Do You Know the Signs of Unhealthy Dating?
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As a Catholic speaker, I speak on love and relationships to large groups, small groups, and even privately, person to person. I have counseled many people over the years and have seen certain patterns emerge. I will focus on just one of these patterns that occur—losing yourself in a relationship. Understanding this pattern will help you to gauge whether a relationship is healthy or unhealthy.
Healthy Relationships:
A healthy relationship brings you closer to your family, your friends, and to God. You remain yourself, stay free, and keep your hobbies and those things you love to do.
Unhealthy Relationships:
One of the clearest signs of an unhealthy relationship is when someone grows further away from God, their families, and their friends—and when they stop doing hobbies, sports, or activities they like to participate in. In short, they lose themselves in the relationship, and their dating life early on becomes their whole life.
Even in marriage when your spouse becomes your whole life, even then you remain yourself with your own likes and dislikes, friendships, hobbies, activities, projects, and the like.
Your friend starts dating someone...and then disappears
Many of us have had the experience of knowing a friend who began to date someone they were head over heels for. All of a sudden, they completely disappear. Your texts go unanswered. You leave messages, and nobody returns your call. Even though you were close friends before and hung out all the time, you stop hearing from them cold turkey.
However, we all know that the day this person breaks up with their significant other is the very day they will be calling you wanting out again. You may wonder what kind of a friendship you even have with this person. In any case, this is a huge red flag—the sign of an unhealthy, codependent relationship. These people just began dating, and yet, they act like they are married.
I wrote a whole series of posts for CatholicMatch called, “The Pathway To Love.” There are certain steps that lead to happily ever after. One cannot skip to the end and expect it to work, no matter how much attraction or passion may be part of the relationship. Even if you wish to see each other all the time in the beginning (which is normal to desire), it must be tempered with prudence.
That has codependency written all over it
We must always keep our friends. While many significant others come and go, your good friends will always be there for you even in your marriage. So, don’t dump them and attempt to pick them back up later as if they are worth nothing. Keep your friendships. Keep your family. Keep yourself. Once you stop doing everything you love for someone else, you have lost yourself.
Even in marriage when you have to surrender everything you are to another person, and even though you have to compromise in marriage; even then you must retain your own autonomy, hobbies, goals and dreams. Anything else has codependency written all over it.
Lastly, do not lose your relationship with God on account of a significant other. God is there now and forever—while you date her and after you break up, or when you are married and into eternity. Losing your faith life is an indication that your relationship has entered an unhealthy level. God must always be a priority.
Always keep God, your friends, and your family, along with your hobbies, desires, goals and dreams. This is the solid foundation needed to create a whole, healthy, successful, and long lasting relationship, and one we all desire!
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