How to Know If You Are in a Healthy Relationship

Research has consistently shown that good social relationships are critical for optimal health, both mentally and physically. Studies have found that people with healthy relationships are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors and tend to have better health outcomes. They also often enjoy a longer life.

Learn some of the characteristics of healthy relationships, along with signs that suggest poor relationship health. We also share several steps you can take to create healthier relationships in your life.

Questions to Assess Relationship Health

No relationship is perfect, each having a mix of healthy and unhealthy characteristics. While people often spend a lot of time talking about how to spot an unhealthy relationship, they don't necessarily discuss what constitutes a healthy one.

When assessing the health of your relationship, it's helpful to ask yourself questions such as these:

• Do you have trust in one another?
• Do you respect each other?
• Do you support each other’s interests and efforts?
• Are you honest and open with each other?
• Are you able to maintain your individual identity?
• Do you talk about your feelings, hopes, fears, and dreams?
• Do you feel and express fondness and affection?
• Is there equality and fairness in your relationship?
  

Characteristics of Healthy Relationships

While all relationships are unique in their own way, there are some characteristics that differentiate a healthy interpersonal connection from an unhealthy one. Here are several to consider.

Trust

Trust is a key component of healthy relationships. Research suggests that your ability to trust others is influenced by your overall attachment style. In other words, relationships experienced early in life help shape a person's expectations for future relationships.

If your past relationships have been secure, stable, and trusting, you are more likely to trust people in future relationships. If, however, your past relationships were unstable and undependable, you may have to work through trust issues going forward.

Trust is also established by how two people treat one another. When you see that the other person treats you well, is dependable, and will be there when you need them, you are more likely to develop trust in them. As this trust grows, the relationship becomes a greater source of comfort and security.

Openness and Self-Disclosure

Another characteristic of healthy relationships is feeling able to be yourself. While different couples have varying levels of openness and self-disclosure—the latter of which refers to what you are willing to share about yourself with another person—you should never feel like you have to hide aspects of yourself or change who you are.

At the beginning of a relationship, you may hold back and exercise more caution about what you're willing to reveal. Over time, as the intimacy of a relationship increases, partners begin to reveal more of their thoughts, opinions, beliefs, interests, and memories to one another. 

Being open with each other helps you feel more connected as a couple while fostering greater trust. Self-disclosure can further enhance trust in your relationship.

This doesn’t mean that you must share every single thing with your partner. Each individual has their own privacy and space boundaries. What matters most is whether each partner feels comfortable sharing their hopes, fears, and feelings if they so choose. 

Healthy Boundaries

Although your partner may have different needs than you, it's important to find ways to compromise while maintaining your boundaries. Boundaries are not about secrecy. Instead, they establish that each person has their own needs and expectations.

Healthy boundaries are unique to each individual and each couple. They establish what you will and will not accept in your relationship. Examples of healthy boundaries include agreeing not to go through each other's phones, giving each other the time and space to have friendships outside of the marriage, and respecting each other's personal space.

A partner with unhealthy expectations of openness and honesty might expect to know where you are and what you're doing at all times. They may also restrict who you can spend time with or demand access to your personal social media accounts.

Mutual Respect

In close, healthy relationships, people have a shared level of respect. They don't demean or belittle one another and offer support and security.

There are a number of different ways that couples can show respect for one another. These include:

• Listening to one another
• Not procrastinating or stonewalling when your partner asks you to do something
• Being understanding and forgiving when one person makes a mistake
• Building each other up, not tearing each other down
• Making room in your life for your partner
• Taking an interest in the things your partner enjoys
• Allowing your partner to have their own individuality
• Supporting and encouraging your partner’s pursuits and passions
• Showing appreciation and gratitude for one another
• Having empathy for one another

Love and Affection

Healthy relationships are characterized by love and affection. A relationship often begins with passionate love or an intense longing, strong emotions, and a need to maintain physical closeness. This eventually transforms into compassionate love, which is marked by feelings of affection, trust, intimacy, and commitment.

The initial passion that marks the start of a new relationship tends to decline over time. Even though intense feelings early on eventually return to normal levels, couples in healthy relationships are able to build progressively deeper intimacy as the relationship progresses.

It is important to remember that physical needs are different for each individual. There is no right amount of affection or intimacy that applies to everyone. The key to a healthy relationship is that both partners are content with the level of affection they share.

Good Communication

Healthy, long-lasting relationships—whether friendships or romantic partnerships—require the ability to communicate well. Being able to communicate doesn't mean having no conflicts. It means being able to resolve differences of opinion effectively.

When conflicts do arise, those in healthy relationships are able to avoid personal attacks. They remain respectful and empathetic of their partner as they discuss their thoughts and feelings and work toward a resolution.

Sometimes conflict can even be an opportunity to strengthen a connection with your partner. Research has shown that conflict can be beneficial in intimate relationships when serious problems need to be addressed, allowing partners to make changes that benefit the future of the relationship.

Give-and-Take

Strong relationships are marked by natural reciprocity. It isn’t about keeping score or feeling that you owe the other person. You do things for one another because you genuinely want to.

This also doesn’t mean that the give-and-take in a relationship is always 100% equal. At times, one partner may need more help and support. In other cases, one partner may simply prefer to take more of a caregiver role. Such imbalance is fine as long as each person is okay with the dynamic and both partners are getting the support they need.

Signs of Unhealthy Relationships

Relationships can change and not every relationship is healthy all the time. A relationship is unhealthy when the bad outweighs the good or when certain behaviors are harmful to one or both individuals. Times of stress, in particular, can lead to behaviors and coping mechanisms that create issues.

Signs of poor relationship health include:

• Attempts to control your behavior 
• Avoiding one another
• Being afraid to share your opinions or thoughts
• Being pressured to quit the things you enjoy
• Criticism of what you do, who you spend time with, how you dress, etc.
• Feeling pressured to change who you are
• Feeling that spending time together is an obligation
• Lack of fairness when settling conflicts
• Lack of privacy or pressure to share every detail of your life
  
• Neglecting your own needs to put your partner first
• Poor communication
• Unequal control over shared resources such as money and transportation
• Yelling
  

Some of these may be temporary and something you can address together, either through self-help methods or by consulting a mental health professional. When it comes to more serious issues, such as abusive behaviors, your primary concern should be maintaining your safety and security.

Are You in a Healthy Relationship? Take the Quiz

If you've got questions about your relationship, our fast and free quiz can help you better understand if your partnership is rock solid or if it could use some work.

How to Build Healthier Relationships

Toxic behaviors are often a sign that an unhealthy relationship should end. For other issues, there are many ways to fix weaknesses and build a healthier relationship. 

Commit to the Work

Relationships take work—on both your parts. If you're the only one who is trying to make things better, it leads to a one-sided relationship. This type of scenario can leave you feeling stressed, resentful, and emotionally exhausted.

Each person must be willing to do their part to maintain the connection and remedy issues that may exist. Commit to each other that you'll do the work to build a stronger partnership.

Show Appreciation

Couples who feel gratitude for one another often experience greater closeness and personal well-being. Finding ways to express this gratitude is also important.

One study found that showing gratitude to a partner can improve the relationship, especially when the gratitude is genuinely given. A different piece of research notes that feeling gratitude from a partner helps protect the relationship, even during times of conflict and financial strain.

Ways to show a partner that you appreciate them include:

• Taking care of a household chore that they typically do
• Giving them a card to let them know how you feel
• Making their favorite meal
• Purchasing tickets to an event that they would enjoy

Keep Things Interesting

Keeping up with the daily grind of work and kids can cause couples to fall into the same old routine. Over time, this can make you feel bored in your relationship, also making you less likely to engage in activities with one another.

What are some things that you can do to keep the romance alive over the long term?

• Schedule regular dates or set aside time each week to focus on one another
• Try new things together, such as taking a class or starting a hobby that you both enjoy
• Look for ways to surprise each other, like sending a random "I'm thinking of you" text in the middle of the day
• Find time for intimacy and do things to get in the mood beforehand

When to Seek Relationship Help

All relationships have their bumps in the road. Conflicts over finances, challenges of parenting, and other differences can all create ups and downs in a long-term relationship. Even if you and your partner have a healthy relationship most of the time, problems might sometimes arise that could benefit from professional help.

If you feel like your relationship may benefit from outside help, consider talking to a counselor or therapist. Finding a mental health professional skilled in addressing interpersonal and relationship issues can help you both learn to communicate and cope with some of the issues that you might find challenging.

It's important to remember that you can't force someone to change their behavior unless they want to. If your partner is not interested in or willing to go counseling, you can always go on your own and focus on your own needs and wellness. Work on building your social support system outside of the relationship and consider ending the relationship if it is ultimately unhealthy.

A Word From Verywell

Even if your relationship seems healthy, it can be helpful at times to step back and look for improvements you can make together. Healthy relationships are marked by an ability to recognize problems, including your own, that might pose a threat to the long-term success of your relationship. By being willing to analyze your relationship, you can work together to build a more fulfilling partnership.