Making New Year's Relationship Resolutions With Your Partner

When we think about setting our sights on the new year, we often think about our personal, individualized goals. We want to lose weight, spend more time on our hobbies or with family, or achieve something new for the first time. These are fantastic New Year's resolutions that can act as a springboard for thinking about other areas of your life, like your relationship or marriage.

It's important to remember that our relationships benefit from focused attention and intentional action. Just like we can lose weight with diet and exercise in 2022, we can also work toward strengthening our relationship with those we love and identify aspects of our relationship that we ourselves want to put renewed effort into.

Talking About Areas of Desired Growth

As with every new step in our relationships, growth starts with communication. Take time to sit down with your partner to discuss what your relationship looked and felt like this past year. Where were the points of contention? What do you want to do differently for your partner? What would you like to see your partner do differently for you? While it's not intended to be a blame game, the goal is to identify things you and your partner can work on together. Think about your family life, cohabitation, finances, quality time together and any other aspects of the relationship that seemed pertinent this year. You and your partner should each come up with at least three aspects that stand out for each of you. Reflect on this year so that you are ready for action in the new year.

Making Objectively-Attainable Goals

Once you and your partner have an idea of what you'd like to accomplish, it's time to actually set objectively attainable goals, an action that is not only within reach but can actually be quantified. Both you and your partner need to be able to objectively determine when a goal has been accomplished so you can celebrate and reflect on it together. For instance, a goal like "Be better about taking the trash out" would be considered subjective. What does it mean to "be better"? Instead, formulating specific language can help. "Take out the trash Wednesday and Sunday." If the trash isn't taken out by Thursday or Monday, both partners understand that the goal was not accomplished and remedy can take place as needed. Try writing down 3 objectively attainable goals each with your partner. They could be anything from scheduling 1 additional marriage counseling session per month to having at least ten minutes of quality time together each day.

Holding Ourselves Accountable

Remember that building, healing, or sustaining a relationship requires accountability on both ends. We need to be able to hold ourselves accountable in pursuing our relationship goals to ensure the effort does not feel one-sided. Likewise, we need to hold our partner accountable for not upholding effort. Strive to have regular check-ins to get a feel for progress between you and your partner on relationship goals, and don't be afraid to address imbalance in the way of effort.

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