All relationships go through stages and itâs unrealistic to expect everything to be a bed of roses all of the time.

However, if the following elements are in place, the relationship should remain healthy:

  1. The man is actively deepening the woman’s love, respect and attraction over time, rather than taking her for granted.
  2. The man has purpose in life and is rising through the levels of his true potential as a man, rather than hiding from it behind the woman.
  3. Both the man and woman are able to love each other fearlessly, rather than loving each other in an insecure manner where they always try to protect their heart.
  4. Both the man and the woman are genuinely committed to growing as a couple and creating a future together.
  5. Both the man and the woman have the same type of long term goals for the relationship and are excited whenever they make any progress towards those goals together.
  6. There is a clear masculine and feminine dynamic in the relationship (i.e. the man is clearly the man and the woman is clearly the woman, rather than the man and woman being equal in their expression of masculinity and femininity), which ensures that the sexual desire for each other doesn’t die.

In your attempts to understand what makes for a healthy relationship, it’s also helpful to look at where things often go wrong…

Common Problem 1: Living in Each Otherâs Pockets

Living in each otherâs pockets and being practically joined at the hip is not what makes a healthy relationship. Unfortunately, a lot of couples fall into this trap and they seem to think that spending every waking moment together is what âtogethernessâ is all about.

For some guys, this means not having any individual interests out with the relationship, and not spending any time with friends unless their girlfriend comes along. This is not healthy.

Firstly, âtogethernessâ does not necessitate being physically together at all times, it means feeling connected emotionally as well as physically, and itâs a connection that can only be made when both parties are on the same wavelength in terms of what they want out of the relationship.

Secondly, not having any individual interests will eventually lead to both parties feeling suffocated by the relationship. Unless youâre able to do your own thing, youâre unable to grow as a person, and without individual growth, your relationship canât continue to grow â it stagnates.

A good example of this came from a guy called Alex who contacted The Modern Man for advice on how to get his sex life back on track. Heâd been living with his girlfriend for just over six months and his sex life had taken a dive from once or twice every day to once a week if he was âlucky.â

Well, the first thing that needed addressing was that Alex should not be feeling âluckyâ to be having sex on his girlfriendâs terms, it should really be the other way around.

When a man creates and maintains the ideal sexual dynamic in a relationship, his woman will feel more than lucky to be having sex with him â and sheâs going to be wanting it more than once a week.

When Alex and his girlfriend first moved in together, they effectively shut themselves off from the rest of the world in their own little âloved upâ cocoon.

They stopped hanging out with their friends and doing the individual stuff they used to do, choosing instead to stay in and snuggle up on the sofa every evening or only go to social events together as a couple.

To make matters worse, they also met up every day for lunch as their workplaces were just a short walking distance apart.

In Alexâs words, he described his relationship as âvery closeâ and his girlfriend as his âsoul mateâ because they were able to hang out and do everything together, without having to be around anyone else. Too much âtogether timeâ and the consequent lack of opportunity to grow as individuals was suffocating the life out of their relationship.

Eventually, they had nothing new to talk about; they had no time alone to discover anything new about themselves as individuals, and the relationship was becoming stale as a result. 

The bottom line was that Alexâs girlfriend was becoming less interested in sex because she was beginning to see him as more of a âfriendâ than a boyfriend.

Common Problem 2: Being Equals in Everything

Time and again we hear from guys who want to know why their relationship is not as happy as it once was when theyâve been doing everything by the book. Well, it all comes down to which book they’ve been learning from…!

Unfortunately, it has become quite a popular belief that âmodernâ couples should share all relationship responsibilities on a 50/50 basis.

This is based on the fact that itâs now normal for both men and women to have full-time jobs, so both of them should do their fair share of household chores etc.

Itâs a theory that sounds good on paper, but the reality is that it doesnât create a healthy relationship in practice.

To create the ideal relationship dynamic, a man and a woman need to have their own roles within the relationship.

Now, before you start complaining that this all sounds a little too 1950s and not relevant to modern life, consider the fact that recent research has proved that ârole sharingâ makes it 50% more likely that a relationship will fail or end in divorce.

Statistics show that when men take on traditionally female roles and vice versa, relationship breakdowns are 50% more likely than in relationships where men are men and women are women, so to speak.

The reason for this is simple: Women want to be in a relationship with a man that they describe as a âreal man.â

A man going by the âmodernâ idea of shared responsibility is a man who in a sense becomes less masculine and more feminine, and the same can be applied to women as they become more masculine and less feminine.

This upsets the all-important balance in sexual chemistry and the end result is less sex.

Maintain a Healthy Relationship By Embracing Your Role as the Man

The answer to the question of what makes a healthy relationship is really quite simple.

It takes a man with strong, alpha male characteristics to lead the way and to allow a woman to relax into feeling like a woman to create a healthy relationship dynamic.

When you accept your masculine role in the relationship, you allow yourself to create the ideal sexual dynamic between you and your woman and you create a stronger, happier, and healthier relationship as a result.