Skills for Healthy Relationships

Parents want their children to have healthy, happy relationships—as teens and as adults. Parents might assume that teens know what a “good” relationship looks like and also how to develop one. But teens need to learn not only about “violence-free” relationships, but also about what it takes to engage in healthy relationships. It takes information, awareness, attention, and—above all—the intention or deliberate plan on the part of parents to be sure their children know what a healthy relationship actually is.

An unhealthy relationship may be hurtful because of the partners’ inability to communicate well, handle their emotions, or tolerate closeness. Not all unhealthy relationships are abusive or violent, however. In an abusive or violent relationship, one person is afraid of the other, and afraid of doing anything that will upset the abusive partner, who might lash out at them, or punish or humiliate them.

Talking with teens about what they are looking for in their relationships helps them to be aware of the differences between unhealthy and abusive relationship behavior, as well as healthy behavior. They can then begin to understand what it takes to be a healthy relationship partner: to be treated with respect and to treat the other with respect.

Characteristics of Healthy Relationships

A healthy relationship includes more than feelings of love, passion, affection, and shared likes and dislikes. Engage your teen in a discussion by emphasizing the following characteristics of healthy relationships:

Both partners give and receive, each getting their way some of the time and compromising some of the time.
They respect each other, value one another’s opinions, and accept each other for who they are. They don’t feel pressured to do things they are not comfortable with, such as drinking, using drugs, or having unwanted physical contact.
They support and encourage one another’s goals and ambitions and want what is best for each of them. They encourage each other to have friends and activities outside the relationship.
They trust one another and learn not to inflict jealous and restrictive feelings on the other if these feelings should arise.
Neither is afraid of the other. They feel emotionally safe; for example, they feel comfortable being themselves without fear of being put down. When one of them is upset, they feel safe enough to talk things out in a respectful manner. They feel physically safe; they are not afraid of being hurt or pressured into unwanted physical or sexual contact.
They communicate openly and honestly and make their partners feel safe in expressing themselves. They listen to each other and talk face-to-face (not just text) about their feelings.
They share responsibility in decision making. They have an equal say in choosing activities and friends.
They accept the differences between them. They can be themselves and have their own individuality, without pretending to like something they don’t like or be someone they are not.
They respect each other’s boundaries. If one says “no” or “stop,” the other listens. This applies to sex as well as other activities. When they are together, they feel connected, not controlled.
They are each responsible and accountable for their own behavior and don’t blame others to justify their bad behavior. They accept the consequences of their actions and try to repair them.
They express appreciation of one another to one another.
Although they may be sad or even brokenhearted if the relationship ends, they know they will essentially be okay, and they aren’t fearful about the relationship ending.

These characteristics were adapted from the book Fifty Ways to a Safer World and are also listed in appendix B for easy reference.

Skills for Sustaining Healthy Relationships

Communicating respectfully, resolving conflicts, and managing strong emotions are all important relationship skills that everyone can learn. Parents can model and teach teens (starting at a young age) behaviors that are constructive in maintaining mutual respect through the good and bad times in a relationship.

Conflict and disagreement are normal and expected in relationships. Resolving conflicts in a manner agreeable to everyone involves special skills that anyone can learn. It is important to practice conflict resolution and problem solving in your family and teach these skills to your teen, who can apply them to other situations outside your home. “Fighting,” or having disagreements, can happen in a healthy way, if both partners know how to “fight fair.” When parents provide models of effective interpersonal interactions, they are teaching violence prevention skills. If you feel you aren’t able to provide models of these skills, you can find other ways for your teen to learn them, such as through classes or groups offered at community centers or in their school.

Resolving Conflicts and Solving Problems

Successfully resolving conflicts involves honest communication, willingness to listen to others, assertiveness, compromise, and problem-solving skills. You can teach your children the following five-step technique for problem solving.

Five steps for problem solving:

Discuss and define the problem from each person’s point of view (by listening and communicating clearly).
Jane: “I want to spend Christmas Day with you, and I want you to come to my house.”

John: “But I want to spend it with my family.”

Jane: “The problem is we both want to be together on Christmas, and we both want to be with our families too.”
Brainstorm possible solutions.
John: “We can go to my family’s house this year and to yours next year.”

Jane: “I can go to my family’s and you can go to yours.”

John: “We can spend half the day with each.”

Jane: “We can spend the day by ourselves and avoid the whole thing.”
Evaluate and choose a solution that is acceptable to both people (by negotiating).
John: “We can’t go to your family’s house and not mine because my family will be too upset and I can’t deal with that.”

Jane: “The same is true for my family.”

John: “So… we can’t avoid our families, and I really want to be with you.”

Jane: “Let’s split the day between our two families, or go to your family’s house on Christmas Eve and to mine on Christmas Day.”

John: “Okay. Let’s go to my family’s on Christmas Eve and to yours on Christmas Day.”
Implement the solution that has been negotiated.
Evaluate the outcome at a later date.
John: “I’m glad we saw both our families the way we did, but my mother didn’t like it that I wasn’t there for Christmas dinner.”

Jane: “This worked out just fine for me.”

John: “Maybe next year or for Easter we’ll have the holiday dinner with my family.”

“Fighting Fair”

How a couple argues can determine the success of a relationship. Fighting fair means communicating respectfully during the process of resolving conflicts. When the goal is to resolve a conflict, you aim not to win but to come to a mutually satisfying solution to the problem. You don’t want vengeance, punishment, or control, or to be the one who is “right” so that you make the other person “wrong.” A fight is not an excuse to attack your partner about everything that has gone wrong in the relationship or a reason to threaten your partner to get your way. This means being thoughtful about what you say.

There are several things to keep in mind when trying to be fair in a conflict or fight. Parents can use the following principles in conflicts with teens, and they can point out these principles as a way to teach teens these skills.

Ten principles of fighting fair:

Keep it real: Focus on the topic or problem at hand (not the person)—no old grudges, and don’t use the past as ammunition.
Be respectful: No personal attacks, cursing, name-calling, or hitting below the belt.
Listen carefully: Try to see your partner’s point of view.
Express appreciation: Acknowledge when your partner is right or understands what you are saying.
Look for compromise, not to win: Seek solutions that satisfy everyone.
Avoid exaggerating: Refrain from saying “you always…” or “you never…”
Stick it out: Stay focused until the issue is resolved. Do not walk away unless you agree to take a break to calm down and talk about it again at an agreed-upon time.
Refrain from ultimatums or threats: They escalate tension.
Pick your battles: Not everything you disagree about is earth-shattering or worth a fight. Sometimes it’s better to “let it go.”
Keep it short: Arguments shouldn’t go on for very long. Don’t allow the stress of the argument to drag on indefinitely.

Communicating Respectfully

Communication in healthy relationships is most challenging when emotions are high or when feelings are hurt. You can help your teen learn the essential skills for effective communication: how to express opinions, thoughts, and feelings so that they can be heard clearly, and how to listen effectively so that others are heard. Listening well and expressing one’s feelings are most important at moments when people are trying to sort out a problem, tension, or emotion. Poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings that create problems, tension, or intense feelings. Abusive communication can be used to punish, hurt, and control the other person.

Parents teach effective communication by modeling and practicing it within the family. A respectful and calm way of responding to one another can allow for clarification and empathy. Teach teenagers how to communicate effectively by practicing the skills yourself.

Use the following guidelines to practice clear and effective communication in healthy relationships.

Ten guidelines for effective communication:

Calm yourself so you don’t over-react to something someone says or does. Give yourself room to think about how you want to respond.
Stop yourself if you have the urge to defend yourself—if your response is defensive, the other person may defend him-or herself too. Then strong feelings could escalate and communication could be blocked.
Ask for clarification before responding, to be sure you understand what the other person has expressed. For example, ask, “Do I understand that…?” or “I am hearing that…?”
Establish agreed-upon ground rules: for example, not allowing personal attacks, insults, or name-calling, and agreeing that the conversation will stop and be restarted later if this occurs. Another example of a ground rule is to turn off cell phones during the conversation.
Show that you are interested and be attentive by maintaining eye contact and avoiding distractions. Sometimes making eye contact doesn’t work, especially if the other person is uncomfortable with the subject. In those cases, looking at something else or sitting side-by-side while engaging in the conversation works better. Be aware that people are discouraged from expressing themselves when someone cuts them off, denies their feelings, rolls their eyes, or lectures them.
Emotional issues are sometimes best discussed in person rather than by text or e-mail. Talk with your teens about the pros and cons of communicating by text. It’s easier, quicker, and abbreviated. It allows for time to think before responding, thus avoiding emotional flare-ups and making emotional conversations easier and more effective. Texts offer a way to begin difficult conversations (e.g., “I need to talk to you about school when I get home”). On the other hand, texts can also be easily misunderstood and may not convey the emotional tone that the sender intends.
Encourage communication by asking open-ended questions that can invite conversations; avoid asking questions that only require a “yes” or “no” answer, or answering with only an immediate “yes” or “no” before you understand or thoughtfully respond to the question.
Be aware of your nonverbal communication. People often don’t listen to words as much as they watch facial expressions or gestures, or hear the speaker’s tone of voice. Teens in particular often express themselves with body language and facial expressions more than with words. Teens can learn how to pay attention to their own and others’ nonverbal communication.
Communication problems sometimes occur when one person makes a request of the other, and it is interpreted as a “demand.” Requests become demands when the other person thinks they will be blamed, punished, or made to feel guilty if they don’t comply. Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication, notes: “When people hear a demand, they see only two options: submission or rebellion. Either way, the person requesting is perceived as coercive, and the listener’s capacity to listen compassionately to the request is diminished.”²²
Listen carefully, and express yourself with a combination of empathy and honesty (though not “brutal” honesty). Listen for other people’s feelings and needs, trying to understand their feelings about what they are telling you.

Managing Emotions

Healthy relationships require a balance between having and expressing feelings, and being able to handle them so they don’t control and overpower the people involved. According to Heather Forbes, “regulation” and “dysregulation” refer to our varying abilities to be in a state of stress and to tolerate stress. As mentioned earlier, regulation is the ability to experience and maintain stress within one’s window of tolerance, generally defined as being calm. “Dysregulation” is “the experience of stress outside your window of tolerance,” which is often called distressed or “stressed out.” Stress, fear, and being overwhelmed interfere with a person’s ability to be connected with others.²³

Parents can help teens develop healthy relationship skills by encouraging them to be engaged, focused, and calm when confronted with intense feelings, fear, or stress. The most beneficial and effective way to “self-regulate” and to manage intense emotions is to practice tools for becoming calm. You can develop your own personal “tool kit” while helping teens to develop their own. Help yourself and your children to develop ways to restore a calm mind and body as part of daily life.

Practice these calming and self-regulating strategies together:

Breathe. Because we breathe automatically, we rarely pay attention to it. To calm yourself, guide yourself to pay attention and take deep breaths from the diaphragm or belly. Exhaling is as important as inhaling. One example of a breathing technique is to inhale, expanding the belly, to the count of four, and then bring the breath from the belly to the lungs, expanding the chest. Then exhale while silently counting to eight. Do this at least three times.
Find the stress spot. Locate as precisely as possible where you feel tension, tightness, discomfort, distress, or fear in your body. Where does it show up? Mindfully breathe into that part of your body, become aware of your body’s responses, and then release the tension. This brings you to the present moment, stops your thoughts from spinning and agitating, and helps you physically calm your nervous system.
Use imagery. Imagine a place that is peaceful, safe, warm, and secure. Imagine yourself in that place, and focus on your feelings, enjoying the benefit of those feelings.
Connect with yourself on an ongoing basis. What do you do that gives you a sense of being centered and feeling peaceful, safe, and secure? For many people, spending time in nature does this. For others, listening to music calms them. Daily meditation is another powerful way to connect with yourself.
Connect with others. Find sources of emotional support, safety, and security among your friends and relatives, or through organizations such as AA or other support groups.
Take time-outs to physically and mentally calm down. Take a walk or go to another room to breathe and work on soothing yourself when agitated or stressed.

Expressing Anger

Anger is a normal feeling that is neither “good” nor “bad,” and it needs to be expressed in healthy ways. Repressing anger, hurting oneself, or raging at someone else is not constructive. Healthier ways of expression include verbally communicating your feelings to someone, using artistic expression, writing in a journal, exercising, or taking action to change a situation.

Here are some steps to making safe choices for expressing anger:

Recognize the physical signs (for example, increase in heart rate, racing thoughts, feeling hot) when you are feeling angry.
Joseph was waiting for his girlfriend, Sara, to arrive at the coffee shop. After ten minutes, he started worrying about her, then he became angry that she hadn’t shown up or texted him that she’d be late. He started imagining that she wasn’t going to show up and was going to leave him hanging there. Then he started imagining that she was with her friends (“who are more important than I am!”) or, worse, with another guy. He realized that he was pacing and obsessing, and getting more and more agitated.
Calm your body’s reaction. The best way to do this is to pay attention to your breathing and take deep breaths.
He stopped himself and took a few deep breaths.
Identify your judgmental and/or blaming thoughts (violence is often a result of the belief that other people cause our pain and should be punished) and reframe your thoughts (“Is there another way to understand what is happening?”).
He decided to stop assuming that Sara intended to hurt him…
Recognize what has triggered you, especially needs of yours that aren’t being met.
…and realized that he liked her a lot and he felt insecure, afraid that she might not feel the same way about him. He even thought that maybe he could talk to her about how he felt about her when they would have time alone together later. He remembered that it was more likely that she was delayed at school and couldn’t use her phone.
Stop and think so that you can make good choices. Think about how your actions and reactions may have an impact on the other person.
Feeling calmer, he decided to listen to music on his phone while he waited for her. When Sara got there, the urge to yell at her for being late had gone away.
Come up with a safe way to express yourself. Find a way to channel your anger into healthy ways of expressing it or taking action to meet the needs that aren’t being met.
He told her that he had felt mad at her when he had to wait so long, but he figured that she had a good reason. He asked her what happened, and listened to her story.

Joseph found a way to accept his feelings, make choices about how he thought and behaved, express his feelings about Sara and about her being late, and listen to her.

Appreciating the Other Person

People often overlook the opportunity to express appreciation, regardless of their age. We tend to be quicker to express what is wrong rather than what is right. Everyone needs to know that a person who is important to them appreciates them. So often people feel that the “gifts” they give and bring to a relationship are taken for granted. Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication,²⁴ describes the components to expressing appreciation in relationships: “This is what you did; this is what I feel; and this is the need of mine that was met.” He also emphasizes that appreciation is important to “celebrate” a good moment or action between people, not to manipulate it or to get something one wants. Beware of adding “but” at the end of an appreciative statement, because it negates the positive remark.

Receiving appreciation gracefully can be difficult for many people. Rosenberg says to accept appreciation “joyfully,” and with empathy, showing that you have heard the feelings the other person has expressed.²⁵

Teach your teen how to express and receive appreciation by noticing and expressing the things you appreciate about him or her, and by explaining how important it is to show and express this in all relationships, especially intimate ones.