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Maintaining Healthy Relationships are very important for College students. Trying to keep up with all your classes, homework, having a social life and maintaining relationships is very hard for college students, but is very important. Keeping healthy relationships with family, friends, or a significant other can be challenging at times, but having those people there to support you is important and will be needed throughout the journey of college.

What is maintaining healthy relationships?

Maintaining Healthy relationships is keeping a good relationship with people that is in your life. Having a healthy relationship Is communicating, working through the problems and respecting each other. Healthy relationships make you have more happiness and less stress.

The importance of maintaining healthy relationships

Maintaining healthy relationships is important because having a good support system while in college is very important. Not only does maintaining healthy relationships make us happier, improve our feelings of security, and provide meaning to our lives, it also affects both mental and physical health. Healthy relationships play an important role in our mental health.  

10 tips for maintaining healthy relationships

1. Keep expectations realistic. No one can be everything we might want him or her to be. Sometimes people disappoint us. It’s not all- or – nothing though. Healthy relationships mean accepting people as they are and not trying to change them
2. Talk with each other. It can’t be said enough that communication is essential in healthy relationships.

• Take the time. Really be there
• Genuinely listen. Don’t plan to say next while you’re trying to listen. Don’t interrupt.
• Listen with your ears and not your heart. Sometimes people have emotional messages to share and weave it into their words.
• Ask questions. Ask if you think you may have missed the point. Ask friendly questions. Ask for opinions. Show you interest. Open the communication door.
• Share information. Studies show that sharing information especially helps relationships begin. Be generous in sharing yourself, but don’t overwhelm others with too much too soon.

3. Be flexible. Most of us try to keep people and situations just the way we like them to be. It’s natural to feel apprehensive, even sad or angry, when people or things change and were not ready for it. Healthy relationships mean change and growth are allowed. Being flexible in college is hard because you have so much going on, but once a day set aside time for them and give all you time to the relationships.
4. Take care of you. You probably hope those around you like you so may try to please them. Don’t forget to please yourself. Healthy relationships are mutual!
5. Be dependable. If you make plans with someone follow through. If you have an assignment deadline, meet it. If you take a responsibility, Complete it. Healthy relationships are trustworthy
6. Fight fair. Most relationships have some conflict. It only means you disagree about something; it doesn’t have to mean you don’t like each other! When you have a problem:

• Negotiate a time to talk about it. Don’t have difficult conversations when you are very angry or tired. Ask “when is a good time to talk about something that is bothering me?” healthy relationships are based on respect and have room for both.
• Don’t criticize. Attack the problem, not the person.
• Stay with the topic. Don’t use a current concern as a reason to jump into everything that bothers you.
• Say “I’m sorry” when you’re wrong. It goes a long way in making things right again.
• Ask for help if you need it. Talk with someone who can help you find resolution like your RA, a counselor, a professor, a minister or even parents.

7. Show your warmth. Studies tell us warmth is highly valued by most people in their relationships. Healthy relationships show emotional warmth.
8. Keep your life balanced. Other people help make our lives satisfying but they can’t create that satisfaction for us. Only you can fill your life. Don’t overload on activities but do use your time at college to try new things like clubs, volunteering, lectures, projects. You’ll have more opportunities to meet people and more to share with them. Healthy relationships aren’t dependent
9. It’s a process. Sometimes it looks like everyone else on campus is confident and connected most people feel just like you feel, wondering how to fit it in and have good relationships. It takes time to meet people and ger to know them. So, make “small talk”. Healthy relationships can be learned and practiced and keep getting better.
10. Be yourself! It’s much easier and much more fun to be you than to pretend to be something or someone else. Sooner or later, it catches up anyway. Healthy relationships are made of real people.

My Experience

Coming into college no one ever told me about maintaining healthy relationships, so I really didn’t know what to expect. The thing that I have done that has helped me a lot has been taking time out of my day every day to put effort into my relationships. Homework can sometimes seem overload you and you feel like you have no time for anything else, but make sure you take out time for the relationships in your life. My biggest obstacle was maintaining relationships with my friends back home, because you meet new people in college and it’s very easy to forget that you must keep in touch with them. Every day I made it a point to reach out to my family members and friends back home to ask how they were and to make sure I kept up with them. Facetime is always a good way of keeping in touch with everyone.