Relationship Goals: Finding Your Circle

Rita Mercer Author

Lean in as we cover the secrets to build meaningful connections and finding your circle of trust and support. Let's go!

Healthy Vs. Unhealthy Relationships

So let’s explore the differences between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Healthy relationships are built on a foundation of mutual trust, respect, communication, and support. In contrast, unhealthy relationships may involve control, manipulation, lack of boundaries, and may even show up as codependency.

Knowing When Your Relationship is Unhealthy

So how do you know when your relationship is unhealthy for you? And in our culture, everyone wants to cut everyone off, and that’s also not healthy either. To everything, we must bring in truth, we must bring in love and balance. The key is to learn when and when to let go, and sometimes the most loving thing to do is to let go, but we don’t have to throw in the towels so easily when the going does get tough.

The Role of Relationships in our Lives

Relationships are like the pillars of our lives. They can either support us and strengthen us and build us up, or they can crumble and not be strong. That’s why it’s critical to know the difference between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one.

Exploring Healthy Relationships

Healthy relationships are relationships that give us life, they give us energy and make us feel safe, seen, and heard. Emotional safety is what we find in healthy relationships. When we’re in a healthy relationship, we find mutual respect, trust, open communication, and equal partnership.

The Value of Emotional Safety

There’s also a sense of emotional safety. When we think about being autonomous, that means each person can stand in their own light independently, and they feel the freedom to be themselves without the fear of judgment, criticism, or rejection.

Example of a Healthy Relationship

An example of what a healthy relationship looks like is a friend who is always there to celebrate your victories, offer a shoulder to lean on during tough times, they respect your boundaries, and then they encourage you to be your best and your true self. This type of relationship energizes you, it makes you feel good about yourself and adds value to your life.

The Impact of Unhealthy Relationships

On the flipside, looking at unhealthy relationships. These are relationships that are not life-giving, and they deplete us of our energy, our time, our love. This type of relationship may be marked by control, manipulation, dependency, dishonesty, and disrespect.

The Feeling of Walking on Eggshells

There’s a constant feeling of walking on eggshells and conflict. When it does arise, it often turns to very explosive blowups and arguments without a resolution. This can lead to emotional, mental, and sometimes physical harm.

Lack of Emotional Safety in Unhealthy Relationships

The lack of emotional safety in unhealthy relationships looks like shutting down because you’re so afraid to express your feelings, to express your opinions openly. So you use all of your energy to avoid conflict at all costs. And that’s also very unhealthy, all the while you’re invalidating your own experiences and your own feelings.

Working Through Conflict Makes You Stronger

Actually, the truth is working through conflict makes you stronger and the other person stronger. You learn more about yourself in the process. You learn how to navigate difficult conversations, which is a normal part of life, and you learn how to listen with empathy. So rather than fighting to win, you’re fighting to love and you’re fighting to grow. Now that that, my friend, is powerful and that will stand the test of times.

Example of Unhealthy Relationship

An example of what unhealthy relationships look like is, for example, a partner, coworker, supervisor, family member. They criticize you, they belittle you, they undermine your self-worth and confidence, and they don’t respect and honor your boundaries. They might even try to make you feel guilty for something that you had no control over. This type of relationship is not sustainable. It can take a toll on your physical health as well as your mental and emotional well-being, leaving you feeling exhausted, depleted, drained, and very unhappy.

Checking In With Yourself

If some of these words are hitting home, take a quick check-in with yourself. Ask yourself does this feel life-giving or is it life-sucking? Be careful not to judge one moment in isolation. Consider the whole story, the whole relationship. Are there patterns of unhealthy behaviors that you’ve noticed that you ignored for the fear of being alone, or for the fear of being rejected? Those could be some telltale signs. Do you feel emotionally safe to be authentic and have honest conversations? That is another good indicator for you.

Understanding Different Levels of Relationship

Now that we have some clarity on what healthy and unhealthy relationships look like, it’s important to understand that there are different levels of relationships. I categorize relationships into three different levels. The truth is, people come into our lives for many different reasons. It’s up to us to know how to show up for them and how to show up for ourselves.

We’re going to look at how to nurture ourselves as well as others, so that we can navigate relationships at every stage of our life.

Our Inner Circle

Our inner circle - so let’s imagine three circles, one encapsulates the other. On the first level, we find our inner circle. These are the individuals who know us intimately, who love and support us unconditionally. These are the people we connect with when we want to share our biggest joys and our deepest pains. Our inner circle may include family members, a romantic partner, or even close friends, who have become just like family.

The Secondary Circle

The secondary circle - moving up to the second level, these connections are based on our shared interest, values, experiences, and emotional support. These are the people you might spend a great deal of time with and hang out with a little bit more frequently. You may even share more personal details with them more than a typical acquaintance, but there’s still some level of distance.

These relationships are significant as they create a different level of understanding and connection. They are people we trust and confide in and rely on for support.

The Tertiary Circle

The tertiary circle - the outer circle or the third level consists of our casual relationships. So if someone is at this level, they’re there for a reason and that’s OK. There’s no need to feel pressured to put someone in a different level, if it doesn’t feel true to you, regardless of the type of relationship, remember, you are the chooser. In different seasons of life, you will find the same people who are with you in a different season, are no longer with you due to many factors which we will explore in our next section on cultivating healthy connections.

Various Types of Relationships

The truth is, we need various types of relationships to thrive. There’s a sense of connection, but you don’t necessarily share deep personal details with them and that’s OK. The relationships found in this third level may be good, but the key factor that I want you to remember is they typically lack depth and true intimacy, that true vulnerability, the type of intimacy that allows you to feel safe and truly be your true, authentic self.

Nature Vs. Nurture

Let's take a look at relationships through the lens of nature versus nurture. So how do we nurture ourselves while at the same time cultivating healthy relationships with others? It all starts with our awareness and our understanding of our own needs while setting boundaries so that we can maintain healthy relationships.

I truly understand how hard it is to set boundaries, especially considering the three different levels of relationships that we just covered. But relationships require boundaries and boundaries are super important and absolutely necessary if you desire healthy relationships. Boundaries are the gift we give to ourselves and others. It helps us to make things crystal clear so there’s no misunderstanding of what one wants and needs.

Understanding Boundaries

But boundaries are just one piece of the relationship puzzle. To better understand how to cultivate healthy connections, let’s go deeper with exploring nature versus nurture. The nature versus nurture debate is as old as time yet, it offers us a unique glimpse into a different perspective of how we connect and why we sometimes feel disconnected in relationships.

"It's Not You, It's Me"

That cheesy break up line, "it’s not you, it’s me", you know what, that actually has some truth to it. There’s no shame or judgment if you notice that some of this might feel a little true. That’s a good thing. That means your awareness is being queued up for change.

Don’t stop there though, but go further with a licensed counselor or wellness coach. 

Impact of Nature on Healthy Connections

Let’s start with how nature impacts healthy connections. Nature refers to our internal characteristics, instincts, and genetic traits that we are born with. These biological qualities often play a role in how we form bonds with others. For example, we may naturally gravitate towards people with similar traits, interests, or personalities. This dynamic of relationships is sparked by chemistry, a natural connection that draws people together. Some people may refer to this as a certain vibe or energy that feels connecting. Some researchers suggest that our capacity to connect with others and form close relationships is partly determined by our genetics. Traits such as empathy, kindness, and cooperativeness, which are important in forming strong relationship bonds, can have a genetic component.

The Role of Nurture in Relationships

Nurture, on the other hand, refers to the influence of external factors, such as life experiences that impact our growth, and how we show up in relationships. In terms of relationship bonds, nurture comes into play through our experiences and interactions with others, starting with life experiences within our family of origin. Our family of origin reflects how we were raised, the social norms and the values that we learned, and the gender roles that were modeled. All of our life experiences, including as early as in vitro, shape us. They shape our ability to form, connect, and even show up and how we maintain our relationships.

How Early Experiences Shape Attachment Styles

If a person grows up in a loving and supportive family system, they may learn to form secure and healthy attachments. On the other hand, if someone has experienced trauma or neglect, such as emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, or medical trauma, they may find it hard, and may even struggle to form stable and healthy relationships unless they receive unconditional love and support or therapy to find ways to heal and address these issues directly.

Attachment Theory and Relationships

Attachment theory, first developed by psychologist John Bowlby, helps us to better understand the nurture side of the debate about relationships. It explores how the early relationship bonds formed between infants and their caregivers shape our development and present-day relationships, and how we connect emotionally with others. Infants form an attachment to their primary caregivers, typically their parents, as a means of seeking out safety, security, and comfort.

Addressing Unhealthy Attachment Styles

If these basic needs of support are unmet, these learned responses set the stage for various unhealthy attachment styles, including insecure, disorganized, anxious, and avoidant attachment styles. These attachment bonds are formed through repeated interactions and responses to the infant's early developmental needs such as feeding, soothing, and nurturing. If you or someone you love has an unhealthy attachment style that may be preventing them from connecting deeper in relationships, there is hope. This is reversible with lots of self-reflection, intentionality for change, and most times, therapy or wellness coaching is super beneficial.

The Balance of Nature and Nurture in Relationships

With a blend of both nature and nurture, we see that relationships usually start out naturally but require nurturing to maintain. Both inherent traits and life experiences, including those from our family of origin, play a critical role in our ability to form and maintain relationship bonds. While nature might draw us closer together to certain individuals, nurture helps us learn how to maintain these bonds over time by better understanding our needs within ourselves.

Setting Healthy Relationship Goals

So, what are your relationship goals? Setting boundaries, effective communication with empathy, and practicing gratitude are some good relationship goals and practical, actionable steps you can take to strengthen your relationships with others so that you can create a supportive circle of relationships that are life-giving.

In this article, we’ve covered a lot of ground about relationships. We’ve explored the characteristics of healthy versus unhealthy relationships, covered the three levels of relationships, and explored relationships through the lens of nature versus nurture.

Until next time, keep moving forward and building your circle and keep daring well! Take care.

Categories: : Goals, Relationships