How to Build a Healing Relationship That Lasts

A Video That Healed Me

The other day I came across a video that healed something deep inside me.

A woman was diagnosed with depression. She had no appetite and no motivation. Every day she locked herself in her room, and more than once, dark thoughts crossed her mind.

Her husband, meanwhile, got up early every morning to make her breakfast, reminded her to eat properly, and then headed off to work. Throughout the day, he’d send her countless messages asking whether she’d eaten, whether she’d slept — even though she almost never replied. In the evening, he’d bring home the foods she used to love, racking his brain to surprise her.

She still couldn’t find any joy, and she kept blaming herself: “I’m so tired.” “Am I just useless?” “Am I holding you back?”

And every time, he would stroke her head, hold her, and soothe her gently: “It’ll get better.” “How could you be?” “It’s okay.”

Late one night, she asked him through sobs: “You must be exhausted too. So why do you always stay with me?”

He told her that when he first started university, he couldn’t climb out of the shadow of failing the college entrance exam. That period was the hardest, most desperate time of his life. It was she who stayed by his side — chatting with him, eating with him, watching movies with him, making him laugh… slowly piecing his broken soul back together, piece by piece.

“If it hadn’t been for you back then, I don’t think I’d have made it out.”

The girl cried, and the two of them held each other tightly.

Watching it, I envied them deeply. A good relationship is one of mutual redemption and mutual healing. A healing partner is like an angel sent by God — if you meet one, you are truly lucky.

But more importantly, we must not only learn to receive, but we must also learn to give.

Today, Xinli001 would like to talk with you about how to create a long-lasting, loving “healing relationship.”

Can Someone From an Unhappy Family Become a “Healing Partner”?

Psychological research has found that the family we grow up in is the first place where we learn about emotions and how to relate to the opposite sex.

For some people, once they fall in love, their relationship with their partner starts to resemble the relationship their parents had closely. And some long-buried childhood wounds resurface completely in front of a partner, causing struggle and pain in the relationship.

That’s why we so often see people from unhappy families or difficult childhoods who believe: I don’t even dare enter a relationship, let alone become a “healing partner.”

But is that really true?

Maudie, the Douban 9.1-rated film, may offer you a different answer.

The film is adapted from the true story of Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis.

Maud’s childhood and youth were spent amid ridicule and hardship. She contracted polio, which deformed her limbs; she walked hunched over, with a limp. The locals called her “the lame bird.”

After her parents died, her brother secretly sold the house their mother had left behind, and Maud lost her home entirely. To survive, she took a job as a housekeeper.

But her employer, Everett, was eccentric and ill-tempered. Whenever he was upset, he took it out on Maud: “There’s no room here for lazy people. I don’t want a crippled woman…” When he saw her feeding the dog, he shouted at her and “taught” her the rules of the house: “In this house, it’s me first, then the dog, then the chickens, and you last…”

Maud was hurt, but she didn’t resent him for it.

Instead, at mealtimes she’d ask with care: “Is it good? You must be tired today. Business must be hard…” And while they worked together, she’d praise him again and again: “You’re so good at what you do…”

Maud understood that Everett, for all his tough and forceful exterior, was inwardly extremely fragile. Having grown up in an orphanage, he was deeply insecure and found it very hard to form connections with others. He longed for intimacy, yet feared it.

Little by little, Maud broke through Everett’s defenses — and slowly earned his appreciation and his love.

On their wedding night, the two held each other tightly and mused:

“We’re like a pair of odd socks…”

“I’m the stretched-out, misshapen one, full of holes, stubborn and sullen.”

“And I’m the plain white cotton one…”

“No — you’ll be sapphire blue. Canary yellow.”

Two unhappy people on the margins of society came together, largely because Maud saw Everett and healed him.

So the first step in creating a healing relationship is this: believing that even if your family of origin was unhappy, even if you have been wounded, you are still capable of healing someone else — and you still have the chance to be healed by someone else.

Everyone comes out of a family of origin. The basic coloring of our personality and the state of our life today are closely tied to our past experiences.

But while the family you grew up in can influence you to a certain degree, it does not determine your whole life. Your parents only walk the first half of your journey with you. The road of the second half is still yours to choose.

How to Develop Your Own “Healing Qualities”

So why is it that Maud, despite being someone who suffered, could heal her partner?

Meeting a healing partner is a kind of luck. But “luck” by definition means not everyone gets to have it.

So more important than finding a healing partner is developing your own healing qualities.

These healing qualities can heal your partner — but first and foremost, they heal you. Love yourself well first, and only then can you love someone else well. Keep nurturing your inner world, get yourself into a better state, and you’ll find it much easier to have a “healing relationship.”

To do that, we may need to cultivate the following three psychological qualities.

1. A stable sense of self-worth

Maud was exceptionally good at painting, and she felt that painting was what she was meant to do.

So even after being abandoned by her brother and rejected by everyone around her, she never gave up on herself. Under her brush, the world was always full of beauty.

Because of this, her inner world remained rich, and her sense of self-worth stayed steady. In love, too, she insisted on being herself — while still respecting the other person.

So people with healing qualities must first have a stable source of self-worth, or a belief that they are capable of creating value.

Within the family, they can take on their responsibilities and play their part. Outside the family, when faced with setbacks, they can self-regulate and actively adapt to their circumstances.

So how do you build a sense of self-worth?

One crucial point: don’t fight against the parts of yourself you don’t like.​ That will only make you deny yourself more and more.

Instead, accept your imperfections, and seek out your own bright spots. Trust that some of the qualities others have, you have too — and that some of the qualities you have, others may not.

Slowly water that depleted inner self. Only then will you have enough left over to nourish a relationship.

2. A certain sense of “relaxation” (ease)

In a relationship, a partner needs to have a sense of ease.

A person who carries this ease can tolerate the unknown and won’t be easily shattered when something bad happens. Because of that, they won’t offload their anxiety and fear onto their partner through blame and attacks.

Life is always full of trivial annoyances and uncertainties, which is why it takes two people facing it together with positive emotions and a positive mindset.

People with this sense of ease are good at steering the relationship in a positive direction, eventually forming a relationship of mutual healing: being loved lightly by someone, and loving someone lightly in return.

So what if you’re not naturally a relaxed person?

Try cultivating “positive beliefs.”​ For example, say to yourself often, deep inside: “I am valuable.” “I am loved.”

Discover your strengths and resources — for instance: diligence, creativity, a willingness to help others… Look at what you already have: a healthy body, a stable job, hobbies and interests, good friends…

You can write all of these positive things down, and keep updating the list. Consciously tune in to the things that nourish you. As your inner world starts to feel better, that sense of ease will follow.

3. A strong capacity for “containment”

The term “containment” is one we use most often in the context of psychological counseling.

Good therapists generally have a strong capacity for containment. Only then can they hold all of a client’s emotions. A therapist must be able to contain whatever emerges — both in the client and in themselves — within the relationship, while maintaining a sound state of mind and responding in a positive way. The client needs to feel that they are held, permitted, and accepted.

This is also a crucial point in intimate relationships.

A partner with good containment has something like a solid container within. They can steady their own emotions and, at the same time, free up extra space to hold their partner’s negative emotions. This is the process of being contained.

Later, I learned from my own therapist that my weak capacity for containment came from this: my emotions were often ignored by my parents when I was little.

The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion believed that in the earliest stage of life, a person is not yet able to process their own feelings and emotions. This requires parents to receive the various signals a child sends out, perceive the child’s emotions, translate them into information the child can understand, and send it back — so that the child gradually learns the containment capacity.

So what do you do if you lack containment?

Psychologically speaking, containment can still be redeveloped after childhood through good relationships.

On the one hand, it allows you to project the wounds you suffered in past relationships onto the new one. This gives you the chance to have a relational experience different from before, and to feel accepted and understood.

On the other hand, from people who themselves have good containment, you can also learn how they handle their own emotions.

Of course, not everyone is obligated to be someone else’s “emotional container.” So once the emotional load exceeds what you and the people around you can bear, it’s time to seek professional help.

A therapist will help you integrate the fragments of your emotions, further help you integrate and develop yourself, and strengthen your containment capacity.

Making yourself a more stable, more accepting person is the foundation for making a relationship better.

A Healing Relationship Requires Effort From Both Sides

I once read a line: “Unhappy marriages are each unhappy in their own way, but happy marriages are all alike.”

To build a healing relationship, both people need to work at it together. The key lies in two things:

1. Allow the other person to be themselves

A person’s world is divided into two parts: the social domain, centered on work relationships, and the private domain, centered on intimate relationships.

These two domains each have their own core rules. The social domain runs on the rules of power, whose purpose is to fight over who has the final say. The private domain runs on the rules of cherishing​ — which means: I respect you as you truly are.

A healing partner is able to see the real other person, rather than forcing them to fit their own expectations.

This kind of holding, respect, and companionship that comes from the heart is the medicine that heals everything.

More importantly, we must not use love as an excuse to control and exploit the other person.

2. Both sides support each other

Psychologically speaking, mutual support between partners brings a stronger sense of trust, raises self-esteem and self-affirmation, and brings more happiness and fulfillment.