Things I didn’t know were possible in a romantic relationship until I had a healthy one, and now I will not accept anything less and you shouldn’t either, a thread:

If your partner is stressed/over-capacity, they can tell you without being mean to you, and you don’t need to fix it to be safe with them.

When you’re stressed/over-capacity, you can tell your partner instead of hiding it and they can hold you in it without trying to make your feelings go away.

It doesn’t actually need to be normal to fight. Conflict DOES happen, but instead of resulting in a fight you and your partner can treat it as a mutual problem that you can solve together, and not be mean to one another in the process.

If your feelings are hurt, your partner should care about that and want to talk about that. Even if your hurt feelings aren’t necessarily a result of them having done something “wrong.”

If your partner HAS done something wrong and hurt your feelings as a result. They should be eager to apologize. Apologizing should also look like: recognizing harm, not making excuses, committing to doing differently in the future.

If YOU have done something wrong and hurt your partner’s feelings, you should feel safe to apologize without having to flagellate yourself on their behalf to be safe with them again.

If your partner is upset with you, they can and should communicate that to you without being mean to you.

Feelings like anger, hurt, and sadness can be welcomed and held with compassion, while also recognizing that everyone involved is responsible to their actions while they are in those emotions.

Your partner can be excited and encouraging about your other relationships in life. They can be happy that you have friends and community outside of them and should not make you feel guilty for the time you spend with others and not them.

Your partner should also be excited about your other life projects, encourage you to pursue what makes you happy and fulfilled, and be excited to talk to you about them even if they’re not in their personal interests.

Bears repeating: if you are passionate about something, your partner should (w/ understandable limits) be interested in hearing/talking about them with you, because they love you and part of loving you is loving your passions too, even if they don’t share them.

If your partner feels jealousy, they can talk to you about it *without* making you feel bad for having other projects and relationships in your life/pressure you to end them to soothe their jealousy.

Your partner should want to help *protect* your boundaries. You should not have to protect your boundaries from them. All it should take is communicating your boundaries for them to respect them. Your boundaries should not have to withstand a battering ram.

Your can see your partner’s boundaries not as attempts to punish you or an indictment on the status of your relationship, but simply as what they need to feel safe.

It can and should be safe to talk openly about your relationship structure with your partner. This can be as radical as wanting to talk about polyamory, or just whether or not you need more alone time. It should not be scary to have this conversations, even if they are difficult.

If you need something different in your relationship (like more alone time for example) your partner should want to talk about that and want to make that happen for you if they can, even if it’s not what they want or is disappointing to them.

Self-regulation and co-regulation can both play an important part in your relationship. You can both build your capacity to self-soothe so you can be kind/respect each other’s boundaries, but sometimes we also need to co-regulate with the people who love us when things are hard!

While each person may have different skills/inclinations/ability for certain projects, reproductive labor (housework, paperwork, emotional labor, etc.) should be generally equitable and you and your partner both can be attentive to that.

Relationships can be filled with gratitude! Thanking someone for even small things, like clearing the table, sweeping, giving you a kiss on the cheek as they go by, is a wonderful way to keep gratitude in your relationship, in your heart, and in your day to day practice together.

You can have a relationship(s) in which you share important values, and in which you hold one another accountable to acting in those values and growing in them.

You should be able to feel excited at opportunities to grow and change, and know that your partner shares in that joy, rather than feeling threatened by change.

Manipulation is not an acceptable tactic to get what one wants in the relationship. If you have a boundary that is not compatible with a need of theirs, the conversation should be about how they can see to that need otherwise, NOT how you should change your boundary.

Also I 100% agree with all the folks commenting that these should be practices in ALL healthy relationships!

So so glad and honored that this thread is meaningful and helpful to many of you. Here’s a longer form piece I wrote on the subject of love, relationships, and capitalism if any of y’all are so inclined: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lee-shevek-process-centered-love