Are the STARS aligned? 5 Keys to a Healthy Relationship
For many of us, relationships can be a challenge. If you grew up in a household with parents in a difficult relationship, you may not have had a healthy model.
As kids we often look up to our parents to know what relationships should be like. In addition, social media, television shows, movies, and books often present us with high drama relationships that aren’t the healthiest.
All of this can lead to a lot of confusion as to what a healthy relationship looks like. If you’re uncertain about that, you’re not alone.
In this post, I will present 5 key elements to a healthy relationship. These come from many years of personal and professional experience. You can use these to better understand your current relationship or past relationships you’ve been in. As you look at your current or past relationship, ask yourself are the STARS aligned?
- Safety
- Trust
- Affection
- Respect/Repair
- Shared values
Safety
Safety refers to an inner feeling of security when in the presence of or when you think about your partner. Take a moment to think about your current relationship (or a past relationship) and tune into if your body feels safe or has a sense of fear. If you notice a sense of fear, try to understand where the fear might be coming from.
Safety also refers to different aspects of the relationship – physical, emotional, intellectual, and even spiritual. There may be a sense of anxiousness in any one of these elements and notice if that anxiety shows up in one or more ways.
Reflecting on your own relationship, notice if you feel physically safe, like the other person would protect you.
If you feel emotionally safe, it means you are able to share your emotions openly and know they will be well received.
Intellectually safe means you can share your ideas, interests, and passions without judgment. Spiritual safety refers to having some sense of mutual respect for your spiritual lives and values.
As you read this and reflect on your relationship, you may want to note if any of these aspects are worth communicating to your partner about or if you don’t feel comfortable communicating to your partner about these things that can be a sign there is a lack of safety.
Trust
Trust refers to the feeling that there is integrity in the other person and the relationship; in other words, the person’s actions and their intentions are aligned.
Does your partner follow through with promises? Do you trust that when they say something, they really mean it? Or are you afraid that they are going to betray what they say, go back on their intentions?
Trust is something that is both earned and given in a relationship. It takes some time to know if the other person is trustworthy and it can be a source of pain to both trust someone who is untrustworthy and to not trust someone who is trustworthy.
Trust is a two way street. You need to check in if you are a trustworthy person as well, or worthy of the trust of your partner. Trust is built over a sequence of events that build it. If you feel that trust has been broken in a relationship by an event in the past, this is something that will need to be addressed in order for a healthy relationship to take place. You may decide the person is not trustworthy and therefore not the right partner for a relationship with you.
We also need to learn to trust ourselves, but that may be a topic for another blog post 😉
Affection
Affection refers to a spectrum of loving touch. Everyone has their preferences and needs of touch in a relationship from gentle and soothing to sexual and active touch.
It can help to really know what your affection needs are in a relationship and communicate those clearly to your partner as well as seek to understand your partner’s preferences and needs.
The key to this is clear communication and understanding if there is compatibility in terms of needs.
If you feel unsatisfied with this aspect of your relationship, you may want to consider communicating your needs or evaluate if this is a compatible match for you.
Respect/Repair
Respect refers to a positive outlook on your partner’s life choices, career, friends, and all aspects of what makes them who they are!
If there is competition in the relationship, judgment, or jealousy — these may point to a lack of respect.
A major element of a healthy relationship is that your partner is seen as a teammate rather than a competitor. There may be unconscious ways in which we are disrespecting our partner or they are disrespecting us.
Are boundaries respected?
If you feel disrespected in your relationship, this is something to consider talking to your partner about. If you feel abused in your relationship, that is a strong indication it may be unhealthy and it is worth considering leaving.
Repair is essential for any relationship to survive in the long term. It refers to the ability to work through conflicts effectively, to apologize when necessary, to forgive, to seek to grow from disagreements.
When there is a rift in the relationship, healthy couples are able to notice this and seek repair. One of the keys to repairing is trying to understand the other person’s perspective while also communicating your own feelings and needs.
If both people can see the conflict from the other person’s perspective and have a level of compassion for the other’s suffering, the repair occurs fairly naturally.
For some couples this can be a challenge, especially if you had an unhealthy model of handling conflict such as avoiding conflict or using it as a means of control. However, repair is a skill that can be learned and practiced in relationships and can ultimately help the relationship grow stronger.
Shared Values
Values refer to the things that are most deeply important to us in life. This could be things such as family, travel, life’s work and purpose, a spiritual path, and qualities of being in the world such as being compassionate, adventurous, or loving.
When there is a misalignment of values in the relationship a couple will struggle to connect on a deeper level. The relationship may still be able to function but it will lack a deeper meaning.
Shared values can be the fuel that propels the relationship toward a common goal. For example, couples that work together on projects or create nonprofits such that their relationship has become a vehicle for something greater than the two of them.
This could be something as simple as raising a child or family together or hosting social events as a couple.
Seek to understand what your true values are and be curious about your partner’s! Perhaps take an evening to share and ask about what really matters to you in your life, what you want in your future together and the direction you want your life to go.
If you find that you and your partner have very different values or directions, it may mean the relationship is not meant to last or may not reach the fulfillment that you are wanting.
So, do the STARS align in your relationship? Give your present or past relationship a score of 1-10 on each of these categories and notice which scores are higher or lower.
If you find that your relationship doesn’t contain these elements, not all hope is lost. Even if you grew up with models of relationships that didn’t have any of these elements you can learn to cultivate them within yourself, within friendships, and with partners.
These 5 elements are not all-incompensing of the elements of a healthy relationship and each relationship has its own individual needs and considerations.
If you find that these 5 elements resonate with you, seek out models of relationships that do contain them such as in the media, with friends or couples you may know, and use these models as new healthy guides for yourself and your current or future partners.