Are you considering beginning a romantic relationship after experiencing abuse from a previous partner but aren’t sure if you’re ready? How much do you know about healthy relationships? Have you thought about the type of partner and relationship you want?
Beginning a new relationship after abuse can be intimidating and challenging. You can be afraid of ending up with another abuser or someone who has many of your pervious partner’s worst qualities. You could also doubt your own ability to be a good partner who can begin and maintain a healthy relationship.
These are all common, natural, and potentially well-founded concerns. Abusive relationships teach you unhealthy beliefs about what is normal in relationships, while also making you think poorly of yourself.
Before entering a relationship, it’s incredibly valuable to spend time making sure that you feel you’ve emotionally healed enough, you understand the types of behaviours that indicate a relationship is healthy, and you’ve considered what you want and are unwilling to accept in a partner.
Healthy relationships can bring an incredible amount of joy and positivity to your life, while relationships that are unhealthy, toxic, or abusive can drain your energy, dominate your time and thoughts, and make you doubt yourself and what you’re capable.
Taking the time to consider how emotionally prepared you feel and reflecting on your ideals for a relationship can help you feel prepared and confident in your abilities to make informed decisions – in the partner you choose and how you behave and advocate for yourself in the relationship.
Healing from abuse
How much time have you spent addressing the potential impacts of abuse? Do you think positively of yourself and believe you’re worthy of love? Are you confident enough to be open and vulnerable with someone yet capable of protecting yourself if necessary?
No one leaves an abusive relationship without any lasting impacts, so it’s important to address these so you can have a positive relationship with yourself as an individual. (Healing was covered in depth in this article)
Entering a new relationship after experiencing an abusive one can be difficult. But you could also want a partner one because of how much enjoyment and positivity they can bring to your life. You could have some well-founded concerns about repeating past behaviours, both in the type of partner you choose and how you behave, especially what you’ll tolerate.
If you begin a new relationship before you’ve unlearned many of the harmful beliefs that often persist even after leaving an abuser – that you’re unworthy of love and respect, you can’t make good decisions, and that your wants and needs are unimportant – you’re at a greater risk of having an unhealthy relationship. This could be because you unintentionally choose a partner who mistreats you, or because you do things like: surrender more decision-making power than you’re comfortable with, don’t ask for things that are important to you, and don’t speak up when you feel uncomfortable or hurt. This can lead to resentment, feeling inauthentic, and/or ignoring your own emotions, which isn’t good for your mental health or the relationship.
It’s also important to consider your motivation for wanting to find a partner.
If you think that you need to be in a relationship in order to be happy and feel fulfilled, this is a sign that you’re not fully comfortable with yourself as an individual and would likely benefit from take more time to improve how you feel about yourself.
If you’re not happy and believe that a relationship is the solution, it may be healthier for you to wait until you’ve taken more time to heal and discover what brings you joy. Recovering from abuse is a complex process; relationships can also be complex and demanding, so it’s likely better to do one at a time.
The purpose of a relationship should be to find someone you like and love to share your life with, not replace the process of healing that is often necessary after experiencing abuse. Partners can be incredibly healing and shape who you are, but relying on someone else to help you recover is risky; you can’t be certain they’ll stay in your life and remain capable of being present in the ways you need them to be. Even the most supportive partner can’t get better for you.
Many people who have experienced abuse can benefit from seeing a mental health professional. They can help you discover unhealthy beliefs, suggest techniques for improving your mental health, and act as an accountability partner.
When you do begin a relationship, it can also be valuable to consider attending relationship counselling, as an individual or a couple, even if the relationship is fulfilling and healthy. Although many people think of counselling as only being necessary and useful for couples who are struggling, it can also help partners maintain a successful relationship. Counsellors can help you and your partner recognise potentially unhealthy beliefs and behaviours that are undermining the relationship, help you better understand each other by recognising your differences, and identifying your strengths and healthy habits so you can continue incorporating them into your relationship.
Feeling ready and capable of a healthy relationship is an ambitious but achievable goal, but one that has the many benefits of asking you to confront and address a number of the challenges and lasting effects that are so often caused by abuse.
Learn about healthy relationships
Have you been in healthy relationships in the past? Did your parents or other important role-models have a healthy relationship while you were growing up? How do you think partners should treat each other?
If you didn’t have examples of healthy relationships in your past, either those you observed or ones you experienced, you can believe that harmful behaviours are acceptable and typical behaviours are unrealistic to expect. Your beliefs about normal behaviours and reasonable expectations can also have been shifted by an abusive partner. Therefore, it’s important to consider your beliefs about relationships and how partners should treat each other before entering a relationship to reduce your risk of choosing an unhealthy and possibly abusive partner, as well as tolerating harmful ways of being treated.
Healthy relationships are founded on mutual respect, equality, trust, and communication. If one of these is absent in a relationship, then it can’t be healthy. It’s important to find a partner who applies these traits to the relationship, and it’s just as necessary to feel comfortable practicing them yourself. If you don’t feel capable of any one of these, this is a strong sign that a relationship is unhealthy or that you aren’t yet ready to be in a relationship.
Although how these qualities are practiced depends on personalities the dynamics between couples, they generally involve the following:
Respect: You think highly of your partner and don’t want to hurt them, even when you’re upset, you disagree, or they made a mistake.
Equality: You believe that you and your partner can and should make a similar amount of decisions, you’re both willing to compromise (which you do often), you share responsibilities, you take care of each other physically and emotionally, and neither thinks their wants and needs are more important.
Trust: When your partner tells you something – what they think, where they’ll be, how they’re spending their time, etc. – you believe them, and you’re honest as well.
Communication: You and your partner have regular meaningful conversations, and you both usually try not to hurt each other during conflicts and disagreements.
While abuse is the fault of the abuser alone, both partners are responsible for building and maintaining healthy relationships. This doesn’t mean changing to please someone or doing things you disagree with, but taking their wants and needs to consideration alongside your own.
It’s also important to be aware that healthy relationships can feel different, and not always better. People who are used to unhealthy relationships where they’re often tense, stressed, anxious, and in survival mode can associate these feelings with love. The familiarity is comforting and reinforces their belief that they’re in a promising relationship. A healthy relationship can even feel boring without the emotional turmoil, highs and lows, and danger of an abusive or toxic relationship. Consistency and safety can be mistaken for a lack of chemistry and compatibility. But by understanding this you can be prepared to challenge these unhelpful beliefs.
Knowing what is necessary for a healthy relationship can help you recognise harmful behaviours and feel better equipped for being a healthy partner yourself.
Considering what you want in a relationship
What sort of person do you want your next partner to be? How do you want to be treated? Which behaviours and ways of being treated would you find acceptable?
Considering what you want in a partner, both in who they are and how they treat you, before entering a relationship can help you find someone who will make you happy and (ideally) enable you to recognise signs that the relationship is unhealthy.
Boundaries
Boundaries are what you say yes or no to based on what you think is acceptable. They apply to all aspects of your life, although they don’t apply to all people equally. You would have different boundaries with your best friend than with your boss because they’re different types of relationships.
Although it’s common to have fewer boundaries with your partners than most other people, it’s still important to have them.
Listing your boundaries, in general as well as with a partner, is valuable before entering a relationship so you can:
- Clarify to yourself (and later to others) what your boundaries are so you know when they’re being broken
- Consider if you have too few boundaries in any areas of your life
- Consider if any of your boundaries are unreasonable (ex. asking me personal questions is unacceptable) – if so, ask yourself why you feel this way and if you think you could benefit from softening this boundary
- Make a plan for what you’ll do if someone isn’t respecting your boundaries
Partners should be willing make sacrifices, compromises, and reconsider their original positions for each other, but partners don’t pressure each other to change their boundaries in healthy relationships. It’s valuable to know what you’re not comfortable compromising on, as well as which boundaries you would be willing to relax for the right person so you can respect what is important to you while also becoming closer to someone else.
Deal-breakers
Despite the importance of being flexible and willing to reconsider what you’ll consider acceptable from a partner, it’s important to know what are deal-breakers for you.
Most people know their major deal-breakers, such as infidelity or physical violence, but there are many more subtle ones that can be useful to be aware of while looking for a partner and during the early stages of a relationship.
These could be:
- Mocking me, what I like, and my hopes for the future
- Prioritising time with friends over time as a couple
- Substance abuse
- A pattern of dishonesty
Knowing your deal-breakers can save you a great deal of time as you’re less likely to begin or stay in an unhealthy relationship with an incompatible or disrespectful partner.
Expectations
Everyone should have expectations of their partners when they’re in relationships. These can emerge naturally, but some people benefit from clarifying to themselves what they are.
Common expectations include:
- When we’re having a conversation, I don’t want my partner to be distracting themselves with their phone or anything else
- During disagreements it’s important that my partner remain relatively calm
- I want an apology when I’ve been wronged
If you have too few expectations, or you don’t know what they are, you’re at a greater risk of being disappointed by a future partner. It’s common for people who were previously in an abusive relationship to have very low expectations so they can stay with someone who has few qualities that appeal to them longer than they would have had they known more about their expectations.
Some people are concerned that they have too many expectations and/or their expectations are too high. An effective way to test this is to ask yourself if you would be willing to do the same for your partner – if you are, then you aren’t being overly demanding.
Preferences
Your preferences are the qualities, habits, and traits you want in a partner. They can include:
- Having similar tastes in music
- Agreeing on the importance of work-life balance
- Being equally tidy
Preferences and expectations can overlap as they both relate to what you want in a partner and how you want them to treat you because you think this is what is necessary for you to be happy in a relationship. But they differ in that preferences are typically more flexible than expectations – it would be ideal to have a partner who likes the same types of music that you do, but for most people this isn’t strictly necessary.
Knowing the differences between your deal-breakers, expectations and preferences can be valuable since you’re aware of what you can comfortably compromise on and what you can’t sacrifice without feeling inauthentic, and potentially that you’ve betrayed yourself.
During the early stages of a relationship – often referred to as the honeymoon phase – it’s easy to overlook potentially-problematic behaviours and ignore signs that you aren’t compatible with your new partner. Some differences can be reconciled or they don’t have to impact the relationship, while others can be signs that the person is unhealthy or that you have fundamental differences that likely can’t be resolved.
At the beginning of the relationship these aren’t always impactful and can even be thought of as interesting personality quirks or unimportant differences in beliefs. But over time they can become much more impactful. This could be finding a new partner who doesn’t like animals but you’re a passionate animal-lover who has always had pets. At the beginning of the relationship your different opinions could seem unimportant, but if having a pet is necessary to you being happy and your partner doesn’t want to live in a home with pets and neither of you are willing to compromise, you might not be compatible long-term.
Having experienced abuse can make you more willing to tolerate unacceptable and harmful ways of being treated, or make it difficult for you to be comfortable with the openness and vulnerability that is necessary to form meaningful connections. So having a healthy and fulfilling relationship after being abused can seem challenging.
But if you take the time to consider how you think and feel about yourself, learn about healthy relationships, and identify what you want and need from a future partner, you can increase your chances of not only avoiding an unhealthy relationship but finding a partner who makes you happy and maintaining a deeply rewarding relationship.
