Love Goals

Chris:

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  We would say that the road to an unfulfilling relationship, may be paved with those same intentions. Does this sound familiar?  You intend to be romantic, caring, sexy or fun but, you’re too tired, you come home late from work or you just simply forget.  Is it because you’re thoughtless, because you care more about your job or because you have the romantic aptitude of a sponge? Maybe, but it is more likely that you are human, with good intentions.

Michelle:

But intentions are never really enough. I have ADHD. I can have a really great idea to make Chris feel loved and valued and a couple of seconds later be thinking about the data points I need to cover for work.  Unless I put my ideas into actions, Chris will never know they exist.  Recently, at a work conference about goal setting, the presenter shared how to set and achieve goals, daily.  Here are the steps:

1. Create a morning aspiration ritual

2. Share an aspiration with someone that can hold you accountable

3. Talk it out

4. Set a reminder

5. Take action

Chris:

Michelle shared with me what she learned and asked if we could put it into practice in our relationship.  Here’s what we did:

1 and 2. Create a morning aspiration ritual and share with someone who will hold you accountable-Michelle and I go out for a walk every morning.  We now use that time to share one relationship goal we would like to achieve that day.

3. Talk it out-Michelle and I will talk about if the goal is too lofty or might need some finessing. 

4. Set a reminder-Michelle likes to put a sticky note on her computer or send herself a text or email.  I like to create an alarm on my phone.  We do this reminder as soon as we return from our walk.

5. Take action-we then set out to achieve what we shared.

Michelle:

We have noticed that the taking action is the power.  Don’t get me wrong, intentions are important. When we set our intention, we decide what matters. For example, recently, my relationship goal was to send text messages throughout the day while I was at work, to let Chris know I was thinking about him. While Chris knew my intention and that it mattered to me that he knew I was thinking about him, the power was in my action.

Chris:

We have added a sixth step to the process.  Each evening at dinner, we do a check-in. We can have great intentions and actions that we think have hit the mark but they may miss.  If Michelle sent a text that just read, ‘Hey’, I’m not sure that her goal of letting me know she’s thinking about me, would be achieved.  When we check-in with each other, we know what worked and what to tweak. In the movie Patch Adams, Robin Williams says, ” When you left the house today, you had the intention of putting clothes on and you did. You didn’t try to put your pants on today. You simply put them on. The same has to hold for all of our intentions. We don’t try to be more loving partners. We make the intention, and we act on it.”