5 Signs of a Healthy Relationship

I’m in one. Are you?

Healthy relationships with a significant other or with family is really the same thing. Oh, sure, there are different dynamics influencing familial versus romantic relationships. After all, you didn’t choose your family, and odds are good there is some baggage going back to having to share a bedroom or chafing against rules you considered arbitrary.

But the principle is the same. Healthy relationships are characterized by some very specific characteristics. None of them are new to you, but in article after article these popped up, so there must be truth to them.

You can sort most of what you find by researching healthy relationships into several broad categories: Trust, Respect, Communication, Shared Values, and Intimacy.

Trust is bedrock for healthy relationships. The person you love should be unfailingly trustworthy. My online dictionary says trustworthy people are: dependable, honest, direct, principled, truthful, ethical, loyal, faithful, staunch and more. Is your partner one you can always count on for support? Do you believe what heesh tells you?

Respect isn’t just deep admiration for one another. It goes more deeply to having regard for the other’s wishes, rights, traditions, and feelings in a non-judgmental way. You honor one another’s differences and treat one another kindly despite disagreement. In a respectful relationship, the past is let go. Once a disagreement is resolved it’s never resurrected. Holding onto grudges represents a lack of respect.

Communication is essential for relationships that work. No topic is off limits. No judgments are formed based on past experiences or present perspectives. The partner may express concerns about issues or stances, but the lines remain open. Also, in healthy relationships people talk to one another about what’s important (and even unimportant) rather than assuming the partner knows how to read minds. “He ought to know . . .” is the route to hurt feelings and deeper misunderstandings. Communication also means that sometimes you spend time in one another’s company in companionable silence. Through communication, couples make decisions and move forward with life.

Shared Values is another critical component. The most important shared value is a total commitment to the relationship and making it work. You and your partner need not have all the same goals or identical values, but they need to be compatible. Think of yourselves as a Venn diagram. The middle section is where you are the same and supportive of one another. The two outer sections are your individual strengths, interests, talents, and identity. The strongest, healthiest relationships are when two people are fully realized, actualized. Each has a strong sense of self so each can engage in the give and take in relationships.

Intimacy is so much more than sex. Oh, yeah, sex is important to many of us. It ought to be equally important to partners in a relationship. But if true intimacy is missing, sex is just an exercise routine. My online dictionary says intimacy is closeness, familiarity, rapport, affinity, friendship, togetherness, warmth. Your partner ought to be your best friend. You experience joy and sorrow together. When you are so connected to one another, the sex act isn’t an act!

As to novel writing, there is plenty of fodder here to show healthy and unhealthy relationships in your stories. Use these five as a template for healthy relationships. Or when there is a breakdown in one of the five, show how troubles arise and are dealt with.

Want more? Come back next week for the signs you’re in an unhealthy relationship.

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An Open Letter to My Husband on His Birthday

Dear David—

Happy birthday! As we age together I am reminded daily of how good our life is and how fortunate I am that we found one another. As I’ve shared, this Ohio farm girl had no idea her life would turn out to be this wonderful.

I thought I would not marry. Oh, I had plenty of boyfriends back in the day. Even some proposals. But I didn’t want to end up like so many of my friends and parents of my friends. Divorced. Or worse, M&M, married and miserable.

I have no doubt my parents loved one another, but they had a weird way of showing it sometimes. They could go from canoodling on the couch one night to screaming at one another the next. Not a terrific role model on how to be a good spouse, though I have thoroughly adopted the canoodling modeling.

But it will end. Because that’s the way of it. I will leave our relationship or you will. We’ve talked about how the best scenario is we leave together. At the same time. Without pain and suffering and lingering, of course. Just, BAM, we’re dead at the same time.

But a part of me thinks you will be the surviving partner from our life together. And all I have ever wanted for you is to be happy and loved. My birthday present to you today is my blessing for you finding someone to spend your life with.

Find someone who is funny, smart, interesting, and interested in what you like. Find someone who will nag you about the good stuff and let lie the other junk.

Find someone our children like and respect and, I hope, come to love. And she should enjoy cooking, too, since you enjoy eating. I’ll leave her my David’s Oatmeal-Cran-Pecan cookie recipe.

Find someone who can play Crossword Cubes with you and win sometimes. Find someone who understands when you’ve had a rough day at Pickleball and bring it home.

Find someone who can be silly and serious, impulsive and restrained, curious and reflective. Find someone who can “read” you so she knows what is going on behind your quiet demeanor.

Maybe she’ll even be tidier than I. You could get lucky. It could happen!

Love you to infinity and beyond!  xoxo

P.S. Remember that I’ll be back. So look for me in the sparkle of a new baby’s eyes!

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Facebook: Angelica French posts about an unusual birthday present: giving permission to a husband to find a new love. What are the conditions she set? http://bit.ly/2hCEu7r

Twitter: An unusual birthday present is giving permission to a husband to find a new love. What are the conditions @RomanceRighter set? http://bit.ly/2hCEu7r

Fight Right Plight

We all know to fight fair, don’t we?

Dr. Nathan Cobb’s article says that fights between couples need rules as much as any sporting event. “Rules,” he says “provide purpose, safety, structure, and predictability.” Hmm. Maybe we need to send this article to our legislators.

Seriously, though, arguments are unavoidable in healthy, honest relationships. It’s how they are dealt with that can determine whether the relationship remains so. And there’s where the stories lie. As authors we can create numerous scenarios for fair/unfair fighting episodes. One is fair. Neither is fair. Both are fair. Then create variations based on those.

Cobb and others have examined what makes for good fighting and how fighting can deteriorate and never resolve anything. Cobb has nine rules. They are:

1)   No degrading language

2)   No blaming

3)   No yelling

4)   No use of force

5)   No talk of divorce

6)   Define yourself, not your spouse

7)   Stay in the present

8)   Take turns speaking

9)   When necessary, use time outs

Both parties need to agree to the rules. If one doesn’t agree or if one breaks the rules, it’s time to leave the argument. Simply state that when fair fight rules are in place, you’ll be back to start over.

Walking away and not responding is very, very hard. But if you want to fight fair, you have to fight for that state. Don’t let yourself be baited into fighting unfairly yourself. It never works.

In essence, you can boil down these nine Cobb rules to the ones we use in my family:

1)   no personal attacks or physical abuse allowed

2)   keep to the topic of dispute

3)   keep tempers and volume in check

4)   settle it by the time you’re done; it can’t come back up in a later argument

Disputes are inevitable. Feelings can be strong and emotions run high. But only reasonable address will lead to resolution.

Oh, one more thing. Compromise isn’t a four-letter word. And a simple, “I’m sorry” goes a long way in resolving arguments.

How do you resolve disputes with your partner? Please share your tactics in the Comments section.

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Twitter: How do you fight fair? Resolving disputes with a partner is never easy, but when the arguments escalate into unfair fighting, nothing good happens. Fight Fair! http://bit.ly/2AHQJEm

Develop Story Premises from Quotes

A story concept is a basic idea or theme. The premise is that concept/theme fleshed out to make a viable story idea.

Family first. Blood is thicker than water. Love conquers all. Shared love is multiplied love. And many more concepts come readily to mind.

A premise however has to have more detail. The premise builds on the theme or concept to add in characters and their conflicts. As an example for “family first”,

You might block out a story premise like this:

       Alli is caught between loyalty to a friend who needs her support and her family who see the friend as a liar and betrayer who is taking advantage of Alli’s good nature. Does she stick with the friend who might destroy what she loves or desert the friend to save her family?

A premise is very close to a mini-book blurb.

I typically know my premise first and then examine it to pick a concept/theme and a sub-theme or two to weave into my stories. Others start with the concept/theme and develop the premise. 

I’ve found a short cut way to premises. Read quotes on a topic. I love the website www.brainyquote.com  It has quotes on hundreds of topics.

Here’s what you do: read the quote that speaks to you, identify the concept/theme, and fill in the missing parts of the premise.

For example, for the John Woodern quote, “The most important thing in the world is family and love,” you could develop the premise I created above.

         The most important thing in the world is family and love, and Alli is caught between loyalty to a friend and her family threatened by this liar and betrayer. She must choose between the friend who might destroy what she loves and the family she needs.

See how that works? Now you try it. I have ten quotes for you to play with. Show me what you come up with in the Comments section. Have fun!

There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.    George Sand

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.   Lao Tzu

Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness. Euripides

Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own. H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.  Mother Teresa

Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.  Ann Landers

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Love yourself. It is important to stay positive because beauty comes from the inside out.   Jenn Proske

The most important thing in the world is family and love.  John Wooden

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.  Bradley Whitford

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Facebook: Writers, Angelica French shares an easier way to create story premises using quotes. Check out her suggestions and give it a try. http://bit.ly/2yjqItm

Twitter: #Writers, @RomanceRighter offers ideas for using quotes to find story concepts and create story premises. http://bit.ly/2yjqItm