There’s no bigger playground for love than a college campus, but how do you escape without getting a scraped elbow, or even worse, a broken heart? Liz Rekowski, is here to give you the 411 on all things love, lust and anything in between.
Some relationships can lead in unhealthy directions without us even realizing it. The sad thing is, once it’s over you realize you should have packed up and left months ago. But, when you are blinded by love, how do you realize what’s good for you and what’s not?
The major sign of an unhealthy relationship is if you feel controlled by your partner. Although having a controlling partner, may at first not seem serious, it can grow into much more serious problems. When trying to decide whether or not you are in a controlling relationship, consider the following:
- Are you allowed to hang out with your friends and make plans without your partner?
- Does your partner try to get you to stop doing activities you enjoy?
- Does your partner get extremely jealous if you talk to people of the opposite sex?
- Will your partner take advantage of opportunities to make you feel bad about yourself or inadequate?
If you said yes to any of these, you most likely have a serious problem in your relationship. It’s never healthy to be controlled by another person, and although these things seem relatively harmless, they can lead to dangerous actions, such as violence or verbal abuse.
If you’d rather look at it from the other side of the spectrum, there are also many different qualities you should examine your relationship for if it is, in fact, a healthy relationship. Everyone knows the key factors to a healthy relationship: Trust and honesty. Those are key in not only romantic relationships, but all relationships in general. And if you don’t have trust or honesty in your relationship, get out now! There’s no point in having a relationship with anyone who you can’t trust or be honest with. That’s why I’m going to talk a little about the not so obvious qualities of healthy relationships. First and foremost, how do you and your partner handle arguments?
In a healthy relationship, fights and disagreements are completely normal and apart of the package. The way you fight with your boyfriend or girlfriend is a good sign as to whether or not your relationship is healthy and has the potential to last. For example, when there is a disagreement, do you jump straight into yelling, screaming and calling names?
To maintain or create a healthy relationship, couples should speak their individual thoughts on the topic of discussion and try to find common ground or at least understand the other’s point of view. You won’t always agree or come up with a solution right away, but at least no one’s feelings will be hurt. Of course, this doesn’t happen all the time. There’s no such thing as a perfect relationship, but if you try your best to keep a level head when there’s an argument, your relationship should be fine.
Another important aspect of a healthy relationship is fairness. In a relationship, there shouldn’t always be one person catering to the other’s needs. It should be mutual. You should both equally help and care for each other.
Additionally, you should also be able to care for yourself. Although there should be some dependence on each other, you should know that if the relationship ended, you would be able to continue life relatively easily (after a quart of ice cream, box of tissues and a few movies with your roommates of course).
Support is also key to a healthy relationship. A lot of people think that being supportive means being there when times are tough. But, it also means having someone to celebrate with you when you accomplish something or other positive things happen in your life.
Your significant other shouldn’t get jealous of your success or upset if you are accomplishing things they aren’t. If you get an A on that huge final you and your beau studied for all last night, and he gets a C, he shouldn’t make you feel bad, but instead praise you and congratulate you on your hard work. At the same time, if you got an A and know he didn’t, don’t rub it in his face! Let him know he tried his best, and there’s always next time.
Although love can blind us from the truth, it’s not as hard as you think to realize whether or not you are in a healthy relationship. Like your mom always told you “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” If you aren’t treated how you’d ideally like to be treated, or you aren’t treated the way you treat your partner, it’s not worth your time. This is college, there’s so many other people out there and so much to experience. Whatever you do, don’t waste your time in a dead end relationship! Breaking up is tough, but it’s even tougher when you realize after the relationship is over that it should have ended much sooner than it did.
Have you ever been in an unhealthy relationship? What made you realize it was unhealthy and how did you deal with the dreaded break up? Comment me and share your thoughts!
Photos courtesy of http://healthyvisions.org, http://blackprof.com and http://youthvoices.net.
January 18th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Finding the time to build a relationship is the tough thing. Relationships like Rome are not built in one day.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:01 am
I follow your blog for quite a long time and should tell that your articles are always valuable to readers.