Relationships are extremely important for your well-being.
They promote both your mental and physical health by reducing the effects of stress, fostering a sense of meaning and purpose in life1, 2 and even decreasing your mortality.3, 4
Although relationships can do wonders for your well-being, they can also do the opposite: in fact, toxic relationships can lower your sense of self-worth, generate fear and insecurity, trigger depression, and much more.
Therefore, regularly doing relationship check-ins with your family, friends, and lover(s) is essential to make sure that you nurture social connections that are good for you.
Below, I will share with you 4 signs of a healthy relationship according to Segrin & Taylor5 (2007) that will allow you to check in with your social circle and make your relationships flourish ✨
Here are the 4 signs:
Let’s explore them together.
1. Intimacy
The first ingredient of a healthy relationship is intimacy.
Prager6 (1995) states that intimate relationships take time to develop and include 3 elements:
- Relational intimacy, which is “the presence of ongoing, frequently occurring intimate interactions between partners” (pp. 26-27).
- The partners’ lasting emotions or attitudes that arise as a consequence of their intimate interactions.
- Affection, trust, and cohesiveness, which are 3 characteristics that are necessary to sustain an enduring relational intimacy within a relationship.
There are two types of intimate interactions: intimate behaviors and intimate experiences6.
Intimate behaviors refer to any activity in which partners share personal and/or private things with each other.
Intimate experiences are “possessive affect and perceived understanding that partners experience along with or as a result of their intimate behavior” (Prager, 1995, p.26).
2. Relational Trust
Another important sign of a healthy relationship is relational trust.
According to Yang & Soo Lim7 (2007), this concept includes 4 elements:
- Dependability, consisting of a “partner’s reliability based on predictability and consistency in acts and words” (p. 343).
- Integrity, namely “a relational partner’s perceived unwillingness to sacrifice ethical standards to achieve individual or organizational objectives”, which comprises elements such as “honesty, discreetness, confidentiality, and concern or care for relational partners” (p. 343).
- Transparency, which is “a relational partner’s perceived willingness to share ideas and information freely and frankly” (p. 343).
- Competence, namely an individual’s capacity to perform his or her duties and obligations, including characteristics such as technical skills, expertise, and timeliness in completing work.8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
3. Openness to Experience
The third element of a healthy relationship is openness to experience, which is a character trait pertaining mental curiosity and interests.14, 15
According to McCrae & Costa14 (1997), “open people actively seek out experience and are apt to be particularly reflective and thoughtful about the ideas they encounter” (pp. 829-830) and, therefore, they tend to “have a richer and more complex emotional life, and could be more curious and flexible in their attitudes and behaviors” (Chen et al., 2019, pp. 2-3).
4. Concern for Others
The last of the 4 signs of a healthy relationship according to Segrin & Taylor5 is concern for others which, within a relationship, is reflected by the concern that the partners/friends/family members have for each other.
Concern for others is also referred to as sympathy, empathic concern, or affective empathy, and it is “an emotional response consisting of tender feelings onbehalf of a distressed other” (Davidov et al.16, 2013, p. 126).
Also, care for other people usually goes hand in hand with endeavours to cognitively understand another person’s state and can stimulate prosocial action to reduce another’s suffering.
Now tell me: which of the 4 signs of a healthy relationship discussed do you have the most in your relationships? Which points do you need to work on?
Let me know in the comments ✨
Here are some articles that might interest you…
- The 5 Love Languages: How to Love Better.
- 7 Types of Love (From Greek)
- 5 Facts About Empathy You Probably Didn’t Know
♡ Let’s connect on Social Media ♡
References
- Cohen, Sheldon. 2004. Social Relationships and Health. American Psychologist, pp. 676–84.
- Thoits, 1995. Stress, Coping, and Social Support Processes: Where Are We? What Next?. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, pp. 53–79.
- House et all., 1988. Social Relationships and Health. Science, pp. 540-545.
- Berkman & Syme, 1979. Social Networks, Host Resistance, and Mortality: a Nine-Year Follow-Up Study of Alameda County Residents. American Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 109, Issue 2, pp. 186–204.
- Segrin & Taylor, 2007. Positive interpersonal relationships mediate the association between social skills and psychological well-being – ScienceDirect. Personality and Individual Differences, pp. 637–646.
- Prager, K. J., 1995. The Psychology of Intimacy.
- Yang & Soo Lim, 2007. The Effects of Blog-Mediated Public Relations (BMPR) on Relational Trust. Journal of Public Relations Research, pp.341-359.
- Huang, Y. H., 2009. A cross-cultural, multiple-item scale for measuring organization-public relationships. Journal of Public Relations Research, pp. 61–90.
- Butler, J. K. (1991). Toward understanding and measuring conditions of trust: Evolution of a conditions of trust inventory. Journal of Management, 17, pp. 643–663.
- Gabarro, J. J. (1978). The development of trust influence and expectations. In A. G. Athos & J. J. Gabarro (Eds.), Interpersonal behavior: Communication and understanding in relationships (pp. 290–303). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Mishra, A. K., 1996. Organizational responses to crisis: The centrality of trust. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 261–287). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
- Moorman, C., Deshpande, R., & Zaltman, G. (1993). Factors affecting trust in market research relationships. Journal of Marketing, 57, 81–101.
- White, T. B. (2005). Consumer trust and advice acceptance: The moderating roles of benevolence, expertise, and negative emotions. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15, 141–148.
- McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T., Jr. Conceptions and Correlates of Openness to Experience. In In R. Hogan, J. A. Johnson, & S. R. Briggs (Eds.), Handbook of personality psychology (pp. 825–847).
- Chen et al., 2019. Relationships between openness to experience, cognitive flexibility, self-esteem, and creativity among bilingual college students in the U.S. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, pp. 342-354.
- Davidov, M., 2013. Concern for Others in the First Year of Life: Theory, Evidence, and Avenues for Research. Child Development Perspectives, pp. 126-131.