Topic of the Day: Did You Make Relationship Goals for the Year?

As we start the second month of 2019, I’m wondering: did you make any relationship goals for the new year? Drew and I made a few, including:

watch less cable news (like close to none, if we can help it), and do more creative projects together. Since Trump was elected, we got into a habit of finishing most evenings watching Rachel Maddow or some other cable news source, and after 2+ years of that cray, we’re done. If shit really hits the fan, we might tune in for a quick re-cap, but our days of analyzing every move and debating each possible conspiracy theory are o-ver. And the creative projects are just fun – we enjoy them, they bring us closer together, and they flex some muscles that have been a little dormant. Yesterday we shot a couple Drinking with Dear Wendy videos, and now Drew will edit them for your viewing — and drinking — pleasure (look for them in coming weeks!).

So, what about you? Any relationship goals for the year? Maybe you and you partner want to save for something important or luxurious (a down payment on a house, a great vacation) or just pay off some debt, maybe you aspire to have more regular date nights or more frequent sex, maybe you want to do less of something (fight, watch TV, get take-out). Or maybe your relationship goal this year is to start a relationship (or end one that isn’t working anymore). If you didn’t make any relationship goals for the year, it’s not too late! We’re only 8% into this thing – there’s still plenty of time to improve the state of your love life. What relationship goals did you or would you make for 2019?

13 Comments

  1. I guess my overall life relationship goal was to settle down with the right person, so last year I accomplished that.

    This year, well, we were saving for a house, which still are, but this surgery crap may be seriously slowing that down, so we will see. So I guess that changes to our goal to, get pregnant.

    But really, we need more date nights, or just private time without a screen anywhere near. The weather this month has made that difficult obviously as the roads have been constantly bad or of course, lately, it has been miserable cold, so we haven’t wanted to go out.

    Also, marriage counseling. We keep putting it off because life gets busy. We don’t really have problems to discuss but just to keep things running well and to do some counseling regarding son. Husband is very lenient with discipline which is really the only cause of any frustration in our house. So we need to work on that.

    Oh and to plan a trip to get out of this hell hole. For my sake it better be somewhere with some good shopping. 🙂

  2. My goal is to get engaged! And maybe get married too, why not?

    But that’s a tough one. It’s hard to think of it as a goal. It’s more of a process. You can’t sit with your SO on the couch and say “our goal should be to get engaged”, because that’s basically the same as asking someone to marry them right there and then. Instead we have discussions about “Maybe we should try to visit your sister again in the spring” which is not quite as revolutionary.

    We’ve moved in with each other in 2018 and since then I’ve fallen more in love with him every day. We’ve agreed on “let’s wait until we’ve lived together a year before we get engaged”, and since then I’ve been excitedly waiting for the one year mark to come.

    So hopefully we’ll get engaged in 2019. Otherwise… I mean, we’re going to go skiing again, for the first time in like 6 years! But that seems like a very minor goal in comparison. And we should also visit his sister.

  3. LadyInPurpleNotRed says:

    We want to save to go to Japan next spring. Last year was a bit crazy–he had a bad accident in March that resulted in surgery and he’s still recovering (leg/ankle)…then we moved back to Chicago in July. This year I’d like to do more date nights–I got him a membership to the science museum and I want to get him one for the planetarium for Valentine’s Day–that way we can do some date night things he really likes–he lets me choose a lot and I want to be more fair to him and his interests. He does so much for me and I really need to be better about reciprocating.

  4. Rangerchic says:

    We didn’t set any relationship goals but we do have a a goal of getting a few bills paid off this year (early) so that we can get a king sized bed. Husband is finally on board with getting one as a queen with us and two dogs gets…crowded. They aren’t huge dogs but they do take up valuable space. And once the bigger one is on the bed there is no moving the covers. He’s like a very heavy log that doesn’t move.

    Plus our oldest daughter is getting married early June! I’m excited for her…she’s come a long way since last summer with her mental health plus the guy knows everything that happened so he knows all her struggles so I feel comfortable that he won’t run for the hills at any signs of decline/needing help.

  5. TeacherNerd says:

    We don’t make beginning-of-the-year goals; rather, it’s an ongoing process where we evaluate what we’re doing and adjust accordingly. That way, less sneaks up on us.

    On the other hand, we’re not very exciting people. We don’t watch the news, because it’s a time suck and not necessary for keeping up-to-date (we don’t subscribe to cable so no cable news). We have a daily routine we’ve settled into that has been really beneficial (dinner together at the table – rarely do we go out to eat or do takeout); an hour or so of TV (something Netflix-y or PBS-y); then we wander off for an hour or two to do our own thing, then an hour before bedtime, we start to get ready for bed, and read for 45 minutes or so; then we listen to a podcast (happens to be a Catholic contemplative podcast put out by British Jesuits; keeps us focused on, what for us, is more mentally grounded activities). So just more of the same. We assess where we are financially as things arise, put off buying another house for a few more years (ours is already paid off), and plan yearly summer travel plans. But in the years we’ve been together (married for 8 years this year, together for a 18 months longer), the start-of-the-year goals has never been something that’s worked for us.

  6. Our goals are to get a privacy fence to replace our chain link, go to Hawaii for his 40th birthday, and maybe get a dog, but those are more mutual financial/lifestyle goals, rather than “relationship goals” per se. Our relationship is chugging along very nicely, without a lot of external life pressures weighing on us–we are lucky!

  7. We want to move back to my favourite city, buy a house and eventually live in it together. The army is never going to let us live where we want unless we have something tangible to stay there for. It sucks because people with kids can stay at the same post for years but we get shuffled around like our lives and ambitions don’t matter at all. They say they’re family first but apparently only if that family fits the cookie cutter mould.

    1. Hmm that’s weird. My husband was relocated many times in the Air Force. Both him and his then wife were even both deployed at the same time while they had a young child. I have never heard of anyone being allowed to stay in one place longer due to having kids.

      1. You forget we’re in a different country.

      2. Ah that I do. Well, I will say keeping family is better than deploying both. I was pretty surprised to hear that.

      3. Yeah that’s silly. I don’t know if they do that here.

      4. I guess they try to avoid it but this was at he height of th 9/11 stuff so I’m guessing that’s forced the hand. Still crappy.

      5. @JD my boyfriend’s father was allowed to stay at West Point for a few years because at the time his older sister was in high school, then he was going to be entering high school, and then his younger sister, and I guess to be disrupted and move during high school is worse than when a kid is younger? Not sure if that’s the only reason, as he was also an Army dentist so maybe they had different rules. They did move around at least every 4 years, if not more often, prior to that.

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