Lesson 15: Healthy Relationships

Now we are getting into hot waters... Fasten your seat belts, because your ego is going on a ride in this lesson!

Our only aim is to try and give you as much knowledge as possible to keep you healthy and happy. For this we will need to challenge many people's egos and might interfere with political or religious correctness.

Before you continue to read, you might want to have a quick chat with your ego to make sure that you are still the boss.

Ready?

The main reason why most relationships fail is that people are not sufficiently honest with themselves and with their partners what regards their wants and needs. Being honest with oneself is not easy, especially due to our social brainwash.

But let us first have a look at the facts.

We all know that around 50% of all marriages end up in divorces and that the remaining 50% are seldom all harmonious. Unfortunately, we need to say that at least 80% of all relationships are not ideal. This means that by entering a marriage relationship, your chances are around 80% that it will end up being a failure to some degree. Scary, but a fact.

These are the kind of facts our egos do not want to acknowledge.

Common sense tells us that if we do the same thing over and over again, we will get the same poor results. In other words, we need to drastically re-think human relationships.

There is a lack of communication is most relationships. When we do not discuss unmet needs or things that annoy us about our partner, frustration starts to build up (see Frustration Index in lesson 3). Accumulated frustration is very unhealthy and will one day or the other lead to a problem (disease, divorce, domestic violence...).

You need to be extremely aware of this frustration that most of us have to a certain degree. Many relationship "experts" say that you need to compromise when you are married. We beg to disagree: you cannot compromise with your health.

1. Things that annoy us about our partner

Again, Healfi wants to promote a preventive approach, i.e. doing what is necessary so that the frustration never appears again. Every situation is individual, but when you have things that annoy you about your partner, you basically have two options:

• go for a new partner is one option chosen by over half of the population, but most of the time new frustrations appear in the new relationship
• each partner works on improving the things that cause the frustration for the other; this requires both of you to challenge your egos. The attitude should not be one of "having pressure to perform otherwise the partner leaves", but should be an attitude of "constant growth with the certainty for great rewards and better health".

As soon as you settle for less and frustration builds up, you run into problems. This is as true for romantic relationships as for any other relationship in life. It requires character to tell your boss or your wife/husband what annoys you about them and discuss a solution.

Having character means NEVER letting your partner's ego have its say: shouting at you, nagging, beating you, refusing to discuss problems... Don't even think of trying to come up with excuses to justify bad behaviour.

So either you work on your character or you deal with problems/sickness. There do not seem to be any other options.

2. Unmet Needs

The case of unmet needs is different in the sense that it can be about things that are impossible for your partner to fulfill. We think first and foremost of a "need for variety": your partner can be absolutely perfect and you might still have a need from time to time to seek some other entertainment.

Now, our cultural brainwash tells us that this is a big No-No.

Instead of only looking at what society tells us, let us look at what FACTS tell us.

If you search for "infidelity statistics" on the Internet, you will not be surprised to hear that there are millions of subscribers to AshleyMadison.com ("Life is short. Have an affair."). The founders of this "discreet dating service" might not know it, but they are probably doing a huge contribution to public health, by helping people take some steps to fulfill their physical and emotional needs.

Even if the "action" is exactly the same, there is a huge difference between infidelity and open fidelity. We believe agencies should make this difference even more clear and rather promote the latter.

As long as you feel even the slightest feeling of jealousy for what your partner does, might do or has done, you cannot be perfectly healthy and will need to work on yourself and your relationship.

Please look up the term "compersion" to get an idea of the kind of attitude you should strive for to eliminate all relationship frustrations.

Remember that your ego thrives on jealousy, so every time you elevate your voice, get violent, throw dishes or the TV out of the window, your ego gets stronger... and your mental and physical health takes a toll.

The key to any relationship is to be extremely honest with yourself and with others. There is certainly not one solution fits all. It is up to each one of us to know what is right for us and take responsibility for our own lives.

If you let frustration build up, your children will feel it straight away. Remember the statistics and do what you need to do. There are many ways to get rid of this frustration.

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