What is a “healthy” relationship?

It’s important to define.

Hi there,

I’m answering another reader’s question this week. (If you want to catch up on previous reader questions, this month I’ve covered: picking available people, avoiding avoidants, and confronting avoidance within ourselves. I am so thankful that Love Weekly readers are getting vulnerable and writing in — and they so often reveal universal issues. 

This week’s reader question:

Hi Jillian,

I’m getting back into the dating world after a long relationship, and I feel like I’m starting from scratch. Everyone keeps telling me that I have the opportunity now for a “healthy” relationship after my toxic marriage, but honestly, I don’t even know what a healthy relationship is. I genuinely don’t know how to figure out these definitions — and I want to understand as I start to hopefully build something new with someone.

How we define a healthy relationship might seem basic — but it’s actually widely misunderstood. And, we need to understand it in order to accurately assess our love life and the patterns that underline it.  

I’m going to get hyper-specific and go deep on this one — let’s get into it.