You, yourself, are responsible for how people treat you. In life, you will come across all kinds of people, and if you do not muster up the courage to stand up for yourself and speak your truth, you will be shadowed by their opinion and behaviors. The first step towards cultivating deep, meaningful relationships is eliminating the unhealthy and toxic ones.
Here’s a look at a few behaviors that you must never accept in relationships:
Availability
Physical availability: Relationships feed on consistency. No matter how busy they are, if someone is interested in you, they will find the time to spend with you. Do not settle for relationships where the other person vanishes away of their own accord. Huge behavioral changes are not a good sign, and you shouldn’t allow yourself to be fooled by large gestures if they’re going to disappear into thin air later.
Emotional Availability: Emotional availability (EA) refers to the ability of two people to share a healthy emotional connection. For this to become a reality in your relationship, the other person must intend to be in a relationship. If you persistently pursue someone not ready for that, the relationship will go down the drain sooner or later.
I will soon write a detailed article on Signs of Emotional Unavailability and will link it here for better understanding.
Pillars of a Healthy Relationship
The absence of these should be seen as red flags.
Support: Support in a relationship means you can expect your partner to be by your side during good and bad times. More importantly, during the bad ones because support is not usually a problem during good times.
Understanding: An ideal relationship has a foundation of solid understanding where you know each other’s differences and find a way to make space for them.
Trust: Our brains are wired to make us feel safe. That is our biology. If you are in a relationship where you are unsure if you can trust the other person, your bodies activate the danger mode. You are always worried and insecure, hurting your focus and behavior.
Mutual Respect: Truth? Love is not enough. And respect is more important than love. If you are not respected for who you are and are constantly made to feel that you are not enough, walk away.
Love: Love is cherishing your partner with all their flaws. Make them feel special and magnify their positive qualities rather than negative ones. Nobody is perfect, and everyone you meet will have flaws. Love is about accepting the inevitable thorns with the beautiful rose that your partner is.
Read the detailed article here: Compulsory Requirements of a Healthy Relationship
They do not accept and respect you for who you are
It is also unacceptable if your partner makes you give up your interests, particular personality traits, or other significant facets of your life. “If they make you feel like you have to give up the things that make you who you are, that is not a relationship for you. Someone who genuinely cares about you will encourage you to pursue your interests and relationships because they want to see you happy.
A partner who always criticizes you is not someone you should be with, even if a loving partner may gently and respectfully encourage you to be the best version of yourself and the other way around. They might frequently criticize aspects of your personality or body shame you, which are both cruel, immature, and deceptive techniques to manipulate a partner.
Their presence makes you anxious
Do you become more nervous around your partner? That further indicates that their behavior makes you uncomfortable, and if that is the case, it would only be wise to move on from the relationship. Your body and response mechanisms will tell you if you feel unsafe around them.
- Do you avoid being in the same room?
- Do you refrain from doing what you like when you are around?
- Do you overthink about what to speak and how to act when you are around them?
- Are you worried about being judged?
Top Tip: If the answer to the above questions is yes, turn around from this person and run away!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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