that they like to do the same things. 

You would be surprised at how many couples I’ve worked with that are really worried that they are not good together, or that their relationship isn’t going to be happy long term because they don’t like to do the same things, or they don’t feel like they have a lot of shared interests. The actual truth is that enjoying each other’s company and having a good time doesn’t have that much to do with whether or not you both like to do the same things. 

What is much more related to is how flexible, and generous, and tolerant you can be with each other. Also, how much you just enjoy each other as a person. At the same time, there are all kinds of couples that are both really going to music festivals, or really all the stuff that one would put in an online dating profile, “I like walking on the beach. I like to travel.” 

They like doing those same things, but they’re still fundamentally not that compatible because when they go to the music festival or go travel to Tahiti, they’re fighting the whole time because

they’re not enjoying each other’s company. I just want to reframe your idea around what a good solid healthy relationship means in terms of that fundamental enjoyment piece. 

Again, when it comes to enjoying each other, what I’m talking about is, “Do you like your partner’s personality and fundamental ways? Do you have a good time together when you’re just doing regular stuff? It’s nobody’s idea of a good time to go to Costco for half a day on Saturday. But when you do that, are you having a good time? Are you just enjoying that? Do you have just a basic interest in your partner? 

A huge area of health and strength for a relationship is that even if you are not personally that interested in something that is important to your partner, you are still willing to be generous and genuinely curious about their interests in it and what it means to them. Are you willing to join with them from time to time in the things that are meaningful, and valuable, and important to them? Or, can you support them in doing their thing even if it’s not something that you can directly participate in for whatever reason? 

Again, think about the health of your relationship. Do you typically feel good? Does your partner make you laugh? Do you think they’re interesting? Or, if they’re telling you about some obscure hobby that they’re into that you’re like, “Oh, really?”, can you extend the graciousness of being interested in them and what they care about, and communicating that care. 

Likewise, maybe you’re into some really obscure like baseball card… I don’t know, whatever — statistics, and your partner isn’t. But you feel that your partner is at least willing to talk to you if you came home, and you’re all excited because you just found some rare Collector’s Edition baseball card and whatever. Do they get excited with you? And are they willing to, every once in a while, go with you to the garage sale to go look for baseball cards, or whatever it is, even though it’s not their first choice? 

It’s just the feeling that your partner is being generous with you, and that they could care less about baseball cards, but they are still enjoying just driving around on a Saturday with you and going to different places because they like your company, and vice versa. 

Now, on the other side of this, what I would look for as a sign that a relationship does have more serious issues has nothing to do with whether or not people like the same things. But it is: 

Are they judging their partner for liking the things that they like? Are they contemptuous of their partner’s interests? Are they refusing to participate in things that are really genuinely important to their partner? Do they ridicule things that are genuinely important to their partner? And are they just day-to-day just having conversations? Do you feel like your partner doesn’t like you and thinks that you’re dumb, and the stuff that you’re into is lame and feels like they’re always rolling their eyes when they talk to you? Or do you feel that way towards your partner? 

Those behaviors or those feelings to me would be indicative that there’s a much deeper problem, and it is not about finding hobbies that you guys can both do together. It’s about figuring out what’s going on that’s feeling so abrasive to both of you and really working on how do you cultivate a feeling of tolerance and acceptance for who your partner really is. 

How do you learn how to appreciate them for who they really are and have gratitude for who they really are as being individual and distinct from you? Because if you’re in a relationship that’s colored by a lot of judgment where one person is really feeling like the other person should be more like they are, or vice versa — that is problematic, and that is also going to lead to… Over time, it will erode your sense of emotional safety and the foundation of your relationship.

Lastly, joined to that but different is the sense of shared hopes and dreams that a partnership has. In our last category, we were talking about that enjoyment, and that is really around appreciating and respecting each other and enjoying each other as individuals so that you both have space to be yourselves and that you like each other anyway even if you’re different. 

The other piece of this is — do you have shared hopes and dreams for your partnership and your family? Are there things that you can connect around that do feel meaningful to both of you, whether it’s your kids or your home, or if you have financial goals, or if you have things that you’re working towards — like in 10 years, we would like to be retired and buy a house in Vail, and whatever it is. 

It could be other kinds of things. Maybe there is work that you both feel is meaningful and important to both of you. Or, maybe it is volunteer work, or maybe it’s a particular cause that you guys both feel really good about. I could look like anything. But there is this sense of shared meaning and shared purpose, and like you’re working together to create something or that you have values in common that both of you are working together to express jointly in your lives. 

In healthy relationships, there is at least an element of that. There is at least some sense of “us”, of “we”, “This is what ‘we’ are doing with our lives. This is what ‘we’ want ‘our’ home to be like and ‘our’ family to be like. These are the values that we’d like to instill in our children, and this is how we are working together to create this future reality that we’ll share. 

Then, strong couples, strong partnerships are talking about those things explicitly, “What are our five-year goals? What are our 10-year goals? Are we saving money for our kids to go to college? What are we doing with our lives?” Having open conversations about that — again, going back to that last category is also making space for the things that might be individually important for each of you, but that you’re working together as a couple to make those things happen. 

Maybe, the goal for you guys is that one of you could go back to school, and this is what the other person will do in the meantime. Or, that one of you has always had a dream for staying home and nurturing children, and this is how the other person is going to make it happen. Again, it’s not that you guys are both doing the same thing, but that you are working together to create a life that both of you feel good about and having conversations around that. 

On the opposite side of that couples that I worry about don’t have that sense of “we”. They don’t have that sense of future, they don’t have that same sense of shared meaning and shared purpose. It’s not to say that couples can’t create that because I tell you what — 

To people who don’t have emotional safety, who their communication is going off the rails and are still struggling about the right way to load the dishwasher, they have kind of prerequisite work to do in the foundational aspects of their partnership before they can have those headier kinds of conversations around, “What are we doing with our lives?”, kind of thing. 

Just because you might not be in that space now, that doesn’t mean that if you can’t do some repair work around those more foundational aspects of your relationship that you couldn’t build a beautiful life together that’s really based on your shared dreams and your shared goals, and feel like you’re both working together to create that.

Those are the different relationship domains that signify health in a relationship, or that signify growth opportunities in a relationship. Me talking through these, I hope that the number one thing that was conveyed to you is that every couple can grow. By working together on specific areas of their relationship, it can improve. Just because some of this warning sign stuff is happening, all that means is that you need to pay attention to it and work together to make it better. 

That is the only thing that it means. It does not mean that your relationship is doomed. What is more concerning is if you’re coming to your partner and saying, “This is a problem. We need to work on this.” And they are saying “no” — that may eventually spell doom. But we’re not there yet. Because you’re listening to this podcast, you’re educating yourself and you’re going to work on this with your partner. It can be okay. 

If you have been listening to this podcast under duress, if your partner has you trapped in a moving car and is playing this podcast for you, so you’ll listen — I hope that what you heard is that your partner really cares about your relationship and wants it to be better, and has wanted you to listen to this podcast so that you could learn about what areas of your relationship are feeling problematic for them and what healthy relationships look. Because chances are, if it isn’t feeling good for them on some level, it isn’t feeling good for you either. 

I hope that this has put together a roadmap in your mind around goals that both of you can work towards, around what a happy, healthy relationship can look like for both of you. To my other listeners on the other side, if you have been worried about your relationship or having anxiety about certain aspects of it, the fact that your partner does disappoint you sometimes, or that you do have conflict every once in a while, or that you don’t have a lot of things in common, or whatever — 

I hope that you have also learned that those things don’t always really matter that much and that you can have normal relational, turbulence, and friction and things can not always feel perfect. You can still have a really fundamentally happy, healthy, strong relationship; that this is just the experience of being in a long-term relationship as this kind of stuff happens sometimes, and I hope that it’s helped you gain a deeper awareness and appreciation for all the strengths in your relationship. 

As always, I hope that this podcast was meaningful to you and helpful to you. It is my labor of love and just my way of giving back to the world. I will ask, though, that if you feel like you’ve benefited from this podcast, or any others — if you could pay it forward to other people by leaving a review for this podcast, preferably favorable, but on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you listen to this, it only will help other people find this podcast or stumble upon it in their own times of need. 

They’ve just gotten into a fight and are trying to figure out what the heck is going on and what does this mean about their relationship —  they can also hear this and get information that could help them. They won’t unless you leave a review about this podcast because when you do that, it will make the podcast more available for them. Again, this is a totally free — I consider it to be a community resource more than anything else. This is a resource that only exists because listeners just like you have put it in front of other people. 

We don’t do any advertising or this isn’t a financial thing. This is just free help. Anyway, that is my request of you. Also, I’d like to invite you to take advantage of the other resources. Again, if you want to take that quiz come to my website — growingself.com/relationship-quiz. That too is free. 

If you have questions that you’d like me to answer on an upcoming episode rather, get in touch with me through my website. Again, through Facebook — facebook.com/drlisabobby. I love all of your questions. I read every single one, and I am compiling a list of things to discuss on the podcast based on the questions you’re asking me, so keep them coming. 

Alright, thank you again for listening and I’ll be back in touch in a couple of weeks with another episode. Until then, take care.