According to Margaret Paul, Phd. bestselling author and relationship expert, thereare 6 healthy reasons to be in a relationship. First, she stated that there are a number of UN-healthy reasons to be connected to someone and she advises us toavoid these traps. (I’ll get to those a little later.)

1. To Share Love and Caring

There is a huge difference between wanting to get love and desiring to share love. The unhealthy reason above indicates that the person is abandoning themselves — that they have not yet learned to love and value themselves. When you take responsibility for doing the inner work to learn to love and value yourself, you become filled up with love to share, and it is fulfilling to share your love with a partner. Caring about another person feels very rewarding when you are also caring about yourself. One of the greatest joys in life is the sharing of love, and two people who love and value themselves and share their love and caring with each other are able to experience this deep joy and intimacy.

2. To Learn and Grow

Relationships offer a wonderful arena to heal old fears and insecurities that we acquired in childhood. When two people enter a relationship with the desire to learn and grow with each other, they can help each other to heal the rejection, abandonment and engulfment issues that each may have. Our partner can do this with us, but not for us. Both people in the relationship need to be open to taking responsibility for their own feelings and healing, and then they can help and support each other in their learning and healing process.
3. To Be There to Support Each Other

Most of us need a reliable person — someone to fall back on — when we are having a hard time. We also need a cheerleader — someone who supports us in being all we can be. Loving partners can learn to provide this for each other. While it is important to learn to take loving responsibility for our own feelings, we don’t need to do this alone. In fact, it is not desirable to do it alone. Being social beings, we need others who love and care about us to be there for us and to help us see what is true for us and what is best for us.Not only can a relationship provide emotional support, it can also help to provide financial support. Many of us feel safer when we don’t have to provide everything ourselves — when we have each other to rely on, both emotionally and financially.

4. To Share Companionship and Fun

Loneliness is a very hard feeling. We are not meant to live alone. In times past, people lived in family systems in supportive and caring communities. While now we often do not live near family or in caring communities, we can create this companionship and fun with a partner. It is generally much more fun to do things with a partner than to be always doing them alone.

5. To Have Children and Create a Loving Family

For those people who want children, it is generally better for the children, and more fulfilling, to raise children in partnership. While parenting can be deeply satisfying, it’s also often challenging, and being able to share the challenges as well as the joys with a partner is a wonderful thing to do.

6. To Create a Safe and Loving Sexual Relationship

Casual sex can become tedious, as well as challenging regarding STDs. People who love each other and are in a committed relationship have the opportunity to be creative and sexually free with a loving partner. Sex in a loving and committed relationship can provide many things — intimacy, passion, fun, safety and comfort, to name a few.

This is taken from an article im the Huffington Post, dated 09/19/2013

OK, now that you’ve heard from a leading expert on relationships, let me throw in my two cents worth of advice – Just don’t. now let me explain.

Just don’t think that a relationship with someone is going to solve all your problems. It won’t. In fact, it can create new ones that can draw you together or tear you apart. I have 2 friends who lived together for 4 years. Then they decided to get married. Praise the Lord! Right? Well, not exactly. They got divorced a year later and now never even talk to one another. They tried to stuff their life and habits into a ‘marriage’ so that their friends would be happy. Now their friends have to decide who to side with after the divorce. Not cool!

The problem with trying to fit the world’s plan for happiness into your Christian life is that somewhere along the way you’re going to have to choose God’s way, or the cultural norm.

The cultural norm says you can be happy with a partner of any gender, any background, any faith, any moral and ethical code, as long as you are committed to each other. Would you start a business with just anyone if your livelihood depended on it? I hope not. You’d want to know HOW this relationship was going to work out down the road. You’d want to know WHY that other person responds they way they do to things in life. You’d want to know WHAT you could do if there was a disagreement and WHO to turn to that you could both agree to accept advice from in a dispute. That’s smart business. But how many of us rush into relationship without ever thinking through any of the long term issues that can surface?

How many young couples fall in ‘lust’ and then spend their relationship trying to reconcile the differences?

When I meet my future wife I was attracted to her for sure. Duh! She was hot! But I soon learned that beautiful woman was also smart, witty, fun to talk to and…. a real Christian. It wasn’t a secret that her faith was important to her. (Ladies, if you have to hide your faith from the guy you like, you’re in for trouble. And guys, if you find a girl who’s more committed to her church and Bible study group than you…. you may have found ‘the one.’

My wife and I were virgins when we got married. Don’t say it was easier back then because you’re wrong. We had friends who smoked weed, did drugs, drank and had sex regularly, and we went to a Christian college! We didn’t. So just don’t!

You NEED relationships in school. Just don’t build them the wrong way. Some of my closest friends are from college. We were all going through very similar things and we created a community away from home. That’s important. Just build healthy relationships that are centered around your faith in Christ. Yes, centered around that. You need non-Christian friends too. After all, aren’t you supposed to be sharing your faith in college? I’m just saying that if you want a life that pays dividends down the road, build it on the right foundation.

1. Be honest with your friends – you can’t build meaningful relationship on lies and half truths.
2. Be compassionate – no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. That is true about your faith and your relationships.
3. Be forgiving and expect forgiveness – if you’ve hurt someone, find them and fix it. No amount of humiliation will equal the destruction we cause when we choose revenge over remorse and repentance.
4. Be willing to forgive yourself too. I recently spoke with a college student who was involved in some sexual relationships she knew were destructive to her. She felt like she had already messed up so there was no going back. Respect yourself and forgive yourself if you’ve made somemistakes in the past.
Psalm 103:11-13 says, …11For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him. 12As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. 13Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the LORD has compassion on those who fear Him….
5. Be a mentor – you would be amazed at how gratifying it is to help someone else expecting nothing in return. Those feelings of loneliness tend to fade away when our thoughts are turned to helping and serving others.
Matthew 6: 31-34 sums it up: 31“Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ 32“For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34“So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
6. Be confident – If God is real and His Word is true, you WILL, in God’stime, find that special someone and you can be EXTRAORDINARILY happy for life! You won’t have a trouble free life with your God ordained mate, but you won’t be working through mounds of trouble you would have created for yourself by building a plan outside of God’s will for you. Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!
Relationships. Who needs them? We all do, and I’m praying that God blesses each of you with friends, family and possibly a mate someday, who can encourage you to grow deeper in your walk with God! There is an old song by Wayne Watson called “Two Loves.” The chorus goes like:
Oh, if Jesus takes over the heart of your love
When it comes to the needs of a man
If she’s given her first love away
She can love you like nobody can
Like nobody can
I’m praying that God richly blesses you this year at school!