How to recognise healthy love

For many of us, our parents were not the best role models when it comes down to healthy romantic love, simply as they themselves didn't have good examples either. So let's forgive them! How about society? In some movies, magazines, and media outlets you sometimes encounter wonderful examples of healthy love (the movie 'ABOUT TIME' for instance), however there are plenty of storylines out there that showcase the opposite of healthy relationships and expectations. So how are we to know what healthy love looks like? I've had to go through plenty of lessons and read a fair share of psychological literature about it, and to be honest I still feel like getting there!

Without further ado hereby some guidance to help you gain better insights and understanding if you're dealing with a keeper, or if you should politely step out of the dance.

Healthy love shows up as:

⊹ Making you feel peaceful, relaxed and calm

⊹ Unconditional mindset: "I’ll love you also when...”

⊹ A partner doesn’t claim; knows that only what’s meant for them will stay so there's no need to force things, worry or control

⊹ Slow pace in dating sequence (becoming friends first): patience and no rush, because doesn’t come from neediness / isn't need based. Comes from trust that if the person is meant to be, it will unfold

⊹ Securely attached (earned or grown up with)

⊹ Coming from a place of personal fulfilment:“I am complete and you’re a beautiful bonus"

Therefor also doesn't completely fall apart when the relationship ends

⊹ Keeping a healthy independence and personal identity within relationship, doesn't become too 'symbiotic'

⊹ A sense of healthy autonomy in the relationship

⊹ Feeling comfortable to set healthy boundaries, knowing this is an investment in the relationship

⊹ Being patient with a partner

⊹ Being compassionate towards a partner

⊹ Allowing (coming from a place of trust)

⊹ Willing to compromise, compromises without drama or retaliation

⊹ Supporting in initiatives and wishes within possibilities

⊹ Acting from the heart, not from an agenda

⊹ Encouraging career development, personal development and meeting people

⊹ Your success and growth is celebrated not criticised or neglected

⊹ Caring from a place of love, selflessly without an agenda, truly wanting to uplift, support and make the partner happy

⊹ Being kind and loyal: "If I hurt you with my behaviour I only hurt myself"

⊹ Being transparent: knows transparency creates intimacy and trust, which creates connectedness, love and a good bond (secure attachment)

⊹ Actively investing in the relationship and cherishing it

⊹ Communicating openly

⊹ Daring to love and to receive love

⊹ Being a team, you've got each other's back

⊹ Setting, accepting and respecting personal boundaries

⊹ Listening to your needs (you don't have to hide them to keep the peace)

⊹ Protecting own needs (putting a life mask first on ourselves in order to save others)

⊹ Knowing one deserves love also when not perfect

⊹ Conflict feels constructive and not destructive, you make an effort to listen to what the other has to say

⊹ A relationship that evolves and unfolds in graceful flow

⊹ Makes time for the relationship, knows it is like plant (keep watering it or it dies!)

⊹ Understanding people don't easily change, doesn't try to change the other person in order to meet personal needs and expectations

⊹ Accepts the partner for who they are

⊹ Doesn't unload emotions and stress onto the partner

⊹ And more... * Feel free to write down your own thoughts to complete the list. Which person comes to mind?

Unhealthy love shows up as:

⊹ A rocky road filled with high highs and low lows, it feels intense, grand and dramatic (which you can mistake for romantic)

⊹ Conditional mindset: "I'll love you only when...”

⊹ Fast paced dating sequence

⊹ Demanding (fear)

⊹ Looking for love outside of self (need based, "please fill up the hole in my heart")

⊹ Losing yourself in the other, 'symbiotic' behaviour

⊹ Fear of being abandoned; clingy

⊹ Fear of being attached; unavailable

⊹ Avoidant, anxious or ambivalent in attachment style

⊹ Being jealous (feeling threatened and insecure)

⊹ Cancelling last minute (fear of attachment, disrespect)

⊹ Being manipulative instead of transparent, acting with a hidden agenda to get needs met

⊹ Love bombing

⊹ Controlling behaviours: asking a lot of your time, making all the decisions, checking in too frequently

⊹ Scared to give or receive love

⊹ Scared to show true self

⊹ Being overly criticising

⊹ Being condescending (way of protecting from the pain of rejection or feeling inferior)

⊹ Care as form of control:"I take care of you so you won't leave me", "I take care of you so you can't do it yourself"

⊹ Isolating, making themselves your sole contact isolating you from friends and family

⊹ Attachment based (karmic attachments)

⊹ Playing out the old paradigm between male and female energy (male energy is dominant, female energy is being victimised, limited and controlled)

⊹ Thinking being only deserving of love when perfect

⊹ Trying to change the partner to meet expectations and needs

⊹ Promising to change toxic behaviours, with no intention of keeping this promise

⊹ Unloads stress and emotions onto partner

⊹ And more...

* Feel free to write down your own thoughts to complete the list. Which person comes to mind?

Healthy relationships start with healthy self love. Until you're ready for this you will keep materialising lessons and experiences that mirror your unconscious beliefs. Only when you’re kind, loving and nurturing towards yourself you can expect others to treat you this way. If you're not there yet no worries, at some point you'll decide you’re worthy and the worthy kind love will come to you!

Is my romantic relationship healthy?

This can sometimes be difficult to see clearly. Here are some journal prompts to help you gain clarity:

1. When you’re with this person, do you feel more like yourself – or less?

2. Do your nervous systems calm each other – or activate each other?

3. Do you feel emotionally safe and seen in conflict – or uncertain and alone?

4. Do you trust their love when it’s not being actively proven?

5. If nothing ever changed in this dynamic, would you still want to be in it 5 years from now?

6. What does healthy, nourishing love feel like in my body?

7. Do I feel calm in their presence – or in recovery from being with them?

8. Am I growing with them – or shrinking myself to stay?

If your body tightens, your mind spirals, or your heart sinks while answering these. This is important information. And you can’t override what your nervous system knows. Healthy love isn't perfect, however it feels safe, steady, kind, and deeply mutual. You don’t have to abandon yourself to receive it.

Regulation is the ability to stay grounded, emotionally steady, and safe in connection. In a mutually regulating relationship, your system feels calmer, more yourself, more resourced when you're with the other person. In dysregulating relationships, you feel:

• On edge

• Like you're 'recovering' afterward

• Or constantly managing someone else's state, even from afar

So while love might be mutual, it's possible your systems are not harmonising. And as you already know: that leads to pain, depletion, and confusion.

Source: Pinterest

Soul Contracts, Old Beliefs & Energetic Cords

You might have a soul contract with someone that has expired, karmic entanglements, or energetic cords that still bind your energetic bodies together. Also old beliefs from this life or beyond can be in the way of a positive love experience. Things you can have learned or agreed to can be: ⊹ That love = proving yourself

⊹ That love disappears if you're not pleasing

⊹ That inconsistency is normal in intimacy If it resonates and you can use the extra light / help, you can book a healing session to clear cords, contracts and beliefs. We will work on clearingand healing etheric cords, residual karmic memory, cellular trauma imprints, aura tears and enmeshments. You can also use the following healing meditation ritual:

Dissolve Energetic Debris with Lady Nada

Lady Nada is an Ascended Mater and Divine Feminine Christ archetype. She carries the soft bright pink ray of divine love. She is a master healer and a frequency holder of divine truth.

She embodies:

⊹ Unconditional love without sacrifice

⊹ Compassion without codependency

⊹ The sacred art of release with grace

⊹ Healing of martyrdom and empathic wounds

⊹ Soft closure of old karmic or twin flame loops

She often comes when:

⊹ You’re releasing a heart wound that feels 'spiritual' but painful

⊹ You're ready to stop transmuting someone else’s karma

⊹ You need love that stays even after goodbye

Working with her feels like:

⊹ A kind hand touching your heart

⊹ Rose light

⊹ A velvet sword – soft and severing

How to work with her:

Step 1: Call her in

State silently or out loud: “Beloved Lady Nada, I now invoke your highest light to assist in the loving dissolution of all karmic cords and empathic contracts between me and [his/her/their name].”

Step 2: Dissolve Energetic Web

Visualize a holographic web between you and him – cords, pulses, memories. With Lady Nada beside you, infuse the entire web with pink-white liquid light. Let it dissolve, not rip.

Repeat:

“What is not mine returns to Source.

What was never love dissolves.

I keep only the gift, not the suffering.”

When it’s done, place a rose in the space where his field once lived in yours.

Let it stay there as a boundary talisman.

Work with me

Do you feel you could use some support in your process? You can reach out to me for a private healing or coaching session here.

Feel welcome to share the information on this site with others, although I do request that you include this website address, credit your source/page links and author.

All postings by Selianthe Ka – Sweet Energy Yoga, may be used for personal, non-profit purposes only.