I am a nerd for planning.
I love to envision the future. I love to review the past.
New Year's is a time when I want to look over the past year and see the themes and then set intentions for the new year with my husband. But pretty early in our relationship, I got the picture that Kurt was not a planner in the same way that I was.
Can you relate? I find that in most couples, one person is way more into planning & visioning than the other. And that's perfectly alright.
I'm here to help both of you have a peaceful and joyful way of moving through a process that lets you capture the gems from the past year, set intentions for the coming year, and keep your relationship on a powerful trajectory.
I'm going to answer some of the most common questions I get about reviewing your year and setting intentions for the coming year:
Why review together?
What should we expect if we review together?
How do we review together?
Why review together?
The review process is big in business, because we know that when we're trying to create results and build an enterprise that thrives over time, we need continual improvement. A lot of people also utilize that wisdom when it comes to their personal finances, career growth, or fitness.
We set goals for what we want to do with our homes or trips we want to take, but when it comes to our relationship, a lot of times, we sort of abdicate the power that we have; it feels controlling to set goals for your partner and you sense that you can't make things happen all by yourself.
The truth I've found is that we really do have a lot of sovereignty in our relationships. We can do more than we think we can to shift the trajectory of how we experience our love and our intimacy.
So reviewing our year, even if our partner doesn't want to participate at all - looking at what has been happening between us - helps us tap deeper into what's actually going on in our relationship and create better results. What we pay attention to, we expand. If you want more and better intimacy, love, connection, partnership, and communication, pay attention.
A note of encouragement: When you first dive into reviewing and setting intentions around relationship, it's going to become the most improved area because it hasn’t gotten the same attention you may have given your career or health. If you keep doing it through the years like we have, you're going to find that the process gets easier, the insights get deeper and the improvement compounds year over year.
What should I expect if we review together?
A lot of people ask me a more pointed question: "Are we just going to get into a fight like we did last time?" I've sure been there. I started plenty of fights by coming into this process with very clear ideas about what ought to happen, and being really attached to that. I had a vision, and he’d better jump in, and keep up. Spoiler: that doesn't work.
If you pursue it the way I used to, you WILL get in a fight and you'll make both of you miserable. But what I really want for you is a really enjoyable, sensual, pleasurable experience.
The two of you can think about how long your collective attention span is. Of course, the lower desire partner is the governor here. If they only have half an hour in which they can focus their energy on this, take that 30 minutes.
My husband is definitely our lower desire partner. So we do our review in about 45 minute chunks, four to seven days apart. My impatient self doesn't like it. But really, if I rest into it, it's pretty sweet. Because we get to dip in again and again, so I get more frequency, and he gets more bite sized chunks that are more sustainable.
If you engage in the process in that respectful way, where you bring your enthusiasm, and you honor your partner's lower level of enthusiasm, but their willingness, and you're really grateful for that, then you can expect that doing this kind of review and intention setting will help you have more and better memories of planning, for starters.
When you look back through your calendar to review what has happened, even if it's only once a year, you’ll see big questions that have come up over the course of the year. By taking the space to reflect you will be able to connect the dots between the events of your year.
I find that there's a kind of relational amnesia that happens. In some ways, it's a good thing. If we’re upset about how our partner acted towards us one day but choose to give things a few days or weeks to breathe, then we don't create a big kerfuffle between the two of us when that's not necessary or useful.
But, often when we don't want to make a stink over something that's not stink-worthy, we let things slide too long. We have hurt feelings, but we don't tell our partner about them. We keep walking around with that rock in our shoe. And days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years, and we don't acknowledge that difficult-to-speak thing that we're coping with.
By doing an annual review you will recognize, "Oh yeah, this particular behavior or experience happens again and again..." This process can help us recognize and name issues. For example, if your partner is underemployed or overspending or if you bear an unfair share of the emotional and mental and domestic labor in your partnership, that matters. It could be that you feel like you have to take care of them emotionally and it's not reciprocal or there's something sexually that doesn't match for you. If you commit to looking back at these issues even just once a year, that can be enough for you to see where you’re not really addressing an issue, or what things you tried this year to address it and whether your partner has engaged with you on it.
When we review our year, we reduce the amount of inertia in our relationship and reduce that kind of “Groundhog Day” effect, where things happen the same way over and over and over again.
Sometimes one partner brings up an issue, saying "This hurts," or "I need more of that," or "I would really like to bring about this vision for the two of us" and the other partner responds "Nah," and just blows it off.
In our current culture, relationships exist inside this myth that good ones just happen. "Marry the right person, and you're going to have a pretty good relationship. And if it's not so great, well, them's the breaks. That's just how it works. You have to either settle or get divorced."
But I'm going to tell you what I've seen across thousands and thousands of couples: Truly amazing relationships, with what I call Legacy Love, don’t happen by accident. Those are two people who didn't just take what their parents taught them how to do in marriage. They crafted their own way, which honored who they are individually, who their partner is, the lifestyle they value and the goals they hold for themselves. And year after year, they do the work to smooth out their own rough edges, not just to chip away at their partner, but to grow themselves.
This annual review process lays the groundwork for the kind of change that builds Legacy Love over time. It lets us become the author of our own relationship and shed that myth that good relationships just happen. It lets us take on the project of contributing little things to this relationship every single day, year in and year out for decades. There's a real beauty to that kind of devotion, and who it grows you into over the years.
How do we review together?
The good news: I've actually laid out the whole process in my Couples' Guide to Planning an Amazing New Year. It's both a review process and an intention setting process that I’ve been sharing with other couples for 14 editions now. There are 25 pages of exercises and they're all optional so you can mix and match and choose your own adventure. I'm going to give you a little sample here, but you can go download it for free at couplesvision.com.
In the guide, I give you an exercise that helps you write a celebration letter to your partner. This exercise is meant to give you the space to pause and give the attention and focus required to truly acknowledge them for all that they do, all that they are and all that they're becoming and all of your appreciation for that.
It's a truly beautiful gift to give your partner and yourself because you can't walk away from that kind of celebration without feeling tremendously grateful for that person's presence in your life, even if there are other places where the relationship has been causing pain.
Looking at your whole life through the lens of gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to create more of what you want. Many times a day, I call upon the power of gratitude, because it aligns me with what I desire. It shows me all the places that I might otherwise overlook, where I already have so much of what I want and need. And it helps me be attuned, when more things show up that I dig, and that I want more of. It puts me in a position to engage in relationships in a nourishing way, and to just be content, because that's the bottom line: no matter what shows up in our lives, if we can't receive it, it doesn't nourish us.
The next step is identifying what it is you'd really like to create in the coming year. What are your intentions? What do you already know are the blocks that exist just by virtue of the chapter of life that you’re in? Young kids? Aging parents? Demanding career? Identifying those things, and then setting intentions on that basis is a great way to envision your coming year.
If these few steps are all you do this year, that’s amazing! You’re setting yourself up to live with more intention and gratitude together this year. If you want the full guide, head over to couplesvision.com and request the Couples’ Guide to Planning an Amazing New Year.
I love to hear back how it is for you to employ these exercises. What do you create in your relationship when you do?
Wishing you a blessed, blessed New Year full of love.