Healthy Relationships

• Respects your decisions and boundaries
• Accepts your friends and family
• Listens to your opinions
• Trusts you
• Is happy when you feel fulfilled
• Supports you when you are upset or get bad news
• Communicates and gets your approval when making plans
• Makes sure to have your consent before physical contact

• Ignores you
• Blackmails you if you refuse to do something
• Belittles you and your opinion
• Makes fun of you
• Manipulates you
• Is constantly jealous
• Controls where you go and how you spend your time or money
• Goes through your texts, emails, or social media messages
• Insist that you send them intimate photos
• Isolates you from friends or family
• Calls you crazy when you express concern about their actions

• “Blows a fuse” when they are unhappy about something
• Pushes, pulls, slaps, shakes, or hits you
• Threatens suicide because of you
• Touches you intimately without your consent
• Threatens to circulate intimate photos of you
• Forces you to watch pornography
• Forces you, either physically or through coercion, to have sex

Learn how Safety Planning can help you escape violent relationships

If you have experienced violence in your relationship, you can submit an incident report

Trust means you do not seek to control the other person, their actions, what they like to do, or how they dress. You respect their privacy and never seek to put them through a “test” to prove their loyalty. Trust means the other person is safe with you and has confidence that they will not be hurt or violated.

Honesty means you should be truthful and candid and allow the other person to do the same, even when you don’t like the outcome. In a healthy relationship, both people should feel like they can share the full truth about their life and feelings without lying or hiding things.

Respect means knowing that every person has value, honoring and loving that person despite conflict or differing opinions. Respect also means that you honor the other person’s boundaries, whether emotionally or physically. You are happy for them when they succeed, support their dreams and goals, and comfort them when they get bad news or experience something difficult.

It’s important to work to create an environment where both people feel safe to listen to the opinions, concerns, and ideas of the other. Humility means treating the other person with kindness, admitting when you’re wrong and talking through a problem with patience and understanding.

Jesus is the greatest example of service; it means each person in the relationship seeks to serve the other. Rather than thinking of yourself, both people strive to consider the other first.

Every relationship can be difficult because people make mistakes. Having patience means knowing that no one is perfect and gets it right all the time. Your relationship isn’t going to be perfect, but it should never be violent or abusive.

Taking responsibility means owning your actions and words. When you make a mistake, genuinely apologize and seek to make positive changes. It is important that both people in a relationship take ownership of their behavior, even if the behavior was unintentional.