The 10 Cs of Conscious, Healthy Relationships
This article was originally published on Soulaia.com. This version has been lightly updated to reflect my current understanding, work, and offerings while preserving the heart and core message of the original article.
Have you ever stopped to consider that all of life is relational? That everything we think, feel, say, and do– our sense of self, of power, of agency, and of truth– to some degree impacts and is impacted by others? There really is no way around it.
It makes sense then that we would devote time, effort, and attention to improving our relational ‘know-how’ and, in essence, to becoming better at relationships.
How can we become better at relationships?
Well, becoming better at anything begins with enhancing the level of intention and awareness that we bring to it– and this is no different for relationships. Whether platonic or romantic, relationships tend to flourish when we approach them with intention rather than running solely on habit or autopilot. When we become more conscious of how we communicate, connect, and respond to one another, we create the conditions for deeper intimacy, trust, and understanding to emerge. Over the years, I've found it helpful to think about these qualities as a framework I call the 10 Cs of Conscious Relationships.
Whether you’re currently in a relationship or are open to or seeking one for the future, take a moment right now to ask yourself, “What kind of relationship do I want?”, “What is the purpose of me and this person coming together?” and “Ideally, what does our experience of love look and feel like to me?” Though we are each unique and every relationship is different, there are themes of conscious relating that often contribute to healthier, more fulfilling connections regardless of your age, gender, cultural, religious, personal beliefs, and current life circumstances.
Here they are… The 10 Cs of Conscious Relationships.
1. Clearly and honestly speak your truth.
You may not be used to it but you’ve got to practice expressing your feelings, needs, and wants. No guessing games, no expectations or assumptions that the other person knows how you feel and/or knows what you want. As often as you can– even and especially when challenging experiences arise– communicate honestly and authentically. With direct and authentic communication, desires, and needs will be known and clear and the likelihood that they will be understood and responded to thoughtfully often increases. All relationships have challenges and it all comes down to knowing how to navigate them. Communicating honestly about your feelings, needs, and desires with another person (upon, of course, practicing self-awareness and getting to intimately know what those are for you), coming out on the other side of a challenging experience unified and not taken down becomes a reality. I've written more about one of the most common patterns that creates distance in relationships in my article So Many Relationships End Because of THIS.
Build a foundation of safety and trust so that you can courageously and comfortably welcome vulnerability and share what you feel with the other person. Take a risk to express something that may not be popular or that may be in disagreement with what your partner thinks and feels but that is nevertheless true for you in the moment. Practice sharing your truth without apologizing for it beforehand or afterwards or defusing its significance with words like “nevermind” or statements like “oh, it’s not that important anyway”. Relationships often lose some of their vitality when we don't feel safe enough to fully express who we are. Our relationships need authenticity and vulnerability to thrive. If you want true intimacy (the hallmark sign of conscious relationship), then you’re going to have to get vulnerable.
2. Continuously show all of who you are, not just the parts you think your partner wants to see.
Ditch perfection. Get real with yourself so that you can see that it, in fact, doesn’t exist. Feigning perfection only leads you to be inauthentic, and relating from an inauthentic place is exhausting because it requires us to hide parts of ourselves in order to maintain connection.
Conscious relating means being yourself and not repressing parts of who you are to please your partner and earn their love. It also means letting your partner be wonderfully imperfect as they are and not expecting them to change to please you. With fewer expectations that anyone has to change in order to please the other, you can give yourself and one another the experience of feeling truly seen, truly known, and truly understood for who you are. You can relax into the freedom of authentic (emotional, physical, sexual, etc) self-expression, and the two of you can jointly relax into the freedom and authenticity of the relationship. If your heart wants to seek, tell it to seek connection over approval, and if your heart wants to yearn, tell it to yearn for authenticity over perfection. Whatever you do, stop trying to be perfect. Stop trying to make the relationship perfect. You’re not, and it isn’t. And perhaps that's part of what makes relationships meaningful in the first place.
3. Connect without interruption.
Be present. Give your partner the gift of your full attention. In this day and age, it is rare that our attention is not divided among the people who are physically present with us and the phone calls, texts, emails, and social media posts that are all often happening simultaneously in our digital social world. By giving your partner your undivided attention, you indirectly let them know “You are my priority” and “I want to know and understand you fully... hence I give you my full attention”. Few things feel more meaningful than knowing that someone wants to truly know and understand us.
Connecting with your partner without distraction also has the potential to prevent a lot of misunderstanding that happens as a function of divided attention. When you’re distracted, it’s unlikely that you’re listening well. Being undistracted doesn’t guarantee that you will listen well, but it certainly lays the foundation for doing so. Being fully present, we can listen with the intent to really hear and understand the other person, rather than to simply hear what we want to hear. Being fully present, we can also ask for clarity and explanation when we recognize we need it. To consciously create intimacy, we’ve got to really be in each moment together.
4. Create an environment that honors boundaries.
Conscious relating flourishes when each partner sets limits to what is and is not okay for the relationship based on their own values, needs, and preferences. If needs and standards are not known, it becomes impossible for them to be met. So take a moment to consider what is and is not okay with you, what actions and behaviors you will and won’t tolerate, and what standards are important for you that the relationship be built on.
You can create boundaries around anything that is important to you and that you want to make sure is honored by the relationship. For example, you may emphasize that your relationship with yourself comes first, that you are not open to lengthy text conversations, and/or that devoting time to your friendships is just as important as devoting time to your relationship. Whatever your standards and boundaries are, own them and make them known. Similarly, honor the boundaries and standards your partner makes known. Let your boundaries and those of your partner evolve as they and you do. Healthy boundaries can be an act of love– they allow you to put systems of understanding in place so that you can connect with your partner while still having your own sense of self intact. In fact, as Prentius Hemphill so beautifully says, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously”. And that, right there, is a beautiful thing.
“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” - Prentius Hemphill
5. Choose to take responsibility.
When you are relating unconsciously and something goes wrong, one person usually gains the title of “person to blame” and the other, “the victim”. When you are relating consciously, you recognize that you are equals and that these sorts of power struggles are unnecessary. Instead, you practice taking responsibility for your own emotions, needs, and healing while recognizing that relationships are also spaces of mutual care, support, and repair.
Most people are too busy focusing on what their partner isn’t “doing right” and taking score of their partner’s less-than-ideal tendencies to notice their own. Most relationships are busy repeating old patterns of blame, keeping the relationship stuck in the past, rather than letting self-responsibility pave the way to a better future together. You don’t have to be like most people. You don’t have to create a relationship that is like most people’s. Personal responsibility is a choice, and you can choose it at any moment. Most of us move back and forth between noticing our partner's role and reflecting on our own. Conscious relating invites us to become curious about both. Working on me is fundamental to working on we, and healthier relationships are built when we learn to look inward at our own patterns with the same honesty and curiosity that we look outward at our partner's.
Working on me is fundamental to working on we.
6. Conflict? Face and embrace it. Don’t avoid it.
What sets a conscious relationship apart from other relationships? Whereas most other relationships begin with the lofty goal of satisfying personal needs and desires, conscious relationships often create opportunities for both individual and mutual growth.
Consider then whether conflict might also hold opportunities for understanding, repair, and growth... an opportunity to practice a healthy and functional form of disagreement. Use each interaction with your partner to explore and experiment with new ways of relating. The truth is that relational growth doesn’t happen overnight– it is a series of uncomfortable conversations, followed by progress, conflict, more uncomfortable conversations and situations, more conflict, and then progress again.
7. Co-create true intimacy and passion by going deep.
Get to know the depths of who you are, the shadow and the light. Get to know the depths of who your partner is, their shadow and their light. Discover both the things they’ve accepted and rejected within themselves, and let them discover the same about you. Let your insecurities be seen, and notice, with immense love and acceptance, as the insecurities of your partner surface naturally in day-to-day life. Take the time to learn your partner’s heart and how they got to be who they are. Let them learn yours. Commit to looking at the hard stuff and to sharing your wants, needs, and truths as honestly as you can. And. as you feel safe and ready, invite your partner to point out to you things that you may not be able or willing to see in yourself, and if invited to do the same for them. Bring it all to the surface. Over time, these moments can become the building blocks of deeper intimacy.
True intimacy, it turns out, is much less about living in fairytale bliss and meeting the ideal of how happy, how long, and how full of passion and romance a relationship should be, and much more about embracing the shadows, the lessons, and the messiness of being human and choosing to grow and evolve together through the depths of it all. Sometimes it's in this messiness that deeper connection and intimacy emerge.
8. Consider where parts of you that are hurt by the other person are stuck in the past.
When you notice that you feel triggered by the other person, dig in, feel your emotions, and follow the emotion to its source. Emotions, after all, are messengers and tuning in to them allows us to become aware of our core wounds (e.g., abandonment, rejection, betrayal, unworthiness, feeling trapped) that still live inside us so that we can acknowledge and healthily work with them. Ask yourself, “Where in life did this feeling of hurt that I am experiencing first arise?” and “How can I care for that version of myself that was hurt before and that continues to feel hurt in similar situations and ways today?” The more you look to yourself, the less tempted you will be to look to your partner as the cause when these triggers arise.
Our present-day partner may sometimes activate wounds that existed long before the relationship. The more open we are to acknowledging and understanding our own hurts, traumas, and triggers, and the more open we are to acknowledging and holding space for our partner’s hurts, traumas, and triggers (this is where #7 comes in to play), the more readily we can move from hurt to healing. We can learn to recognize moments where we may be projecting our past onto our future and we can meet ourselves with love and compassion instead of blame, shame, and/or the temptation to pull away. We can lovingly witness ourselves and be lovingly witnessed by our partner in our past hurt, and we can bear witness to our partner in theirs. One of the beautiful things about life is that we can continue to learn, heal, and evolve throughout our lives. You aren’t defined by your past and your relationship isn’t either.
9. Cultivate open-hearted playfulness.
Conscious relating can be an endeavor we take on seriously, and it can simultaneously be an experience we engage in playfully. When we connect through playfulness, humor, and fun, we build connection in the pure ways that we did in our early years, where connection often felt easier, more spontaneous, and less constrained by expectations. The same is possible in our adult years, and playfulness helps us get there.
To engage a more playful attitude within your relationship, simply ask yourself, “How can I be more easy-going and light-hearted about the things I tend to take seriously day to day?”, “Where is there space for me to engage some spontaneity?”, and “What would it look like for me and for us to be intimately playful whether out on a hike, in eating dinner, or while exploring our connection in the bedroom?” In the early years of a relationship, playfulness and ease are a natural byproduct of the hormonal highs we experience; as the relationship progresses, it is playfulness that can keep the relationship flowing with pleasure, connection, and desire for a long time to come.
10. Celebrate your differences.
You know the ways in which you and your partner are similar and the values that you share– that’s why you got together and became (platonic or romantic) partners in the first place. As the ways in which you are different emerge, and the ways in which your values do not agree reveal themselves, don’t run. Welcome them. Work with them. Dare to be together yet individually different. Honor the differences that exist among you. Honor each other as exquisite individuals. Let the relationship allow for individual expression and for the natural conflict that is likely to emerge (and that we explored in #6) as you navigate what joy looks like for you as individuals and as a couple. See if you can learn to see conflict as an opportunity to honor differences, learn, and grow. Enjoy and feel nourished by each other’s company, prioritize fun, and the rest often becomes easier to navigate together.
Our relationships with others are shaped, in part, by the relationship we have with ourselves. The more self-awareness, compassion, honesty, and responsibility we bring to our own inner world, the more capacity we often have to create those same qualities within our relationships. If your relationship with yourself is a work in progress, you're not alone. Most of us are learning as we go. It’s why I created Happy from the Inside Out®, a place for learning to recognize our patterns, understand our triggers, and relate to ourselves with greater awareness and compassion. And if you'd like more personalized support creating more intentional, connected relationships — whether with a partner, a friend, a family member, or even yourself — I also offer one-on-one support.
Because healthy relationships aren't built by finding the perfect person. They're built through countless small moments of honesty, repair, curiosity, playfulness, and choice.
