Relationships are an unavoidable part of our lives. Whether it’s family, friends, or your profession, we regularly come into contact with other people in some ways. The hard part is not always creating a relationship, but maintaining it as a healthy one. Whatever kind of relationship it is, it’s important to remember to seek out ways to prune it into a healthy relationship instead of a toxic one.
Know Yourself
The first step in maintaining a healthy relationship is knowing yourself. Knowing how you work as an individual and the way you work in accordance with someone else is a beneficial way of thinking. Being self-aware helps regulate your own actions in a relationship and allows a space for empathy with your fellow humans.
Create Boundaries
Creating boundaries is the step ladder to maturity. We need to have barriers to maintain healthy relationships. The lack of limitations and rules is the breeding ground for toxicity in a relationship. Having boundaries up helps you to create space for yourself as an individual and allows you to keep parts of yourself instead of losing them in another person. As you work alongside other people, don’t be afraid to communicate your boundaries. If they have trouble respecting those boundaries, it’s a pretty immediate red flag that your relationship with them will have to change.
Communicate
Healthy relationships grow by communicating effectively. You are not a mind reader, and the person you’re interacting with probably isn’t one too. The only way for someone to accurately know what your thinking and feeling are to tell them. If you leave it up to guesswork, the relationship becomes ripe for assumptions and misrepresentations.
Healthy relationships are a complex and beautiful thing. It may be hard to achieve, and it certainly comes with its fair share of growing pains. The process is hard, but the results are always worth it.
This article was originally published on victoralston.org