Healthy Relationships

Develop healthy relationships

In a healthy relationship, both people respect, trust, and support each other. This means that you can share your thoughts and feelings openly, and you can talk about and resolve problems together without violence. In an unhealthy relationship, one partner may try to control the other, such as deciding who they can talk to or where they can go. Other signs include threats, put-downs, controlling sexual activity or birth control, and violence. To see if your relationship is healthy or unhealthy, click here. Unhealthy relationships can put you or your partner at risk. If you decide to have children, an unhealthy relationship also puts your child’s health and life in danger. To talk to someone about the health of your relationship, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7223) or 1-800-787-3224 (TTY for the hearing or speech impaired). To see if you may be hurting your partner, click here.

Become a source of support

You may already know that women need to take care of their health before and during pregnancy, but you may not know that there are ways you can help too. Men can be an important source of support for their partners before and during pregnancy. Since both your health and your partner’s health will affect the health of your child, you can find ways to be healthy together. Once you have a child, you can also keep your family healthy by being a supportive partner and father.