Healthy vs. Unhealthy Relationships

A reader recently asked me if I would share some qualities that I came to understand were "red-flags" for unhealthy relationships vs. qualities of healthy relationships.

Wow! Tough question.

For many years, it was difficult for me to discern what was and was not healthy for me. Even after considerable healing there were many times that I felt "triggered" even if the other person was behaving in a healthy manner. For example, if another person held a matriarchal role in my life, or other such circumstances that triggered old unsafe childhood feelings, I couldn't differentiate between whether my present situation was unsafe, or I was experiencing old unhealed wounds.

Conversely, sometimes someone was behaving in a manner that was injurious to me and I failed to recognize the behavior because I was still wired to treat myself the way my mother treated me. I argued and "engaged" rather than protecting myself.

Today, I believe that I am responsible to safeguard my own well-being. So, some of my red flags are about me.

I'm sure there are many relationship/friendship "red-flags," however, these are the warning signs that are most pertinent to me:

1. Boundary Issues: Do they maintain their own healthy boundaries? Do they respect boundaries in others? Do they have enmeshment issues? It has only been the last few years that I've learned to consistently maintain clear, respectful, boundaries. Everyone needs to take responsibilities for their own boundaries; yet, a red flag for me, is if I need to spend an inordinate amount of time guarding those boundaries.

2. Blaming: Someone who takes no personal responsibility for his or her own actions or problems, but rather blames me or others.

3. Unrealistic Expectations: Expects me to meet all of his or her needs, and/or tries to move the relationship along too quickly.

4. Dishonesty, Betrayal: Because I was betrayed in my most basic relationships, it took me years to realize that I actually betrayed myself when I accepted betrayal as a part of my relationships.

5. Lack of Compassion, empathy, or inability to connect with others: I have to be very careful with this one. I grew up without any compassion or empathy. As an adult, I needed to learn a healthy balance between 1) learning to provide my own self-compassion, rather than a dependence on others to solely meet this need, and 2) recognizing when someone lacks empathy, compassion, or connectedness.

6. Critical, Demeaning, or disrespectful: If I don't recognize these qualities right away, they can slowly chip away at my self-esteem.

7. Controlling, Bossy, Demanding: Big red flag!

8. Poor conflict resolution skills.

9. Poor self-esteem: Boastful; needs his or her ego fed at the expense of others and/or places his or her needs above everyone else.

10. Crazy-making, ceaseless arguments. This is two-fold for me. It is a red flag about the other person if they need to be "right"all the time (i.e. facts or circumstances). Although feelings have no right or wrong, it is also a red flag about me if I find myself engaging in ceaseless arguments looking for understanding about my feelings. It took me a long time to learn not to engage, but rather stand confidently in my own experience.

Healthy qualities would be the opposite:

1. Maintains his or her own boundaries; respects boundaries in others.
2. Accepts responsibility for his or her own problems and actions.
3. Able to meet his or her own needs as well as share in each others lives.
4. Honest and open.
5. Displays an appropriate degree of compassion, empathy, and understanding.
6. Loving, respectful, dignified, focus's on positives rather than negatives
7. Mutual problem solving
8. Good, calm, listening and communication skills
9. Good self esteem: Self-respectful, humble, and is respectful of others needs.
10. Places relationships ahead of need to be right, and/or can stand confidently in own experience.

Compassion

Yesterday, a survivor friend shared with me how she continues to allow her mother to mistreat her. She said that her downfall was her compassion. She keeps getting drawn back into the crazy-making because she has compassion for her mother.

Boundary issues are common in abusive family systems. Abuse victims and survivors are often programmed to empathize with those who harm us. Other individuals also insist that we should have compassion for an offender in an effort to resolve conflict.

There was a time in my young life when I too had a great deal of compassion for my mother. Whenever I acted on my compassion, I seemed to be giving her permission to hurt me again.

I failed to realize that having compassion for another person is not a license to allow mistreatment. Compassion should go hand in hand with clear, respectful boundaries. Feeling compassion didn’t mean that I had to act on compassion and put myself in harms way.

As a young adult, when I risked sharing the trauma of my childhood, my chosen confidant often ignored my words by simply insisting that I should have compassion for my mother. This response made me very angry because my previous attempts at acting on my compassion failed to heal our relationship and only served to allow myself to be hurt again.

I didn’t experience the compassion of a loving mother growing up, nor did I learn self-compassion. I needed to experience some compassion. Placing conditions on the victim and not on the offender seemed very damaging.

Just as with premature forgiveness – compassion can be premature. The sort of
assistance I needed from others was to just "hold" my experience, listen to me, validate me, and have compassion for me without placing any conditions on me.

Until I was able to focus solely on my own healing, on becoming self-compassionate, and on learning to protect myself, compassion for my mother had to wait.