Online exclusive
MAFS relationship expert John Aiken joins listener.co.nz to share sound advice and top tips on finding and maintaining relationships. Here, he talks about creating a shared vision for the future with a five-step plan that can lead to longer, happier relationships.
When you think of goal setting you will typically focus on your individual aspirations – targeting the specific areas of your life that you want to change, and then creating action steps to get there. It provides you with motivation and focus. It gives you a purpose and clarity to your day.
Unfortunately, goal setting is not as readily applied to relationships, and instead couples often simply drift along with no particular direction. The key conversations about the future are avoided, and there tends to be very little shared vision about how you want to run your relationship. To combat this, it’s vital to consider what’s important to you as a couple and then move towards this together with a strong sense of teamwork.
The reason why couples can so easily overlook their values and goals is that in the early stages of a relationship, the focus tends to be on other things. You meet, fall in love and float around on a high for months on end. You get overwhelmed with the rush of being in love and consumed with doing “feel good” activities – dating, sex, meeting friends, partying and traveling together.
However, as time rolls on, couples need to turn their attention to their relationship values and dreams. These things matter.
There are huge spin-offs if you’re on the same page as your partner about what’s important to you both, and how you want to run things in the future. It gives you direction and focus, it promotes a sense of team and oneness, and it encourages trust and security. Sure, you can have different interests, but on the big-ticket items you need to work toward them as a team.
Do you believe in marriage? What do you define as cheating and infidelity and where do you stand on it? Are children and religion important to you? What makes for a great parent? How should finances be handled in a relationship? What actions do you expect when one of you gets sick or injured? How much should a couple share the domestics/housework? How important is maintaining a work-life balance? What role should sex play in a relationship?
Simply coasting along with your partner and not being aware of values or creating goals will ultimately have a negative impact on your relationship happiness. Boredom can set in, insecurities can arise and increasing anger and frustrations can emerge.
Your relationship will stop growing and moving forward. Instead, it will become static and eventually fall over. I’m not saying you have to have in-depth discussions about your relationship values and shared goals on your second date! But as you spend more time together and start considering the possibility of long-term commitment, you need to address these areas to see if you’re on the same page.
So if you’ve been together for a while and things are starting to get more serious, go through the steps on the following page and uncover your core relationship values, then start creating a shared vision together. It’s fun and it will bring you closer and increase your overall sense of team.
Step One: Write your own eulogy/100th birthday speech
When beginning to create a shared vision with your partner you need to start by uncovering your core values – in other words, what’s important to you. An excellent positive psychology technique involves writing your own eulogy or 100th birthday celebration speech. Imagine you’re magically standing at the back of your own funeral listening to different people talk about you and the way you were in your relationship/marriage (spouse, children, friends, parents, work colleagues). What will they say about you as a husband/wife? What will they remember you for? How did you impact on those around you? Then take a pen and paper and spend 15 minutes writing down how you want to be remembered at your own funeral. This will uncover your core relationship values.
Step Two: Share your values
Once you’ve written your own eulogy, take turns reading this out to each other. What are the key relationship values that stand out? Does anything surprise you about what you’ve both heard? Most importantly, are you both living your relationship in this value-driven way? Or are you doing things that contradict what’s important to you? In short, are you being authentic as a couple, or are you simply drifting along without any real purpose?
Step Three: Establish clear goals
Now you’ve identified your core relationship values, it’s time to start creating goals that are in keeping with these. If you want to be remembered as a family man, then it’s time to start putting up boundaries around your work. If you want to be seen as a passionate wife who’s lots of fun to be with, then it’s time to start having date nights and being more affectionate and sociable. With this in mind, consider the next 12 months, two years and five years and highlight your couple goals together. Consider your marriage, children, health and fitness, finance, levels of intimacy, work, friends, travel and living arrangements. What do you want to be doing in these areas in the future to make sure this is compatible with your values?
Step Four: Take action steps
Once you’re on the same page about your relationship values and goals, it’s time to break these down into easy-to-follow action steps. Make your goals manageable and attainable. For example, if you want to get pregnant by the end of the year, what do you need to do? Action steps might include both getting physical check-ups with your GP, reducing alcohol and coffee consumption, exercising for 45 minutes each day, going to bed at 10pm every night, reading books on getting pregnant, having sex three times per week and stopping smoking immediately. Whatever the couple goal is – break it up into bite-sized chunks that you can do on a daily/weekly basis.
Step Five: Review couple goals regularly
As you begin to start living your life differently as a couple, with a new shared vision, make sure you check in with each other regularly to see how you’re both travelling. Sometimes you can set goals with best intentions, but they turn out to be unreasonable and impractical. Circumstances can change, new opportunities can arise, and you have to adjust. Expect this possibility to occur and meet once a month to review your goals and modify your vision moving forward.
Best known as one of the Married At First Sight’s experts, John Aiken trained in the field of relationships and has been working with singles and couples for nearly 30 years. He focuses on giving hard-hitting advice to empower people in their relationships. He is a speaker, runs exclusive retreats, and is a bestselling author. Elements of this article first appeared in John Aiken’s regular column in Next magazine.
