Navigating Healthy Relationships: Signs, Patterns, and Self-Reflection

How to Cultivate Fulfilling Relationships and Overcome Unhealthy Patterns

Finding ourselves in healthy relationships makes us feel alive, connected, supported, and fulfilled. Not all relationships, however, make us feel this way. Unhealthy or misfit relationships often leave us feeling depleted, confused, frustrated, or unsafe.

Continue reading if you want to learn what a healthy relationship looks like, why we keep finding ourselves in unhealthy or misfit relationships, why we keep choosing those relationships, and how to cultivate healthy relationships.

Why do we keep choosing unhealthy relationships?

We often confuse love with attachment, which is one of the main reasons why many keep choosing bad relationships. When we emotionally connect with someone, we may often ignore warning signs, rationalize their unhealthy actions, or compromise our needs and boundaries to stay connected.

Repeatedly falling into the same relationship patterns and dynamics can occur for several reasons, including past traumas, low self-esteem, a lack of awareness, or a sense of comfort and familiarity due to experiences in childhood.

What are the signs of healthy relationships?

Here are 11 signs of healthy relationships that you can look out for:

1. You feel like you can talk to them about anything

2. You trust that you can be honest, supportive of, and vulnerable with them

3. You feel like your opinions, beliefs, and choices are respected even though they disagree