Stages of a Healthy Relationship - Avoid starting unhealthy relationships
March 28, 2008
The first stages of a healthy relationship are critical so you don’t get hurt. Steve Hedger relationship coach reveals how to avoid unhealthy starts to your relationships.
Letting your emotions run away with you on a dates and when starting a relationship is extremely common. Meeting new people is exciting and especially if you find someone that just blows your socks off. That experience does not happen very often, so it‘s easy to get carried away. They could be just what you are looking for. Your hormones are racing and you can’t help yourself. Your mind starts to create your future together, you see dates, holidays, your house in the country together. You have created this perfect relationship all on your own, and in your own mind.
Being in love with someone is a wonderful feeling and commiting yourself 100% to them is brilliant, or is it? Starting a relationship takes two people, so no amount of enthusiasm on your part is going to make this perfect without the others agreement and effort.
Balance is key in these early stages of a healthy relationship.
Throwing yourself into a relationship in your mind only can be a very scary place to be. Especially if you don’t get the signals back that this is going where you planned it to go, this will create either, an insecurity in you, or you will just totally back off, which is the reverse of what you want. Insecurities will change how you behave and now your seen as needy. Insecurity is off putting and will have the opposite affect to what you really want.
You have probably experienced when starting a relationship what it’s like to have someone really into you and your not there yet, your unsure about them but the more they push you, the further you retreat. The further you go away the harder they chase, and now they are an irritation so you end it. In your mind the person is now a hassle, a problem. None of us enjoy problems so we remove them!
Stages of a healthy relationship
Creation of balance to avoid pain - We all know that to lead a successful life it’s all about balance, and starting a relationship is no different. When we first meet someone we can have feelings of falling in love. For the most, what you have fallen in love with, is what you know so far, and you don’t know everything by a long shot but you feel you do! This is the one and I’m going for it! The creation of a mirrored balance is what will now protect you from yourself.
If you feel or see that you date is putting in 20% of their time or emotion, then make sure you do no more than that. If your both equally interested then you will find that the 20% quickly escalates to 40% and then 70% and your both putting in equal effort, this is reality and that’s exciting. Remember you can’t build a relationship on your own and if you do, you will get hurt. If you feel that your putting in more effort then stop and put in less than they are.
If they are genuinely interested they will increase their effort as they have noticed you backing off and they don’t want to lose you. When this happens you can now mirror them again. If they’re still putting in no effort then it’s time to re-consider if it’s worth your time. As this could be hard work, you will eventually feel taken for granted, which will be emotionally destructive for you, and you will walk away at some point.
The advice is to give no more than 70% of yourself in the first 3 months. Hold back 30% until they have proved they are worth your effort. Only give 100% once the commitment has reached your goal - could be marriage or a serious commitment!
Emotions are difficult to control, but the feeling of being crushed because you read it wrong, is far worse.
Create the stages of a healthy relationship today and look after you.
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