Married Life // Together Goals

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goals

Photos by Smilebooth

For the last couple of years, Mr. Lovely and I have had chats in December about how we want the coming year to be. Whether it’s goals for our businesses, or our individual lives, or our life together, we just toss things around and it’s kind of awesome to check in with each other that way. And talking to each other sometimes even helps us realize things that we individually wanted but weren’t able to pinpoint.

So this year, we decided to set a few goals for our marriage about how we deal with things that come along in the day-to-day. None of these things are changeable overnight, but they’re things that we sometimes struggle with and hopefully will get smoothed out as time goes on. After all, a relationship ain’t worth nothin’ but the hard work you put into it.

Be confident that things are just plain good. Sometimes Mr. Lovely and I get into this cycle of checking in with each other to make sure the other one is okay. Like, when absolutely nothing is wrong. It’s like we’re expecting something to be bad or off, when really nothing is. So we’re working on just letting things be good, and not worrying if something is about to go wrong.

Untie our happiness from food and drink. You know the freshman 15? Yeah, that, but in marriage. Not that I’ve gained 15 pounds or anything, but suddenly we find ourselves celebrating together by eating or drinking, and that adds up right quick. So we’re trying to find other things to do together and other ways to celebrate.

Only take on your own stress. Sometimes Mr. Lovely and I are almost too empathetic towards each other. When he’s stressed, it feels like there’s a raincloud over my day, and vice versa. I always just wish I could make everything good for him (I’ve always been a fixer), but I just can’t. So we’re both trying to trust the other one to be able to deal effectively with our stresses.

Reach across the aisle on household duties. (How’s that for a political analogy?!) I’ve said it before: Mr. Lovely cooks and I clean. But sometimes he’s tired of making dinner and sometimes I wish he would just learn how to scrub a sink. So we’ll be making more of an effort to take part in what we consider the “other one’s” chores.

Do you ever set goals with your partner for your relationship? I’d love to hear if you do! I kind of find it fascinating to know if other people struggle with similar or different challenges, and how different folks deal with things. Leave a comment and tell me your together goals! xoxo

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20 Comments

  1. Having a partner that you can discuss with is the best thing ever! After having a baby we struggled a bit with our sex life as most couples do. We talked about this frequently, spiced things up a bit and everything turned out just fine!

  2. I LOOOVE love love this.
    Rob and I have “themed years.” Last year was “the year of us” and we dropped a whole lotta coin on CrossFit and co-op food to get healthy and together we lost over 100 pounds. This year is “adventure!” because I am going to go full throttle on my business so I can quit my day job and he will be trying to start a business too. This will also be our 10 year anniversary. ADVENTURE! haha

    I like your goal of not letting the other person’s stress affect you too much and the “reach across the aisle”. Rob and I also decided that he would do a “massive clean” the beginning of every month and that I would do the maintenance over the month. Hopefully that works.

    Look how much we have in common. Let’s be besties. haha

    1. Girl, this is all awesome awesome awesome. Congrats on your fitness achievements last year — that’s incredible. And it’s rad that you’re going for it this year with your business! Rooting for ya. 🙂

  3. My boyfriend and I do the same, but seasonally. We make some small goals for each new season for ourselves and for “us” and the revisit them and tweak, add, or take away the following season. It’s so great for us! I’ve written a bit about it on my blog and tomorrow I’m doing a post about the lessons we’ve learned making seasonal goals together.

  4. After almost 10 years, we are getting more and more together goals. Events in our life leaded us to make more : our first apartment together, when we bought our house, when I returned to school full time and now, as we started working together (we did it in the past and it went surprisingly well!). Even if all those events were fantastic things, they leaded to a need for more communication and for some tweaks in our together goals. However, we don’t do those updates on a seasonal or yearly basis… sometimes we have that kind of discussion often in a short time and then we don’t speak about it for a looooong time. On the other hand, I really do like the idea of making it a yearly thing.

  5. My husband used to ask me all the time if I was okay, or if I was upset, when I was perfectly fine and not at all upset, but that question made me upset. LOL. We’ve since both learned to chill out a bit and just enjoy our life together.
    Our main goal is to finish our house remodel! By the end of this year it will be 2 1/2 years from the day we moved in and demo’d everything until the day we are hopefully done….living in a construction zone is an adventure! 😀

  6. Wow! This is really fantastic! I love the point of being confident when things are good. It does seem like whenever life is pleasant we are often waiting for the other shoe to drop and it turn all to turn horrible. Or, when in a relationship, that when someone is just having a somewhat down day there must be something terribly wrong.

    1. Agreed, and so well-said. It’s easy to be so empathetic that you take on one another’s feelings. Everybody has off days, and I try to remind myself that Mr. Lovely has the right to have a bad day without worrying that it’s making me sad on top of that.

  7. I love the bit about taking on your partner’s stress. My husband and I do it too often and it’s encouraging to hear other couples dealing with it.

    1. Absolutely! Sometimes I think we’re in a little bubble and no one else gets it, but I’m sure lots of folks struggle with the same thing. We’re getting better with that one!

  8. We definitely do “together” goals! Even when I did my 101 in 1001, half of those are really “we” things…even though he is making his own list 🙂 Love this post..what great communication between you two! I’m super bad about the “is everything ok” as well.

  9. Wow. There’s so many things that related to my relationship that I hadn’t even noticed. I feel like we’re a few years off from really being able to manage some of these things for some reason but being aware is a big thing too. Thank you!

  10. After being married for almost 10 years and together for 16, it is hard to separate my goals from our goals. This is the first time I have ever thought about the way I take on his work stress. I am a stay at home mom/student, and I make it my job to take care of everybody, even my husband. I need to step back and support him but not make his stress my problem. Thanks for the eye opener.