7 Pillars For Building Healthy Love

Seven pillars support a couple’s healthy love: respect, trust, honesty, support, equality, self-identity and good communication. For a couple to build healthy love, there must be reciprocity, giving and receiving love in equal measure, always taking care of each other.

Authors such as Walter Riso and Jorge Bucay explain that, within a couple relationship, it is very important to demonstrate recognition for the gestures of care and affection that one has for the other. Be grateful as this is not a must. This will help to build, live and enjoy a complete and healthy love.

It can often seem like an impossible quest to find the right person and, in turn, have them think the same about us. So when it happens, we feel a great deal of emotion, and life’s little inconveniences don’t seem to matter so much. It’s as if they don’t even exist in the face of so much happiness.

On the other hand, at the beginning of a relationship, it is common for us to see the world in pink. A tone as fantastic as it is dangerous, as it can blind us and prevent us from seeing that the relationship is not as healthy as it should be. It is important to emphasize that love must be healthy from the start.

Within every relationship there are responsibilities. If something doesn’t “go well” between two people, the problem belongs to both of them and they both have a part of the solution in their hands. It doesn’t have to be in the same proportion, of course.

In this sense, it is not about thinking that you are responsible for everything that happens, or on the contrary, not assuming any mistakes. Instead, the issue is to find a balance in the commitments that each makes and can keep. A smart couple knows how to share these responsibilities so that each other’s strengths shine through.

To share these responsibilities, communication plays a key role, especially when it comes to making commitments or reaching agreements. When it comes to taking responsibility, another important point is to realistically assess what we can and cannot do. Maybe we can’t buy a very expensive gift, but maybe we can do it with our own hands. We may not be able to find another job, but we can accept what we have.

We are talking about a process, with different sub-processes, of constant growth. A process that will occur within the relationship if love is healthy, but also individually in the people who make up the couple.

learned behaviors

We all have an idea before, during and after any relationship of what our partner should be like, just as we imagine what our friends or family should be like. Also, most of us, when we have a partner, tend to compare him to someone “perfect” and do everything possible to fit him in with him.

In this distance that exists between the ideal and the real partner, there are usually attitudes, thoughts or behaviors that bother us so much. In order for the couple to build healthy love, we need to be flexible: in some situations we can reach agreements, but with others we will have to accept them or change partners.

In this sense, it is necessary for both people to adjust their tolerance levels to the reality they share so that healthy love continues to grow. On the other hand, making changes intelligently, without falling into the temptation to manipulate the other, will contribute to the couple’s growth in the same direction.

So when it comes to learned behaviors, such as not taking the plate off the table or other household chores, we can talk to our partner and ask him to change his behavior or decide not to do anything and accept the situation. But if it is something that is part of your personality, for example, if our partner is more shy than we are, we must accept that he is. What we must never accept are behaviors that attack our integrity, such as aggression and insults. This should not be accepted in any other type of relationship.

Building healthy love is a matter of quality, not quantity. Loving a lot does not mean “loving well”. Loving well requires respect, trust, honesty, mutual support, a balance between giving and receiving, maintaining separate identities, and good communication.

7 pillars to build healthy love

In a healthy relationship, the couple mutually gives and receives:

1. Respect

Respect is the ability to see and accept the person as they are, to be aware of their uniqueness. It is wanting it to develop according to its own desires and ways, not according to our plans.

2. Trust

Trusting a partner doesn’t mean proving everything the other says or does, it’s feeling that we can trust to share good and bad times.

3. Honesty

It’s important to be honest with ourselves about our feelings and to be honest with each other. There can be no affective exchange if there is no self-criticism. We must be sure that our preferences, desires, dreams, wishes and needs are reasonable and do not violate the couple’s rights.

4. Support

It is important to demonstrate mutual support: to be able to differentiate our needs from the other’s needs and allow them to grow personally and professionally.

5. Equality (balance between giving and receiving)

Both partners are responsible for the relationship and must take care of it. Reciprocity is the basis of just love, the basis for building healthy love. When we give love, we expect love, because the couple’s affective relationships are nourished by exchange. It is not a question of avarice, but of reciprocal altruism: together we are more.

6. Own identity

It is important to maintain separate identities within a couple relationship, where each member can maintain their own identity, their personality and everything that makes them who they are. Practicing responsible individualism, where each one keeps alive their self-love in the relationship they chose, caring about their partner, but also about themselves. After all, we are complete beings.

7. Good communication

Communication is critical in any relationship. In a relationship where we want to build healthy love, it is essential to maintain good communication at all times.

A couple is made up of two people who must make decisions together and who do not always share the same point of view. To reach agreements, it is necessary to dialogue with tranquility and trust.

These seven pillars may not guarantee a couple’s future, but they will create the certainty that while they are together, it will be possible to build healthy, dignified, fun love and a source of growth and inspiration for those who share it.