Relationship expert reveals the biggest green flag in a healthy relationship

What is the biggest green flag in a relationship? No, it's not how much you love each other. It’s certainly not about whether you fight. Is it trust? Or spark? Then what is it? Baya Voce, a relationship repair expert, says “relationship goals” are really about how you make up after a conflict.

When two different people share the same roof, disagreements and conflicts are bound to happen. But according to Voce, how one resolves them really matters. “The biggest sign of a healthy relationship? It's not how much you love each other, it's not how often you have sex, and it's not whether you fight. It's how you make up. That's the difference,” she said.
The expert opined that in healthy relationships, conflict doesn't feel like the end of the world. It feels like Tuesday. “You get off track and you both know how to come back. You can rupture and recover without one person turning into a courtroom lawyer and the other person climbing out of the bathroom window. It means you can say, ‘That hurt me,’ without your partner saying, ‘Well, maybe you're just too sensitive.’ It means you can be mad without making it unsafe, and you can disagree without it becoming a character assassination,” she said.

You can say a lot about a couple, not by watching how cozy they are at brunch, but by looking at what happens when either of them messes up. Do they walk separate ways, or find their way back to each other's humanity? Yes, couples fight. It’s an inevitable part of any relationship. But do they still maintain respect while fighting? Or do they go into a frenzy, tearing each other down? Because this certainly matters.

When conflict occurs, couples in a healthy relationship know how to handle it. “The couples who make it aren't the ones who never disconnect. They're the ones who've learned that disconnection is just the comma, not the period. Healthy couples don't avoid disconnection; they expect it, and they know how to move through it. They trust each other to make their way back together so that when inevitable ruptures happen, you're not constantly worried about whether or not you're going to be able to feel heard or understood or get what you need. You actually know you will,” she said.

According to the expert, real intimacy lives in the aftermath, when someone says “I was wrong” and actually means it. It’s that sweet spot where you can be upset about something without making it dangerous.
“It might just take some time. So if you're asking, ‘Is this relationship healthy?’ don't just look at the good days. Look at what happens after—after a fight, after a misstep, after someone totally blows it,” she said.
Voce added, “Do you come back and repair with accountability, with willingness, with some version of, ‘Okay, that was a hot mess, let's try again’? That's the sign. Not perfection, not performance—just two people who are committed to finding their way back to each other over and over and over again.”

Also, according to her, the measure of love isn’t in the absence of mess, but in the willingness to clean it up together—not once, but again and again, and without keeping a scoreboard.