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Your Healthiest Relationships Start Right Here, Right Now
Are Relationships Necessary for Humans?
The short answer: yes!
Scientific research has found that both our minds and our bodies work better when we have strong, healthy bonds with other people. Humans just weren’t meant to do life alone.
Loneliness does, in fact, come with mental and physical health risks. Strong, supportive relationships with others release the chemicals in our brain that allow us to experience happiness, belonging, and love. Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the extremely popular book The 5 Love Languages, identifies emotional love (not to be confused with romantic love) as a human need. Isolation can cause anxiety and depression over time, leading to the deterioration of the body in turn. The immune system and heart weaken when we spend too much time alone in isolation and improve when we are in mutually nurturing relationships. The life-giving energy in our bodies is incredibly sensitive to the energy in other people, so we need to interact as often as possible with the people in our lives who awakened the love inside of us.
At Daily Life, we know how important, difficult, and complex it is to constantly build, improve, and maintain healthy relationships. We also know that in order to do that, you need to get a strong footing in your own self-esteem and self-worth so that you can bring positive energy into your relationships. While our relationships can bring us immeasurable amounts of happiness, it is our goal to help you nurture your relationship with yourself so that you need only look within to find happiness.
Relationship & Growth Articles
How Do Relationships Shape Our Identity?
At all stages of life, our relationships impact our identities. The relationships we had in childhood will affect how we understand ourselves and the world around us well into our adult lives. We often spend adulthood working to understand the complex ways that our formative years framed our worldviews.
Our expectations of how relationships look will usually mirror the relationships we saw growing up. However, you are not doomed to repeat your past. At Daily Life, we want to show you how to let your past be your best teacher so you can choose what to hold on to and what to let go of.
Relationships and interpersonal dynamics are important for our success in life. Understanding your own mind and how it was shaped at a young age by the people closest to you can be an empowering process that will allow you to identify the things that challenge you most so you can make positive change.
Your identity is never set in stone. As you move through your life, you’ll meet people who will teach you new things about yourself and about the world around you. The good news is that you can choose the people that influence you and how they influence you. Our relationships do impact our sense of self, but only as much as we allow them to.
Relationships & Mental Health Articles
How Does Mental Health Affect Relationships?
The health of the mind and the way it processes and filters information affects our relationships significantly. The rather obvious truth is that if we aren’t mentally healthy, we risk sabotaging our relationships in one way or another. It’s imperative that we stay aware of our mental health and take action when we need to care for ourselves. Being selfish in this way enables us to be selfless with others where it counts. Care for yourself so you have the energy to care for others.
Just as our mental health impacts our relationships, our relationships impact our mental health. Strong, supportive relationships are often catalysts for mental health healing. On the other side, manipulative, abusive relationships can cause mental health problems and serious illnesses. The good news is that we have complete control over our social networks. Curate your network like you would an art gallery. Only allow the people who make your life beautiful inside.
Maintaining the health of your mental ecosystem, practicing self-care and self-love, and having secure spiritual footing will ensure that we enter relationships for the right reasons, not because we feel we need them to be happy or to have purpose. When we have a strong sense of self-love and soul connection, it’s easier to establish healthy boundaries and intuitively know if a particular relationship is in our best interests long-term.
Sex & Relationship Articles
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Sex & Relationships:
Sex is a deeply personal and complex experience. Talking about it doesn’t have to be.
When it comes to intimacy in relationships, sex is not just something to take for granted or be ignored. In fact, sex is one of the most vital topics to address in your relationships. That said, it’s often an incredibly difficult topic to broach.
At Daily Life, we believe that talking about sex should be a normal, regular occurrence in relationships. It’s important to communicate feelings so that each partner can understand and respect the other’s needs and boundaries. Because many people have experienced shame around their sexuality or have had negative sexual experiences, it’s more important now than ever to be open and honest about sex in a safe, non-judgemental way. It starts with practice, and we have the tools to help you. Having a strong connection between Mind, Body, and Soul will improve your relationship with yourself. In turn, you’ll be able to have healthier intimate relationships.
How Many Types of Relationships Are There?
Each and every relationship is unique to the people involved. This is by no means an exhaustive list of every possible type of relationship. Completely new types of relationships become possible as we evolve as a society.
- Romantic Relationships - There are many different types of romantic relationships, including monogamous, polyamorous, open relationships, long-distance relationships, friends with benefits arrangements, and temporary partners.
- Familial Relationships - These relationships encompass both immediate and extended family, including siblings, cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Familial relationships often last lifetimes because we feel bound to these people by a blood connection.
- Parental Relationships - These relationships involve birth parents, adopted or “honorary” parents, step-parents, or other significant figures who watched over us and taught us right from wrong during childhood and adolescence.
- Friendships - We can have hundreds of friendships over our lifetimes; some last decades, others last days. Our friends are the people we choose to keep in our lives that usually most closely share our personal worldviews.
- Work Relationships - The relationships we have with our co-workers, supervisors, managers, and bosses can be tricky. In a sense, our livelihoods depend on these relationships. Learning to set healthy boundaries for yourself is extremely important to your well being as you spend such a significant amount of time at work.
- Spiritual Guides - While many people do not know these relationships exist in their lives, they do. Some think of spirit guides as guardian angels. We can develop strong bonds with them if we work on to develop our intuition through meditation.
- Relationship with Yourself - The one and only relationship that will last your entire life is the one you have with yourself. At Daily Life, we believe that healing and change begins when we prioritize self-love and self-care. Your relationship with yourself has a direct impact on your mental and physical health and a direct impact on your relationships with others.
Forgiveness Articles
How Do Relationships Evolve Over Time?
According to psychologist George Levinger, romantic relationships evolve over time through 5 phases:
- Acquaintance
- Build-up
- Continuation
- Deterioration
- Ending
Although this model describes the evolution of romantic relationships specifically, Levinger’s model provides insight into how all relationships begin, how they get stronger, and how they end.
Not all relationships fit into these categories and not all relationships go through all 5 stages. Step 1 involves the first impressions and “mutual attraction”. The second step, build-up, involves the gradual process of opening up to one another and starting to develop a bond. In step 3, continuation, your lives blend together, decisions are made jointly, and a sense of shared identity develops. In some cases, relationships will stay in the third phase for long periods of time. Otherwise, you’ll enter step 4 when you find your goals no longer align or that there is an imbalance of power. If these feelings are left unresolved, you’ll reach step 5, the termination of the relationship.
Our first impression of someone often changes when we see how they treat others, deal with stress, and how their values change over the course of time. When our own beliefs and values change for any reason, our social circles and romantic partnerships are affected. It is completely normal and often necessary for others to come and go from your life, and you’ll do the same with others. How else would you be able to tell that you’re growing and learning?
Why Do Relationships Break Down or Fail?
Although it can be difficult to cope and to understand why a relationship ended, it is important to remember that this process is natural, happens to everyone, and will probably happen again. At Daily Life, we don’t think of relationships that have ended as “failed relationships” because of the lessons we can learn from them. With patience and practice, we can face these endings with love and learn from them.
Sometimes we meet people only to learn certain important lessons. Learning to be true to ourselves and how to set healthy boundaries sometimes that means letting go of people who stand in the way of our goals, whether or not they mean to do that intentionally, maliciously, or otherwise.
Any unresolved issues or challenges within ourselves can often cause turmoil in relationships because we bring and project that pain into our relationships. Many relationships end in the same way over and over until we heal the root cause within ourselves. Some people will experience a series of failed relationships because they search for their happiness in outside sources. When you actively work to develop self-love, your need for love from others will decrease, and in turn, so will your anxiety and loneliness. When you follow your heart and live a meaningful life for yourself, your relationships will feel easier and much more rewarding.
How has Social Media Affected Relationships?
The rise of technology, the Internet, and social media has changed so much about how we begin and maintain our relationships. Social networks and dating websites and apps allow us to connect and communicate with more people than we ever could before at the click or tap of a button.
Online relationships and friendships are now commonplace. Our long-distance relationships no longer feel quite so far away as technology continues to evolve in a way that collapses distance. Social media allows us to speak our minds and find common ground with people from anywhere in the world. We now have more opportunities to connect with and learn from each other in ways that were previously impossible.
It’s all very exciting and enticing. But with these changes come a slew of challenges. Since social media is still a relatively young phenomenon, we don’t yet know exactly how the Internet and technology impacts our relationships. Because of this, it’s important to be mindful.
Social media has shortened our attention spans overall, significantly challenging our ability to simply be present in the world around us. Readily available at all times via our cell phones, social media distracts us and keeps us from being present in the moment. It has made it difficult for some people to hold meaningful conversations. It can also create a false sense of identity because of our increasing need to display our lives online for likes and validation from strangers. We often judge people based on what appears on their social media accounts unfairly or in a way that creates an illusion of who they really are. Social media has begun a whole new kind of popularity contest, causing people to crave attention in unhealthy ways.
Social media is a wonderful tool for beginning and building relationships. Still, It’s important to detox periodically and limit our social media time. Moderation is key.