8 Tips for Navigating Mental Health in Romantic Relationships
Use these 6 tips to help navatage issues with mental health in your romantic relationships.
Romantic relationships can be a great source of comfort, support, and enhancement to your mental wellbeing. However, it’s not always easy to maintain a healthy romantic relationship, especially when you or your partner are experiencing mental health challenges. Let’s take a look at what makes a relationship healthy, and how to work through hard times.
What Makes a Healthy Romantic Relationship?
Feeling like Yourself
In a healthy romantic relationship, you like who you are when you are with your partner. You don’t feel like you need to hide parts of yourself. You feel safe, supported, and able to be yourself. Your strengths are highlighted, and your weaknesses are not shamed. You don’t wonder if your feelings are justified when you approach your partner with a concern.
Trust is the foundation of a healthy romantic relationship. In order to maintain such a close relationship, there has to be trust because trust is what builds security in the relationship. If you are in a relationship with a lot of resentments, broken promises, doubt, or uncertainty, then the foundation of your relationship needs to be repaired before you can thrive in this relationship.
Healthy Conflict Resolution
Conflicts will naturally arise when you have such a close relationship with someone else. In a healthy relationship, people are able to talk through their issues with respect for the other person, without assuming the worst intentions of the other person, and with curiosity about the other person’s perspective. Compassion for yourself, the other person, and your relationship is foregrounded when discussing conflict. You work on problems together, not against each other. You don’t feel like you need to win an argument, rather, you work on challenges as a team. If you are in a relationship where you or your partner end up hurting each other more through conflict either by shutting the other person down or dismissing them, yelling at or insulting the other person, or threatening the other person, then conflicts will not be resolved.
In a healthy relationship, you should feel welcome to speak with your partner about what’s on your mind. You will be able to talk with them and listen to them with appreciation. You will feel a sense of affection for your partner which will be reciprocated. Open communication means that you enjoy speaking with your partner and don’t feel like you have to out maneuver them.
How to Work Through Mental Health Challenges Together:
No one is immune from having mental health challenges, and when you are in a close relationship with someone else, it is inevitable that these challenges will affect your relationship. Having a strong foundation of trust supports the relationship and allows you to build an even closer bond as you navigate mental health challenges together with your partner.
1 Compassion
All of us bring in aspects of our childhood upbringings to our adult relationships, which can sometimes be difficult for us to recognize. We all have blind spots, unresolved issues, or unrealistic expectations of ourselves and others. Often we act in ways that we would rather not because we have some aspect of ourselves that hasn’t been examined yet. In a romantic relationship, we need to be compassionate with ourselves for what we are experiencing, and compassionate towards the other person for what they are going through. This doesn’t mean excusing bad behavior or allowing mistreatment, but it means that we understand that we are all going through something that may feel very confusing or difficult at times.
2 Self Care
Taking care of yourself, learning about yourself, and paying attention to your inner desires is essential to working through mental health challenges personally, but also in your relationship. The more self awareness, self compassion, and self care that you give yourself, the better able you will be to support yourself and your partner through mental health challenges.
3 Listening and Patience
Going through a mental health challenge takes time, understanding, flexibility and openness. You and your partner may need to lean on each other for a while before the challenge is resolved. During this time you can not expect perfection, but rather look for signs of growth. If you and your partner genuinely want the best for each other and want the other person to succeed in their own goals, then you will help each other with gentle encouragement.
4 Willingness to seek professional support
Some mental health challenges are too big for us as individuals, or us as partners to handle on our own. It is important for you and your partner to be willing to seek outside support when you need it to help you grow and thrive together. If you feel ashamed to seek professional support, then your relationship might not improve. A therapist can offer tools to communicate more effectively, resolve conflicts, and understand each other’s emotional needs, which is something that all relationships need.
If you or your partner are struggling with mental health, don’t hesitate to reach out. At HQ Psych, we’re here to help you find the care, tools, and connection you need to thrive—individually and as a couple.
