How to assess health of your relationship

Why you don't need to understand why

Meaningful human connection or its absence is what makes life so sweet or renders it unbearable. You might be a lucky one with a stable and reliable friend group or still be looking for your people. In either case, you must know how to determine the health of your relationship and make sure it is not affecting your life negatively. We all heard of studies about friendships and how those closest to us affect our lifestyle and even the probability of success (whatever that is). But how does one assess the health of a relationship and figure out if it's not doing any harm?

If you spent any time in therapy you'd probably be more inclined to talk about what's going on with your partner or a friend or try to figure things out in the privacy of your own mind. We don't feel comfortable sitting in the land of uncertainty so we try our best to come up with explanations, reasons, and possible triggers that left to us feeling a certain way. We try to understand, analyse, and mend. We also have romanticised ideas about friendship and people in general, and tend to blame ourselves instead of calling others on their bullshit. In short, it takes time to figure out things aren't good and have been this way for a while.

But what if there was a simpler way of figuring out if your connection is sustainable, rewarding, and worth keeping? What if instead of overthinking and spending money on therapy sessions we just trusted our gut feeling?

Agonising about the strategy to improve your relationship comes from being used to always taking responsibility for other people's emotions and feelings. We are so uncomfortable with the idea that someone will be upset with us that we rather endure than have uncomfortable conversation. Staying in relationships that are one-sided or downright abusive is a form of self-betrayal. Achieving the life you want can be hard if you're constantly settling for less in your day-to-day. The way you treat yourself sets the example for other people. We communicate with energy, not so much words, so people can read your level of self-respect just by the way you carry yourself.

Feeling uncomfortable, anxious, or just meh when you're spending time with them is enough information to gauge the health of your relationship. The way a person makes you feel is all you need to know to make a decision to stop investing in a friendship. It doesn't have to be the way they make you feel when you are with them. It can be the way you feel after they leave or the way you feel when they consistently leave you on read for days on end. I've broken up with friends I enjoyed spending time with but they didn't invest as much effort into maintaining a relationship. It may seem counterintuitive or rootless but I don't want to feel like I'm always begging people to catch up with me. It doesn't make me feel good about myself.

You don't need to understand why!

You don't need to understand why. Asking why shrinks your reality and makes you question yourself. By trying to under-stand you are putting yourself under another person's reality, shrinking your own and teaching yourself that your awareness isn't enough. Facts, reasons, and logic is a less accurate data than your intuition because your intuition has already done the math. Just because you don't understand how your body's able to come to a conclusion, doesn't mean it's wrong. If you know something is not working, it's enough.

But what if it's not too clear, if you feel great when spending time with someone but then every now and again they make you feel inadequate? How do you figure out the best course of action? It can be as simple as asking yourself if the good time you spend together is worth dealing with the discomfort? How do you decide if you going to mend a pair of your favourite jeans or part ways with them? How much effort would you have to invest in mending? How big is the rip? Will it show after they've been mended? Will you enjoy wearing them?

Friendship is a relationship as significant as romantic partnership. It can make you or break you. It can encourage and inspire, or it can affect your self-esteem and the level of overall joy. If you feel that a relationship is worth mending, then you can start figuring out what it is that makes you uncomfortable and how to approach the uncomfortable conversation.

What if things are vague?

If you feel as though the relationship is worth mending but you can't quite put your finger on it, and talking things out doesn't seem like an option, it's time to let it go. Sometimes our intuition is picking up on things that are impossible to put in words because they are more complex than any logical explanation. In those scenarios trusting your gut comes in handy. After all, all you need to know is that you don't feel good, period.

Creating your tribe isn't about the quantity, it is about the quality of the connection. In a big scattered group you might feel noticed but you won't feel seen. It is the feeling-seen part of friendship that makes it meaningful. Just because you've known each other for decades doesn't mean you are able to acknowledge each other's idiosyncrasies. Letting go doesn't have to be brutal or sad. A breakup can be an opportunity for both of you to find people who will make you feel seen.