Building and Keeping Healthy Relationships

Positive well being and health includes taking care of the relationships with the people who mean the most to you. Whether it’s with a significant other, family members or friends, there are ways to improve and enhance your current relationships.

Building Healthy Relationships With Others
Healthy relationships are essential for emotional well being and overall satisfaction in life. People who maintain positive social connections are frequently the most satisfied. Although there is no standard recipe for building healthy relationships, these suggestions can help create and maintain them:

• Make a priority of doing fun activities together. It’s a great way to keep a positive focus alive. 
• Practice strategies to regain perspective when life throws you a curveball or when stress interferes with your relationships. Life is full of unpredictability; reminding yourself that you have successfully survived similar events in the past can decrease your current anxiety and stress level.
• Regularly share things that you appreciate about your partner. This goes a long way in building and maintaining a strong and healthy relationship.
• When conflict arises with a friend, spouse or family member, think ahead five years and ask yourself if you’ll still feel as strongly about the issue. This strategy helps balance out tendencies to focus on the negative and minimize the positive. 

Building Healthy Professional Relationships
Perhaps surprisingly, healthy professional relationships share many of the same elements found in our personal relationships. Co-workers need recognition for their skills and contributions, and time spent sharing a story at the water cooler does a great deal in building and maintaining healthy relationships. The communal coffee pot is the often most effective tool for building a happy and healthy team of co-workers. 

Maintaining a Healthy Love Relationship
Express gratitude to your partner with direct behavioral terms throughout the year to help create positive feelings. It reminds your partner that you recognize and value your partner’s positive traits and behaviors, despite times when they may fall short. 

Similarly, schedule time for just the two of you each week — regardless of outside responsibilities — and partake in pleasurable activities together. It will help establish a habit where both of you naturally focus on the relationship through fun and enjoyable ways.

How Couples Can Overcome Struggles
Many couples struggle over the issue of finances. This is exacerbated by the current economy, which has resulted in joblessness and decreased financial stability for many people. Here are a few suggestions for couples to resolve conflict:

• Communicate your expectations and your concerns with your partner during a mutually agreed upon time. 
• Maintain perspective by reminding yourselves about the many complex and difficult topics that you do agree upon. In addition, acknowledge your ability to overcome similar issues in the past.
• Once the conversation ends, always treat each other to a pleasurable activity, like going out for ice cream or visiting a park.
• Remember, no couple agrees on everything. It’s quite healthy for smart, reasonable people to disagree while ultimately negotiating toward a mutually agreed upon solution.
• Stick to the topic at hand to keep the conversation from becoming overwhelming. This helps both parties increase the effectiveness of negotiations and willingness to listen.

In addition, stay out of power struggles where you try to change the other person’s behavior. For example, it’s much harder for your partner to decrease a behavior that you find irritating or upsetting. Instead, put your energy into asking your partner to increase positive behaviors that you appreciate.

Resolving Conflicts
Although conflict occurs in every relationship, few of us are comfortable addressing it when it occurs. Following some basic rules can make this anxiety-provoking task easier and more productive:

• Begin by calmly explaining to the other person that a specific behavior has upset you, and the feelings that you experienced as a result
• Next, show that you are willing to empathize with that person by acknowledging possible reasons that may have contributed to the behavior
• Finally, state what alternative behavior you would like that person to exhibit in similar situations in the future, and state the positive consequences that this will have to both of you and to your relationship

Of course, relationships between two people — whether romantic, family- or friend-oriented — will run into roadblocks, sometimes serious ones. How we communicate with each other during these difficult times determines whether the relationship suffers or maintains health and vibrancy.

Contempt for your partner has been found to be one of the most damaging behaviors in relationships. When you are angry, remember to stay away from name calling and blaming. Clearly identify the behavior that has upset you without demeaning the other person by associating the behavior with character flaws.  

Healthy relationships provide us with great joy and happiness and buffer us during tough times. Recognizing that good relationships require effort and ongoing maintenance can prompt us to set up habits that increase our success in building healthy relationships and, ultimately, increase our overall satisfaction in life.

For More Information
To learn more about Sharp's alcohol and drug dependency services or to find a Sharp-affiliated doctor, search for a San Diego addiction specialist or call 1-800-82-SHARP (1-800-827-4277), Monday through Friday, 8 am to 6 pm. To find general information about mental health, visit Mental Health Disorders in Adult Health or read the Mental Health News archive.