We all know from experience when we’re in healthy or unhealthy relationships. But sometimes it’s difficult to explain why they are the way they are.
Years ago I came across a list of 8 qualities of healthy and unhealthy relationships, 4 each for the healthy and unhealthy ones. I don’t remember now where I read them, but the list stuck with me and I’ve found these qualities to be helpful in evaluating the types of relationships I have and how I can improve them.
You can apply these qualities to any relationship, whether it’s the relationships you have with your team members in your men’s team ministry, your work relationships, your friendships, your marriage, or your children.
I’ll start with the 4 qualities of healthy relationships.
4 Qualities of Healthy Relationships
- Communicate – Healthy relationships begin with clear communication. You both pay attention to each other and have the ability to help each other understand your thoughts, feelings, experiences and intentions. You explain when you don’t understand and you clear misunderstandings up quickly.
- Cooperate – Because you understand each other, you have the ability to help each other achieve both common and individual goals. As a result, you form a mutually beneficial team.
- Respect – Because you both derive benefit from your relationship, you naturally develop respect – a confidence in the others’ ability to achieve a desired outcome
- Honor – You publicly and privately acknowledge the benefit you derive from your relationship. You hold each other in high regard.
4 Qualities of Unhealthy Relationships
- Criticism – You focus on each others’ mistakes, inadequacies and deficiencies instead of your own. You require that these mistakes be corrected as a condition of acceptance.
- Defensiveness – You feel like you’re being attacked and begin to see the other person as an enemy who is capable of hurting you emotionally, professionally, socially and perhaps even physically.
- Withdrawal – You protect yourself from being hurt by isolating yourself from further attack. You avoid the person by averting your eyes, ignoring them, leaving the room, etc. You dread being around the person.
- Contempt – You no longer think the relationship can be salvaged. You publicly and privately ridicule each other as a way of putting the other person down and building yourself up.
What’s interesting about healthy and unhealthy relationships is that in each, the qualities are listed in ascending order. Healthy relationships begin with good communication and ascend to honor while unhealthy relationships begin with criticism and ascend (or maybe I should say, descend) to contempt.
And that observation brings out another important point: criticism should be a huge red flag in any relationship. It should occur very infrequently. And if one feels like they have to criticize, it should be done with extreme care. Frequent and poorly handled criticism always starts a cascade of negative relational events.
Here’s what Jesus has to say about criticism:
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, “Let me take the speck out of your eye,” when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye” (Matthew 7:1-5).
So how are you doing in your relationships? Are you a critical person? Maybe it’s time to reassess.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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