What's the difference between a healthy and an unhealthy love relationship?

Brilliant question. Follows…

The presence of respect, trust, acceptance,forgiveness, laughter, peace and joy.

I’m still waiting; but I still believe!

Depends on what norms you adopt(spiritual way). Usually healthy love relationship will make you bond strongly with your lover,enjoyable happiness,and understandable personality. Unhealthy love relationship will make you suffer/painful in your intense relationship,over-demanding,etc.

Certainly one aspect of a healthy love relationship is that it allows each person to continue to grow and self-actualize.

It looks like Howie Long in his underpants :)

I think true love is like the feeling you have when two people really want to get it on, and that feeling never going away. That would be true love to me…oh, and so much so that a hill of kids develop as a result.

Is it cheating if I say an unhealthy love relationship is one that causes you unhappiness?

Maybe we can qualify that—enough unhappiness to outweigh the happiness it brings you. Or unhappiness with no visible end. Something like that.

Relationships are all so unique and individual. My coworker and her boyfriend (both in their early/mid twenties) spend literally hours on the phone every day. It would suffocate me. I would feel unhealthy with someone depending on me that much, or depending on someone else like that. But it works for them, and I think they would feel unhealthy and deprived in my relationship (which is unusual by most standards).

I’ve seen other relationships in which one person gives, gives, gives, and the other takes, takes, takes. And as long as they’re both happy with that arrangement, I can’t call it unhealthy.

What do you think, w?

simple explain: I think the healthy relationship starts with the one person being healthy and whole within and by them selves. that the inner relationship has been cultured to be whole. And absent of self destructive tendencies.
Then that person is ready for a whole and healthy relationship with another same person.
Then they can have a beautiful dance together, and no one steps on toes!

I’ll report back when I have a healthy relationship.

@nikipedia I don’t know. I really don’t. They’ve gotten me all confused. I just don’t know enough yet.

One thing I’m told is that if it’s a relationship where you don’t know anything about the other, but just meet at a bar and jump in the sack, that’s not healthy. That’s a relationship with a fantasy, not a person. Of course, that’s a big DUH.

It isn’t an issue of not being able to have a healthy love relationship with more than one person at a time because we can love any number of children. So it seems like it would be possible to have more than one healthy love relationships at the same time.

Love and/or sex addiction is a common symptom of bipolar disorder. It is my impression that most bipolar folks have a lot of affairs in which they really never get much past the sex phase. They never really get to know each other.

A lot of falling in love is fantasy, but at a certain point, it seems to me, you get to know the other person well enough that you can actually love them in a knowledgeable way, but perhaps not a healthy way. Or maybe the rule is like some people said above—it if makes you happy and if the happiness outweighs the unhappiness, then it’s healthy?

Or maybe there’s something about the structure of the relationship that makes it healthy. Like if it is socially sanctified.

The problem with all of this is that you might be in denial. You might say something is good in order to deny that it is bad and to deny you have any kind of problem. So you’ve fallen into a trap of some kind. Then you can start doubting your feelings and, well, there’s no way to sort anything out properly or clearly.

Like I said. I don’t know.

I can only speak from my point of view on this one. I doubt there’s any one easy answer.

In my marriage, a healthy relationship is trust. It is physical and mental attraction. It is knowing, honestly, that I would put this person’s needs before my own, and often do. I think it comes down to a shared selflessness, that is something I had never experienced in a relationship before. It requires a lot of vulnerability, and honesty, but is it ever good. And as long as we stay open to that, it gets better and better every day.

The unhealthy relationships I have been in or seen are quite simply the opposite. Full of selfishness, and with that follows all of those other terribly unhealthy attributes- deceit, abuse…etc.

@hopscotchy: I Love the phrase “shared selflessness”.

. . .

A healthy relationship is one where you feel loved unconditionally, with mutual trust and respect that allows each of you to be yourselves; yet it also inspires you and gives you the freedom to grow and better yourself.

Honesty and openness are crucial – overcoming inhibitions to be able to share the inner thoughts and feelings; and also bringing each other back to earth when they get carried away. It is maintaining respect and a sense of humor even when you disagree, and realizing that many issues can be compromised on. In a healthy relationship, maintaining the health of the relationship and the people in it are the top priority.

Healthy love does not expect the other to fulfill your needs, to make you feel a particular way, or to entertain you. But healthy love finds pleasure in your joy and sorrow in your pain, and is there to be your comfort and support. There is no ego involved, and so there are no hurt feelings or bruised pride. It is two complete yet imperfect people coming together without any pretense or neediness.

I have been dating a man for 2 months now, and this is the first time I really feel unconditionally adored and I am learning to be totally uninhibited. For example, even with my best friends, I am reluctant to cry… but with him, I realize that it’s OK – he admires my empathy. And while I have always been very sexual, I now recognize that I had still been self-conscious about things in the past… but now having zero inhibitions leads to a much deeper intimacy that carries over outside of the bedroom, as well.

We have yet to argue over anything, but I am sure the day will come that we will disagree on something bigger than whether anchovies are delicious or disgusting… yet I have a sense of serenity that we will be able to talk through it without disparaging the other, as we have the minor misunderstandings that we have had thus far.

My previous relationships were all unhealthy and some were abusive. I realize that there were lessons that I had to learn about myself, and about how to give and receive love. I felt a very deep, passionate love for each of those men, and I will always have love for them in my heart. But those relationships could not work because we weren’t really ready for it… neither they nor I had truly found our inner peace, so once the initial infatuation wore off, we found that we were still ourselves. “Wherever you go, there you are”... so if someone is not happy within, then changing jobs, changing romantic partners, buying new cars, big-screen TVs, etc. merely serve as transient distractions from the unhappiness.

In my last relationship I was tested, and I found a strength within myself in knowing that I am whole, and I will be fine whether I am in a relationship or if I am single. I was tested further while I was single in dealing with crisis situations with my teenaged son, and that inner peace carried me through. Now I’ve entered into this new relationship knowing that I’m OK and I don’t need him for anything. We are together because we choose to be, not because one or both of us are getting something out of it. We know that one day we will say goodbye… but we are both intending for that moment to be with our final breath.

It is unhealthy if you don’t feel loved but criticized and slighted instead or in any way mistreated – a healthy love brings you joy and allows you to deal with the negativities in life in a much better fashion because it keeps you whole

Here’s a link to a list of basic 14 signs of what a healthy relationship looks like. It’s too long to copy/paste.

http://www.fullskills.com/love/signs.php

But @Simone_De_Beauvoir, do you not grant that a person can feel less than loved, can feel criticized and slighted, etc., because of something in his or her own life (psyche, whatever)—even if the other partner is honestly and sincerely doing it right? If X doesn’t believe he is lovable and therefore either doubts any Y who loves him or demeans the value of Y and Y’s love, isn’t that X’s unhealthy state of mind that’s responsible, and not Y and the relationship per se? The problem would seem to be not in Y’s feelings or actions but in X’s perception of them; in other words, internal to X and not truly in the relationship.

And so I don’t see how X’s feeling can be the test of the health of the relationship. X’s feeling is the test of X. It seems like it’s Y who should be asking the question: is it possible for me to have a healthy relationship with X when X doesn’t believe in my love no matter what I do?

I am with OneMoreMinute about a healthy relationship starting with whole people. I like how Shel Silverstein puts it: The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, I think it is worth the six and half minutes. I say this as someone who knows what it is like to be “lift-pull-flopping” along.

I admire you for facing yourself @wundayatta.

@Jeruba everything is possible – my comment, I suppose, had to do with people who aren’t having all sorts of issues (which can be pretty serious and it sucks)

I guess a healthy love, is a perfect relationship which consists of love, trust, friendship, laughter and communication. A unhealthy relationship is everything but the above.

To me healthy love is to care about someone, unhealthy is the need to take care of them (obviously this does not refer to parental love).
Melody Beattie addresses this issue in her books on co-dependency. It is a fine line, but after reading the books, I feel I can tell the difference in my own life and often in observing the relationships of others.

you should rent the movie “paper heart”