Maintaining a healthy relationship is very important topic for research given the current trends in relationships in most marriages or whatever relations between two persons. For the sake of making this discussion a bit more specific, this paper will concentrate on relationship that exists between two individuals who are bounded by love and are mutually committed themselves with each other. Every individual human being is born with an innate tendency to feel in love at a particular stage in life regardless of sex.
This is natural because humans have emotions and falling in love is just part of this emotional tendency. Therefore, having relationship cannot be avoided, it is part of life, but maintaining a healthy relationship is a different thing. It requires more than just a commitment, it requires trust, it requires faithfulness, and all other ingredients that will spice up the relationship including creativity in handling love affairs or the affairs between the two related persons. What is a healthy relationship and what it involved?
Defining a healthy relationship is quite difficult as the human relationships are often complicated. However, various tips and advices on having good relationships are available from countless of books, articles, poems, and other literature on love and human relationships. Claudia Black (2002) stressed that a healthy relationship is about shared power, not control. Black says’ “A healthy relationship is not a power struggle between two rigidly autonomous beings, neither is it symbiotic.
The two of you do not have to think and feel the same way about all things. We want to share ourselves without collapsing into one being. A healthy relationship grows in strength when there is shared autonomy” (Black 2002, p. 150). A healthy relationship involves two people with clearly defined senses of their own identities. In other words, healthy relationship requires boundaries. Healthy boundaries according to Sandra L. Brown (2005) “allow us to separate around our thoughts, feelings, and needs from those of the people around us” (p.
201). Brown emphasize that the lack of an ability to separate these aspect of ourselves from those of others is called enmeshment (p. 201). Brown explained that enmeshment “occurs when a person begins to take on the thoughts, feelings, and needs of someone else, even when thoughts, feelings, and needs do not reflect his or her own best interests” (p. 201). How to maintain and enhance a healthy relationship What is healthy relationship? What makes healthy a relationship?
Or how to maintain healthy relationships are just some of the many questions that have been asked about human relationship. An internet article entitled Maintain a Healthy and Satisfying Relationship points out that “relationships affect physical and mental health” The article emphasized that relationship is something that need to be worked out, something that one has to really put an effort in order for it work well. To keep the relationship strong the article noted that “one need to overlook imperfections and forgive faults” (Tamee).
Healthy relationship takes time to work and it requires trusting your partner with your feelings. Judith Kuriansky (2001) cited some signs of a healthy relationship as follows: You feel secure and happy when you’re together and alone-not sad, suspicious, angry, or deprived. You are inspired by each other to fulfill your dreams and become the best you can be. You are generous and giving—you to give all you can to your partner and are so fulfilled that you also want to give everyone else around you.