Healthy Relationship Sign #5

Our last Healthy Relationship Sign is, "The Personal Boundaries of ALL are Respected."

Honoring and protecting others "boundaries' is essential to the health both of the relationship and the individual. Think of your loved ones boundaries or personal property line as a fragile bird egg. If you care for it and nurture it you will see a beautiful healthy bird. But if you are careless and crack it the growing bird inside may die. Respecting the boundaries of your spouse means you honor that person.

We have talked about this in previous posts but I think it bears repeating. It is the one aspect of relationships that can make a huge difference in how healthy and enjoyable our lives together can be.

Another word for respecting boundaries and property lines of another is "honor" If we honor someone, that person carries weight with us. That person is valuable to us. When we honor someone we give that persona highly respected position in our lives. Honor equals love and provides the ability to stay in love.

What is the relationship between honor and love? When we honor someone we increase their value and then we feel the desire to love and do worthwhile things for that person. The bible say's, "Whatever you treasure, that is where your heart is." When we highly value something or someone we enjoy taking care so we don't lose it or harm it. We enjoy "being with it or them." The "feeling" of love is a reflection of our level of honor we have for them.

So how do you retrieve lost feelings of love? By choosing to increase the value that person has in your mind. Honor and love for your spouse grow best out of a healthy respect for yourself. When we have healthy respect for ourselves we are more apt to honor and respect others.

So healthy relationships are relationships that give others the freedom to think, to talk, to feel and connect with us. They show honor by respecting each person's uniqueness.

We all fail in these areas and the key is to develop healthy habits. No matter what your family background is or how unhealthy it was you can learn to be healthy - we can check our marriage vital signs regularly and move from unhealthy to healthy.

Next Post: An inventory that will show you if your were taught unhealthy relational skills. As parents we for the most part do that best we know how to do but when unhealthy behavior comes to light it is up to us as an individual to make the choice to change.

Question to Ponder: What do you honor and treasure most about your spouse?

"Making Love Last Forever" by Gary Smalley was used as a guide for these posts