Differences between healthy love and unhealthy love
Differences between healthy love and unhealthy love
What are the differences between a healthy couple and a toxic couple? Why do couples who do not grow in their relationship stay together? Freedom and commitment as keys to loving in a healthy way
Understanding the differences between healthy love and unhealthy love is essential to determine whether the relationships we engage in are being built on attitudes that foster growth and well-being, or on toxic and harmful dynamics that lead to suffering.
It is important to underline that there is no precise script to follow when we fall in love. Meeting another person brings situations, changes, and novelty. This can result in either beneficial effects for both partners—or serious harm.
The first stage is infatuation, which usually lasts 6–7 months, after which it fades. Then the relationship stabilizes: partners start to seek confrontation, ask themselves where their story is going, and how to proceed.
Stabilizing is the most important and difficult process for a couple. It doesn’t always happen naturally or peacefully. Many times, partners find themselves shifting from an idyllic phase of infatuation to dealing with the real challenges of everyday life. Disagreements can sometimes be constructive, especially for two healthy, mature, and self-aware individuals—but they can also be destructive.
It is when the couple grows and evolves together that we can speak of healthy love.
Unhealthy love
Unhealthy love is damaging: it prevents both partners from evolving, it stagnates, and it keeps them tied to an illusion that neither benefits them nor allows the relationship to truly mature.
Insecurity is one of the main components of an unhealthy relationship. The bond is shaped by fear, control, jealousy, revenge. Partners seek to dominate and possess one another instead of living the relationship in a healthy way. Greed and possessiveness also characterize toxic and ultimately failing relationships.
These elements often have their roots in past personal insecurities, which can be explored and transformed through online therapy. Continuing an unhealthy relationship for too long only fuels anxiety, neuroses, paranoia, and anger.
Couples that don’t grow but stay together
The most common feature of unhealthy love is its inability to evolve—yet the couple cannot let go. They remain together, desperately imagining a future or making plans, even if the relationship is stagnant or destructive.
Such couples feed on each other’s insecurities and neuroses, unable to separate and put an end to their suffering.
Healthy love
A healthy relationship, on the other hand, is characterized by serenity and balance. Arguments occur, but they serve to improve understanding and growth, and are rooted in a constructive, evolutionary attitude.
It is the climate of growth, support, and mutual care that defines a healthy couple. Love in this case is about supporting the other—not clinging to them to fill a void, a need, or a fear of being alone. It means loving someone simply for who they are, not because we “need” them.
Freedom
Freedom is a crucial element in a healthy relationship. From a Buddhist perspective, it nourishes both physically and spiritually. Feeling free, not subdued, helps us grow, open up to the other, and create well-being. Freedom rests on mutual trust, not as an excuse for betrayal but as a foundation for authenticity and growth.
Love and commitment
Love is first of all a disposition: the maturity to commit to another human being, to respect, listen, empathize, and grow together—in freedom and trust.
Commitment is a determining factor for happy love: the awareness of cultivating love every day and nourishing it over time. Temporary pleasures and distractions eventually disrupt harmony in a couple. A path of awareness and transformation may be necessary to free oneself from them and live a genuine love story.
It is equally important to be sincere with oneself and with one’s partner, without creating false expectations. Commitment and willingness are not qualities that belong to everyone. But if what we seek is healthy, joyful love, then we must first work on ourselves—and bring that light into a relationship made of sharing, support, and growth.
Online therapy is an effective method for working on oneself and learning to shed light on one’s inner shadows.
For more information, contact Dr. Jessica Zecchini.
Email: consulenza@jessicazecchini.it, WhatsApp: +39 370 32 17 351
