You may not realize it, but you either live by a healthy relationship pattern or an unhealthy one. You can also call the two possibilities either the wellness model or disease model in relationships.
Clinical psychologist, Ryan Howes, Ph.D., shares that we too often think in terms of the disease model or pathology when we consider mental health, in his article, “8 More Reasons to Go to Therapy.”
In other words, we commonly have to get sick or unhealthy before we seek appropriate help. Howes challenges the cultural norm on that and replaces it with something much better.
“Indeed, therapy is effective for helping painful experiences become tolerable. It’s a proven method for changing harmful thinking, relational, and behavioral patterns. But it’s also used to make good lives great,” says Howe.
“Making good lives great” is a fitting description of the wellness or healthy relationship model while focusing on solving problems after they cause pain would describe the disease or unhealthy model.
One way of living prevents “fires” as a couple while the other often waits until there’s a raging fire before something’s done about a problem.
What an Unhealthy Relationship Looks Like (Sickness Model)
If you live by the sickness model as a couple, you struggle to envision what a healthy relationship looks like. You only seek help when things are really bad. When you know what hits the fan, as the saying goes.
You have the sit-down-and-talk times after an unusually bad fight, following a big betrayal of trust or when you’re talking about splitting up. You go to counseling when your relationship is in cardiac arrest.
Please don’t feel judged if this is you. That certainly isn’t the goal here.
Rather, the aim is to recognize whether this is you so you can work at making things better. And please be encouraged to know that things can get much better.
The sickness model is just the natural way to go. There are so many demands in your life that you often don’t pay adequate attention to things unless there are big-time pressure points.
The problem with this model is that your relationship can become really unhealthy and splintered by the time you seek help. Sometimes the damage sustained is so bad that both people in a relationship question whether it’s possible to put all the pieces back together again.
But there’s a much better way and that better way leads to a vibrant, healthy relationship.
What a Healthy Relationship Looks Like (Wellness Model)
Couples who practice the wellness model regularly do “preventative maintenance” on their relationship. Most of the time, they create solutions to problems before they surface.
It’s a mental health preventative model just like eating healthy and exercising are a physical health model.
These couples go on dates to communicate about their finances before there are problems. Wellness-model couples put strategies in place to prevent big fights.
They compliment each other and look out for each other. It’s just a perspective change, really.
Wellness-model couples pursue therapy together to make a happy relationship even happier. They seek the help of a trusted professional to talk about their relationship and constantly improve it.
A good therapist further enables this couple to recognize potential blind spots in their relationship so they can be addressed and improved upon.
Wellness-model couples generally are fulfilled in their relationship while sickness-model couples can be pretty miserable.
So, Do You Want a Healthy Relationship or an Unhealthy One?
You may be thinking, “that’s a dumb question.” But each day we have the ability to choose which kind of couple we want to be. We can decide between a healthy relationship or the opposite.
While a healthy relationship is a little more effort ahead of time, it’s far less work later. An unhealthy relationship, on the other hand, requires little to no time up front but, boy, is it tough later on.
You know that little saying that, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?”
That’s so true when it comes to relationships.
Your relationship is far less likely to fail if you practice the wellness model in your relationship. It’ll be quite surprising if your relationship fails, in this case, actually.
With the sickness model, too often, it’s just a matter of time until the relationship crumbles. Your quality of life is really lousy all the way up until things finally implode, too.
Regardless of which category you fall into as a couple, you can greatly benefit from couples’ therapy. And don’t think for a minute that your relationship can’t improve!