I'm Natalie Lou and you're listening to the baggage reclaim sessions.

Hello hello. How are you doing?

This week I want to talk about the landmarks of healthy relationships, something I first wrote about nine years ago and that also featured in my book Love Care Trust and Respect.

I came up with these five landmarks because I kept seeing people being caught up by what I called

the hallmarks of what people might see as a loving relationship or a healthy relationship. So things that they saw as the markings,

indicators that they were headed somewhere good and it was like, well, they introduced me to their

friends or to their family or we went on a weekend away

or I met their work colleagues or they talked about the future or you know they talked about

how they wanted to have a baby with me or they hinted at the

L word or they said it out loud. They did things that a previous partner didn't do so

that's why I thought that this relationship was going somewhere. We we built furniture together. We went to IKEA. Surely we don't do that kind of thing with somebody unless this relationship is going somewhere. And everybody has their own idea of what hallmarks are. And I thought, okay, how can I explain this in a way that helps people to understand, oh, I don't have to go latching on to like every it-y-bitty little

thing that I think that I'm noticing about somebody and I can look at the bigger picture. Now when we think about what a landmark is it is like an

object at the feature in for instance a city in a town somewhere where it's seen from a distance and it makes it easily recognizable.

In London, for instance, we see Big Ben.

We see the London eye.

Depending on where you are, you might see,

well, what was the Millennium Dome announced there,

the O2.

In, for instance, New York could be the Statue of Liberty,

the Empire State Building.

Everywhere has landmarks.

And of course in big cities, you there you know the there can be these super stand out features that are known around the world

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