A companion post to Episode 16 of the Chicana Therapist Podcast
In our last episode, we talked about bare-minimum relationships…where that pattern comes from, how it gets normalized, and why so many of us have accepted it without question. But naming what’s not love only gets us halfway there. If bare minimum isn’t the standard, what actually is?
That’s the question at the center of Episode 16. I give you something to reflect on as you build, or rebuild your relationship, with intention (Ojo, not a checklist to grade your relationship against).
The Myths We Inherited
Before we can talk about what healthy looks like, we have to name what a lot of us were taught to call love, even though it wasn’t.
Jealousy got called as devotion. Big, dramatic conflict got called passion. The absence of any boundaries got called closeness. We were told love should feel effortless, that giving yourself up for someone proves how much you care, and that making someone chase you is the real test of whether they’re serious.
None of that is love. It’s control dressed up as care, volatility mistaken for depth, enmeshment mistaken for intimacy, self-erasure mistaken for devotion, and games mistaken for romance. A lot of this lives inside the popular “toxico/toxica” trope…funny in memes, dangerous when it becomes the actual template for how we treat the people we love.
So What’s Left, Once You Strip All That Away?
Quite a lot, actually, and it’s less flashy than what gets sold to us, but far more sustainable.
Communication that doesn’t require you to brace yourself first. You should be able to say “I felt hurt when you said that” and be met with curiosity instead of defensiveness. You should be able to ask directly for what you need, “I need you to check in on me today”, instead of hinting and hoping someone reads your mind.
Shared values, respected differences. You don’t need to want identical things to be compatible. What matters is alignment on what’s important, and genuine respect, not mockery or minimization, where you differ.
Conflict that moves toward repair, not toward winning. Healthy couples still argue. The difference is someone can say “I was wrong” without it costing them something, and after a fight, someone circles back instead of letting resentment sit and calcify.
Boundaries that don’t get punished. You can say no. You can ask for a night alone. You can have friendships and interests outside the relationship without it being treated as a threat.
Interdependence, not codependence. You can lean on your partner and also stand on your own. You can want someone without needing to collapse into them to feel whole.
Consistency over grand gestures. It’s less about the big birthday surprise and more about the small, repeated, unglamorous stuff…checking in during a hard week, following through without being reminded twice, remembering the little things that make someone feel seen.
Room to grow. People change. Careers shift, therapy happens, we become different versions of ourselves over time. A healthy relationship bends to hold that instead of demanding everyone stay frozen to keep the peace.
No mind games. No rage-baiting to provoke a reaction. No silent treatment. No sarcasm standing in for an honest conversation. No keeping score. Healthy love doesn’t require you to decode your partner, and it shouldn’t require them to decode you.
It’s quieter than what gets sold to us. It doesn’t make for viral content. And if you’re used to chaos, it might even feel a little boring at first, which brings us to the harder truth underneath all of this.
Building Something You’ve Never Seen
How many of us actually watched a healthy relationship up close growing up? Not one that simply lasted, or looked fine from the outside, but one with real communication, real repair, real respect for two different people’s values.
For a lot of us, that number is small. Maybe even zero.
Most of what we know about being in relationship, we learned by watching. Nobody sat us down and explained it. We absorbed it. And if what we absorbed was silence instead of repair, or sacrifice instead of reciprocity, then healthy doesn’t come naturally. It has to be learned on purpose, often in real time, while we’re already inside the relationship we’re trying to change.
That’s why this takes intention instead of instinct. Your gut reaction in a hard moment was trained on what you saw…and if what you saw wasn’t healthy, that instinct might be exactly the thing you need to unlearn. Not because you’re flawed, but because it’s the lesson you were handed.
This is also why healthy can feel uncomfortable even when it’s good for you. If chaos or distance was your model for love, calm and consistency can feel foreign, even like something’s missing. That discomfort isn’t always a red flag. Sometimes it just means your nervous system hasn’t caught up to the fact that you’re finally somewhere safe.
Questions to Sit With
Not to score yourself or grade your relationship, just to reflect on, in your own time:
- Did you ever witness a genuinely healthy relationship up close growing up? If not, where did your picture of love come from instead?
- When things get hard, what’s your instinct — shut down, provoke, go silent? Where do you think that came from, and is it actually serving you now?
- Are you mistaking calm for boring, or chaos for chemistry?
- Do you and your partner actually share what matters most? In the places you differ, do you feel respected or do you feel like you have to shrink?
- If you’ve caught yourself playing games — testing, rage-baiting, the silent treatment — what are you really trying to get? Is there a more direct way to ask for it?
The Takeaway
Healthy was never going to look like what we were sold. It’s not jealousy, chaos, sacrifice, or games. It’s communication that doesn’t require bracing for impact. It’s repair that actually happens. It’s boundaries that get respected instead of punished. It’s two people who share what matters most and honor each other in the places they don’t.
Healthy isn’t a feeling you’re just supposed to know. It’s a practice built on purpose, through honest conversation and real repair. If you didn’t get a blueprint, you’re not behind. You just get to start drawing your own.
Listen to the full episode of the Chicana Therapist Podcast here, and sign up for the newsletter at TheChicanaTherapist.com for updates on new episodes, blog posts, and upcoming local and international events. Follow along on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.