6 Signs You’re Ready for a Healthy Relationship
So you’ve been in a few relationships, and now, you’re looking for the one. You’ve narrowed down your green, red, and beige flags. You’ve been steady with your therapy sessions, and you believe in your ability to recognize (and feel deserving of) someone who would make a good life partner. But how do you really know that you’re ready this time around? That you won’t fall back into the same patterns, predicaments, and situationships?
We often look to our hearts for answers that our brains already carry. We’re so used to letting our emotions guide our dating paths, that we forget how much work we’ve done to gather insight, tools, and knowledge around what we need, want, and deserve. The reality is that our skills get us miles further than our hearts can when it comes to making good dating choices. At the end of the day, readiness for dating is not a feeling, but a set of capacities.
So, without further ado, here’s what I look for to know when someone is ready to step into the world of healthy dating.
1. You’ve Learned that Dysregulation Doesn’t Equate to Attraction
For many of us, there was a time when we confused anxiety for chemistry. We thought that the knots of stress in our stomach were butterflies, or signs of attraction. A delayed text could hijack your whole day, because what you had wasn’t secure, it was unpredictable.
If you’re at the point where your body is starting to crave calm in your relationships, you’re in the right place. That doesn’t mean you’ll never get triggered, or that you won’t be nervous in the early stages of a new romance. It means you don’t confuse dysregulation for desire anymore.
We want attraction to feel exciting, but not consuming. We want to be able to miss someone without questioning if you’re good enough for them. We want to feel attraction without feeling consumed. When we finally recognize that safety can be present without it hinting at a lack of chemistry, we are ready to recognize a healthy connection!
2. You Finally Know that You Deserve Healthy Love
I talk about this all the time in my blog posts, because it’s almost always relevant when it comes to dating. We base our idea of love off of what we’ve experienced in the past. If we grew up in chaos, we learn that love is conditional. If we struggle with self-esteem, we believe that we deserve less than others. We begin to perform, or accommodate, or value making others happy over ourselves.
If you’ve healed from this, readiness will look different. You’ll begin to want to come as you are to new relationships. You’ll show up ready to interview others for the role of a good partner, rather than audition for the part yourself. Mutual effort becomes a non-negotiable, and you won’t assume that anything less is a result of your own failing. Basically, you know what you want, and if you aren’t getting it, you won’t try to convince someone else to give it to you. You’ll look elsewhere.
3. You Can Tolerate Boredom
This one may feel disappointing, but stick with me.
Healthy relationships can feel uneventful at first. There’s no dramatic push-pull dynamic, no thrilling uncertainty. Most importantly, there won’t be any intense declarations of love on day three. When you’re ready for something healthy, you won’t run from a feeling of simplicity or a slow-burn. You’ll embrace people who don’t scare you with curiosity, and give them the chance they deserve to prove their potential.
This isn’t to say we will settle for someone who bores us to tears. We want something in between, a balance. Someone who doesn’t immediately trigger us doesn’t have to be boring, they can simply be approaching dating without urgency to feel loved, because they too know that they deserve it when the time comes.
So, when you’re ready for something healthy, you’re willing to stick around a little longer to find out if the person you’re exploring is right for you, even when you’re not experiencing immediate infatuation.
4. You Can Stay Present When You’re Triggered
It’s important for us to recognize that we don’t need to be “completely healed” before we start the search for a healthy relationship. In fact, I don’t know if anyone is ever finished in their healing. Instead, we should be at the point where we trust in our ability to recognize and appropriately respond to our triggers, and let the people we date help us to exercise our skills.
You’ll know you’re at this point when you:
Pause, take a deep breath, and think before reacting
Name your emotions when they arise, rather than projecting them onto the person in front of you
Recognize patterns, take a step back, and reflect instead of fighting to change the outcome
A real-life example of this could look like a new partner being late to your second date, and you waiting to hear them out before assuming that they don’t care about you or your time. Instead of greeting them with anger or irritation, you would ask with curiosity what happened. And if their excuse is valid, you’ll let your body begin to relax. You won’t feel the need to turn it into a learning lesson for them. You’ll let the future tell you if this is a problem, or if it was a fluke. Most importantly, you won’t sabotage something that could’ve been good all because of a story your body is telling you based on your past, not the present.
5. You’re Craving Feeling Seen Over Feeling Desired
In unhealthy relationship dynamics, we often lean on performance and projection to get to know one another. We play the role of “good partner”, rather than “ourselves”. Why? Because when we’re looking to be loved as a way to feel whole, we don’t put our own needs first. But when we know we are already whole, we want someone to see us as is. We want them to want us for who we already are, rather than who we can transform into.
When you’re ready for something healthy, you’re open to sharing your own needs without shame. You’ll recognize that wanting reassurance isn’t a weakness, but a human need. You’ll be willing to share your insecurities to help others see the real you, and if they’re willing to treat you differently based on how you want to be treated, you’ll be happy you did. If they can’t step up to the plate, you won’t call yourself needy, instead, you’ll know they’re not a good fit for you.
6. You Have a Healthy Relationship with Rejection
Now, I’m not saying you’ll begin to like rejection when you’re ready for a healthy connection. Rather, I’m saying you’ll start to see rejection as an uncomfortable, but necessary, part of dating.
You’re ready for something healthy when you trust that you will not stay in something that hurts you, and that someone else ending things with you is better than them staying just to keep you happy. You’ll want rejection to occur when rejection is needed, rather than never at all. And you’ll begin to realize that rejection is never personal. It’s simply the only way we can all find what we truly want and deserve in a relationship at the end of the day.
You’re ready when you know you can survive disappointment, even if it’s painful at first. You won’t settle just to protect others, and you won’t want them to do the same to you.
So… Are you ready?
Let’s take a quiz!
In your life, does romantic love feel like:
A) a bonus
B) a necessity
Would you rather be:
A) happily single
B) anxiously partnered
Is your preference:
A) a slow burn that feels peaceful
B) a passionate and exhilarating romance that ends in disaster
Would you prefer that someone:
A) take you as you are, aware of your quirks and all
B) be obsessed with you and not see any of your flaws
Results
If you answered all A’s, then you’re probably ready to settle down into something healthy. And if not, that’s okay too. Your journey toward a healthy relationship is your own, and it’s not mandatory. You have the freedom to choose whatever life you’d prefer. Just know that if you’re not ready, and you’d like to be, therapy might be a good place to start. Happy dating!