Is Our Relationship Healthy? A Couples Self-Assessment Guide
Updated: Oct 5
You can run a household together and still feel painfully alone in your relationship. The bills get paid. Someone remembers picture day. You discuss what is for dinner. But you cannot remember the last conversation that left you feeling close.
Or maybe you still talk plenty. You just keep having the same argument, and neither of you understands how a question about the dishwasher turned into another miserable evening.
If you are wondering whether your relationship is healthy, look at what happens when you need each other, disagree, or get hurt. The questions below can help you notice where things are working and where you are struggling. This is a guide for reflection, not a validated test or a diagnosis.
What does a healthy relationship look like?
Healthy relationships have room for disagreement. You can be upset with your partner and still trust that your feelings matter to them. You can say no, ask for something, or admit that you are struggling without expecting to be punished for it.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), the approach I use with couples, focuses on the emotional bond between partners and the patterns that leave them disconnected. It is a research-supported approach grounded in attachment theory. ICEEFT explains the model here.
Here are a few things to pay attention to:
Can you reach each other? When you are worried or hurt, can you tell your partner what is happening?
Does your partner respond with care? They do not have to agree with everything you say to take you seriously.
Do you still show interest in each other? Is there curiosity, affection, or a wish to spend time together beyond keeping life running?
Can you repair after a fight? Can you acknowledge what hurt, take responsibility, and do something differently afterward?
Nobody gets all of this right all the time. Look at what usually happens, and whether both of you are willing to address the parts that hurt.
7 signs your relationship may need attention
You do not need to check several boxes to justify getting help. One problem can be serious enough on its own. As you read, think of a recent example rather than trying to give your whole relationship a passing or failing grade.
1. The same argument keeps happening
You have had this fight before. Maybe dozens of times. The topic changes: money, sex, parenting, who does what around the house. But you can practically recite what each of you will say next.
One person pushes harder. The other gets defensive or goes quiet. Or both of you get louder until someone gives up.
The practical disagreement may be real. An unfair division of work does not stop being unfair because there is an emotional pattern around it. But if every attempt to address it ends the same way, you also need to understand what keeps happening between you.
Ask yourself: When a disagreement ends, have we understood anything new or agreed on a change? Or have we just run out of energy?
In couples therapy in Joplin, we work on those repeated exchanges so you have a better chance of dealing with the issue you were trying to discuss.
2. You feel more like roommates than partners
You can coordinate a week of school pickups and work schedules, then sit down together on Friday night and have very little to say.
You know your partner's schedule, but you are less sure what they are worried about, looking forward to, or missing. You may still care deeply about each other and feel lonely anyway.
Less sex or affection does not, by itself, tell you whether a relationship is healthy. Illness, exhaustion, medication, pain, and different preferences can affect intimacy. What matters here is whether the distance troubles either of you and whether you can talk about it with care.
Ask yourself: Do we make room for each other as people, or mostly as the person who helps get everything done?
3. One partner pushes for a conversation and the other pulls away
One of you wants to talk now. The other wants the conversation to stop.
The more urgently the first person tries to get a response, the more the second person retreats. Then the retreat makes the first person even more upset.
In EFT, this is often described as a pursuer–withdrawer pattern. Reaching harder can be an attempt to get reassurance. Pulling back can be an attempt to avoid another fight or the feeling of getting everything wrong. Those are possibilities to explore, not motives to assume. You may also switch positions depending on the subject.
Understanding the pattern does not excuse hurtful behavior. Each person is still responsible for what they do.
Ask yourself: What do I do when I feel hurt or overwhelmed, and what happens between us next?
4. Arguments include mockery, humiliation, or disgust
There is a difference between being frustrated about something your partner did and treating your partner as beneath you.
Sneering, cruel sarcasm, name-calling, and mocking a vulnerability deserve attention. The Gottman Institute describes these behaviors as expressions of contempt. That does not make one bad argument a prediction of divorce. It does mean repeated humiliation should not be shrugged off as “just how we fight.”
Ask yourself: Can we disagree without attacking each other's worth? When we cross a line, do we own it and change what happens next?
5. You have stopped bringing your real concerns to your partner
You think about saying something, imagine how the conversation will go, and decide it is not worth it.
Perhaps you expect to be dismissed, corrected, or told that you are too sensitive. Perhaps you are so tired of fighting that silence feels easier.
Having friends, privacy, and support outside your relationship is healthy. The concern is feeling unable to bring important parts of your life to your partner because of how they respond.
Ask yourself: What have I stopped telling my partner, and what am I expecting would happen if I did?
6. Trust was broken and the hurt is still there
An affair can break trust. So can repeated lying, concealed spending, or promises that keep being made and broken.
Sometimes a couple agrees to “move on” while one partner is still trying to understand what happened. The subject disappears from conversation, but the hurt has not disappeared with it.
Repair requires accountability from the person who caused the harm. Looking at the relationship pattern does not make both partners responsible for a betrayal.
Ask yourself: Has the behavior changed? Can the hurt be discussed without pressure to get over it?
Affair recovery counseling gives couples a place to work through the impact of betrayal and what rebuilding trust would require.
7. You are avoiding a major difference about your future
You do not have to want all the same things. But some differences affect the life you are building together: children, money, faith, sex, where to live, or whether you both want to remain in the relationship.
Avoiding the subject can leave each person making plans based on a different assumption.
Ask yourself: Is there something important we keep postponing because we are afraid of what the other person will say?
Therapy can help you talk honestly about those differences. It cannot promise that every difference has a compromise both people can live with.
Is this a rough patch or a deeper problem?
There is no reliable calendar rule that sorts a relationship problem into “temporary” or “serious.”
Grief, illness, parenting demands, and financial strain can last a long time. A recent problem can also need immediate attention. Knowing what started the strain is useful, but it does not tell you how well the two of you are coping with it.
Try asking:
Can we acknowledge that we are struggling without immediately blaming each other?
Do we still have moments of warmth or relief together?
When one of us tries to repair, can the other receive it?
Have our attempts to change anything helped?
When the outside pressure eases, do we reconnect, or stay just as distant?
You can understand why things became difficult and still need help with what has happened between you.
If you are afraid of your partner
Threats, coercion, sexual pressure, violence, or fear of retaliation need a different response from an ordinary conflict pattern. You do not have to work through this guide together if speaking honestly could put you at risk.
Seek confidential support on your own. The National Domestic Violence Hotline explains why joint counseling can be unsafe in an abusive relationship. You can call 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.
What happens in a first couples therapy session?
An article cannot see what happens between you. In a session, I can hear from both of you, ask questions, and help you slow down an exchange that usually gets away from you.
At Radical Relationship Transformation, sessions are 90 minutes at $250, in person, with both partners present. I choose that length to give us room to hear both experiences and work with what happens in the conversation.
We begin looking at:
What brings you in and what each of you hopes will change.
What happens when a conversation turns painful.
What each person feels and expects in those moments.
How past experiences may shape the ways you respond now.
What still helps you feel close.
Whether couples work is a safe and appropriate fit.
My aim is for you to begin understanding the pattern and what we need to work on. Some things become clearer quickly; others take time to understand. We do not have to solve your whole relationship in the first appointment.
You can read more about what to expect at your first couples session.
When should you ask for help?
If you keep trying to address something and end up in the same painful place, you have a reason to ask for help.
That might mean arguments that are getting harsher, a betrayal you cannot work through, or a quiet distance that has started to feel permanent. It might mean one of you is considering leaving while the other thinks things are mostly fine.
You do not have to wait until both of you agree on how bad it is. You do need enough willingness from each person to participate in couples work. And if you have been struggling for years, that alone does not tell us what can change now.
If it feels safe, choose one question from this guide and tell your partner what came up for you. Give them room to have a different answer. If that conversation gets stuck too, bring it with you.
Work with Shira Hearn, LMFT
I work exclusively with couples at Radical Relationship Transformation, using Emotionally Focused Therapy. My office is in Webb City, serving the Joplin area.
Appointments are 90 minutes at $250, in person, with both partners present.
If you are tired of having the same conversation and getting nowhere, we can start there.
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If you are ready to get started, Schedule a Couples Therapy Appointment.
Call or text me at 417-768-9089, or email me at shira@radicalrelationshiptransformation.com.
