Healthy Relationships

Healthy Relationships: What do we want to transform from the generations before us, and what do we want relationships to feel like for the next generation?

There is no single picture of a healthy relationship. What feels like love, respect and commitment looks different across families, cultures, faiths and generations. However, at its heart, a healthy relationship is one built on consensual care.

Care that is offered freely, received willingly, and never used as a means of power over someone.

Healthy relationships aren’t flawless ones, either. We all argue, withdraw, say things we regret, and get things wrong. Unhealthy moments can exist even in relationships that are, at their root, loving and caring.

For some of us, the Tamil context has placed survival, image and reputation above healthy, respectful behaviour. Respect can blur into obedience, and shame around sex, relationships and bodies can take the place of honest, autonomy-strengthening conversation and education, leaving many of us without the words for our needs. A culture is made up of the relationships within it, and of our shared ideas about what is safe and unsafe, consensual and non-consensual, caring and controlling. The continuation of sexual violence tells us that things need to change.

To consider what ‘healthy’ means for us and what we want it to mean in our futures, we have to look at the difference between caring behaviour and harmful, controlling behaviour. Care leaves room for you to say no, to change your mind, to be fully yourself. Control does not. Care can look like repair after conflict, listening without pressure, respect for your independence and your choices, and encouragement to be yourself, whereas control looks like fear, manipulation, isolation, and boundaries being ignored.

Harm continues in spaces where consent and care are not part of everyday conversation. This can look like a “no” that doesn’t count and boundary-crossing that goes unnamed, or control and violence being called protection, jealousy being called love, and pressure being framed as loyalty.

For those of us who experienced care tangled up with control, a “healthy” relationship isn’t always simple to picture, and that makes sense. Picturing healthy, harm-free relationships can feel abstract, and may be especially hard for survivors, because care and control can look alike from the inside.

Part of the work is learning to associate care with safety, respect, consent and joy, rather than with fear, control or harm.

Across our lifetimes, we absorb messages about our worth: I am only loved if I …

• get the grades

• behave or present the ‘right’ way

• never complain or talk back

• protect others through my silence

• manage the emotions of the adults around me

These ideas settle so deeply into how we see ourselves that they can feel like part of who we are.

What do behaviours make us feel?

Safety tends to feel like calm, ease and relief, and like being free to disagree without fearing the reaction. A crossed boundary tends to feel like a tight chest, confusion, anxiety, or shutting down by freezing or fawning. These are nervous system responses, not weakness, and they are worth trusting.

“Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.”

– Bell Hooks, All About Love, 1999

Why this matters for survivors of childhood sexual abuse (CSA)

Surviving childhood sexual abuse can affect our trust, self-worth and how safe closeness feels. It can mean searching for unmet needs, finding conflict especially hard, or feeling that familiar patterns of harm are expected and normal. None of this is a personal failing; shame belongs to the abuse, not to the survivor.

At ANBU UK, we believe that survivors navigating harm do what they can, with what they have. We believe that whatever a survivor did to manage and survive harm was intelligent, and that what we notice about how care, safety, harm and control feel in our minds and bodies is valuable information as we move towards the healthy relationships we want.

Healthy Relationships Workshop

ANBU UK’s Healthy Relationships workshop is an interactive, survivor-centred session for Tamil communities and the organisations that support them. Participants explore how culture, identity and childhood trauma shape the way we understand consent, care and relationships, and how to recognise the difference between caring and controlling behaviour. Held in a safe, non-judgemental space where no one is expected to share personal experiences, it draws on participants’ own knowledge and strengths, honouring culture as a source of pride that can also change for the next generation.

To book the workshop or find out more, contact ask@anbu.org.uk.

This piece may have brought up many feelings. Please see the ANBU UK page for resources, grounding techniques, and signposting to charities and organisations with free resources and services to support you. 

Email ask@anbu.org.uk; find us on Instagram at @anbu.uk