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Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships

Whether romantic, friendly, or familial, healthy relationships are mutually supportive and beneficial to the individuals who are part of them. They enrich your life and help you grow. Read more about your everyone deserves healthy relationships and no one deserves to be abused. 

If you are wondering whether a relationship is healthy or not, you can schedule an appointment to explore with a CARE advocate.

Relationships as a Spectrum

Relationships are comprised of a mixture of behaviors that fall along a spectrum from healthy to unhealthy, meaning these behaviors can exist alongside each other. Healthy behaviors promote equity for all parties and add up to a healthy relationship. Healthy relationships are not perfect, but problems can be safely addressed, and conflict leads to productive change.

Some core signs of a healthy relationship include:

Some warnings signs of an unhealthy relationship could include:

Not all unhealthy behaviors are necessarily abusive or signs that a relationship should imminently end, but relationships should be made up of mostly healthy behaviors. Friends, family, and therapists can play a useful and supportive role in identifying an unhealthy relationship and taking steps to improve it, if desired. Relationships with lots of unhealthy behaviors that parties are not willing or able to change might be worth ending. You should always 榴梿视频 the right to safely end a relationship you no longer want to engage in for any reason.

Abusive Relationships

Abusive relationships are motivated by one party's desire to create and maintain power and control over others. Power and control are created through patterns of emotionally, physically, financially, and sexually abusive behaviors. For example, if one partner belittles another during a fight, it may seem like an isolated incident of unhealthy behavior. However, repeated belittling, reinforced by other attacks on self esteem, can lead to a survivor believing that they are not good enough to stand on their own, are to blame for their partner's abusive behavior, and must stay in the relationship and accept being controlled 'for their own good.' 

Examples of abusive behaviors intended to create power and control dynamics are listed in the and on our page Defining Relationship Violence. These behaviors are harmful, threatening, coercive, isolating, and scary. The abusive actions are often dismissed or minimized by perpetrators and victims are blamed for 'causing' them.

Behaviors can start out seeming like a one-off or unhealthy rather than abusive, but become part of an ongoing pattern of power and control that changes and escalates over time. The concept of a is useful for understanding this escalation. It describes how, after an abusive incident, there is often a period of reconciliation where the person who caused harm apologizes, buys gifts, says they will seek therapy, explains their behavior as temporary (i.e., related to stress or substance use), or promises that the abuse will not occur again. However, following this period, tension builds in the relationship, once again culminating in abuse. This cycle continue to repeat itself without the promised change occurring. 

What Should I Look for in a Partner?

With a new partner or any new kind of relationship, it’s not possible to know exactly who could be abusive or unhealthy ahead of time. Even if we had a sure list and a new partner exhibited every sign, there would still be no justification for their abuse later on. You are not to blame for not predicting abusive behavior or for not recognizing it 'soon enough.' 

It’s important to establish positive qualities you do want from your relationship, in addition to establishing your deal-breakers. Being in touch with and affirming your own values will help you more quickly identify when you're not in alignment with someone. Scarleteen's can inspire you to think about your boundaries, needs, and desires in sexual relationships and facilitate conversations with new partners. You can also check out Love is Respect's if you want to discuss your results, CARE is here!

What should I do if I...?

...May be in an unhealthy relationship?
...Think my friend may be in an unhealthy relationship and want to help?
...Want to know more about healthy relationships?
...May 榴梿视频 harmed my partner?