Building Healthy Relationships

Have you wondered why your relationship with your friends is becoming toxic or one-sided? Building healthy relationships, whether with your significant other, friends, or even family members, is essential to long last relationships. Each one of these relationships is very different from the other. You could build or continue to grow healthy relationships in several ways. If you are looking for helpful ways to build healthy relationships with your friends, you came to the right place.

Psychology Today states that the most important thing to building and maintaining healthy friendship relationships is “Friendships are built on mutuality and reciprocity — be there for her so that she will be there for you.” Having healthy relationships isn’t a one-way street, which means that you guys have to put in the time and effort with each other. You have to trust, support and be honest with each other at all times, no matter what it is.

Another important step is listening to each other. Friendship isn’t built on half listening to each other or sharing your side of things and not letting the other person talk. You both have to listen to each other and let the other person speak. It states on Psychology Today that “However, friendships require attention and tending — if we don’t truly know what a friend needs, and if we don’t clearly state what we’re feeling or needing ourselves, friendships just won’t survive.” Listening to each other is essential to every relationship, no matter who it is with.

Along with listening to each other, another really important step to building and maintaining relationships is handling disagreements properly. Disagreements are normal in any relationship that you have. That is because you are two individuals with different values and beliefs. How you handle the disagreement will put your relationship to the test and prove if you are real friends. According to the University of Colorado Boulder, “Working through a disagreement in a healthy way by talking respectfully and listening to understand each other is an important component of any relationship, whether it’s with a friend, family member or significant other. We also can’t assume that someone can inherently see an issue from our point of view.”

Handling disagreements and conflicts before they turn into fights is very important because once the disagreement turns into a fight is harder to both hear and respect the other person's thoughts and what they are saying, and it is harder to come back up to a good and healthy relationship after a fight.

Individuality is The last and most key to building and maintaining relationships. This means that you shouldn’t have to compromise your values or beliefs for the other person. Also, you have to know yourself pretty well to main and build those relationships because you know what you want in relationships and what is important to you. According to youth.gov, “Each should continue seeing his or her friends and doing the things he/she loves. Each should be supportive of his/her friend wanting to pursue new hobbies or make new friends.”

These tips can apply to any relationship, no matter who it is with, because these are the foundation for all relationships. If you want more in-depth tips for one type of relationship, you can look up different tips to help you. Building and maintaining healthy relationships is essential in life.