How to Set Relationship Goals With Your Partner (2024)

Setting relationship goals is a way to commit to something together and show each other you care about the relationship and one another. When you write down a list of goals together, you are showing each other the relationship is a priority and has a future. Developing goals will encourage you to work as a team to enhance and sustain the relationship.

You can organize goals by physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects, or according to self, relationship, work and family categories. It’s up to you. But, whether they are goals like setting aside time for more intimacy or retiring by the time you are both 40, when you work together towards a common future, it bonds you more deeply.

Ideas for Relationship Goals

There are a wide range of goals that can help bring couples together. Here are some ideas of goals you and your partner can try:

1. Stay connected: Make a decision about how often you want to correspond with your partner. For example, deciding you are going to talk on the phone at least once a day.
2. Take advantage of love languages: Figure out what you and your partner's love languages are! You can use these to better connect with one another, especially if you commit to using their "love language" a set number of times a week. Take this free quiz to find out your love language!
3. Always make up after a fight: It may help to write a contract to meet this goal, where you and your partner agree to be forgiving with one another. You can also be more specific, for example agreeing to not go to bed angry with one another.
4. Spice up your sex life: Commit to trying a new position/exploring a new fantasy once a week. Or simply decide how many times you want to have sex a week.
5. Make more time for affection and intimacy: This can be physical or emotional. You may decide to hug a certain number of times each day, or ask each other deep questions over dinner every night.
6. Decide to overlook small transgressions: Commit to letting the little things go. It may be helpful to write this on a post-it note affixed to your bathroom mirror or kitchen fridge as a small reminder for when you walk by.
7. Schedule time to have fun together: This will look different depending on what partners enjoy doing together. Maybe it's playing a video game together each weekend, or trying a new restaurant each month.
   

Tips on Creating Relationship Goals

When establishing relationship goals, the best kind are those that you create and support together. Making sure your goals are specific, measurable and attainable helps do this. You can create a schedule to effectively incorporate specific activities into your everyday lives. This will also help you track your progress and determine when you’ve achieved these goals.

Sherry Amatenstein, a New York City-based therapist, journalist, author of three relationship books and host of the podcastSHERAPY: Real Therapy with Sherry Amatenstein, offers some tips. She says, “It’s important for both of you to be on board about whatgoalyou are setting. What one views as an obstacle, the other might view as a fact of life.”

When setting goals, make sure to listen to the other person and have a flexible perspective throughout the process. Amatenstein says its important to having empathy for their concerns even if you don’t share them. She also reiterates the importance of setting small, achievable, specific goals."One step at a time versus leaping into the sky," she says.

Steps for Creating Relationship Goals

Making goals doesn't have to complicated. Here is a basic set of steps to follow when creating goals with your partner:

1. Brainstorm separately: take time to think about goals individually before sharing with your partner. Think about what you want to get out of this practice and what goals will help you achieve that.
2. Come together to discuss your ideas: after brainstorming goals on your own, you can begin to share your ideas with your partner. You may find your partner came up with things you never thought of that you would like to work on, or you may come up with new ones together.
3. Decide which goals you want to focus on: reach a conclusion together about what goals you want to set. It may be helpful to start with just 3 short-term and 3 long-term relationship goals.
4. Set realistic deadlines: you don't need to be to ambitious with deadlines because it takes time and trial and error to make a lifestyle change. Remember illnesses and setbacks happen, so it may be helpful to anticipate them or expect the deadline to change.
5. Check in regularly: evaluate how where you are at in the process of reaching your goals to determine the progress you have made. This can double as nice quality time with your partner, and can be done over a nice dinner or a scenic walk.

How To Make Your Goals a Reality

Through all of the ups and down in a relationship, it can be hard to stay committed to relationship goals. But there are ways to get past obstacles and stay on track.

When you first move to set relationship goals, it may be hard to agree on them. Every person has different ideas of what the future looks like, which naturally can result in discord. To combat this, be sure to compromise. If one of you wants to have sex five times a week, for example, and the other prefers three times a week, it may be beneficial to compromise on four nights of intimate sex per week.

Obstacles will also come up that can interfere with the regular action you agreed to take to reach your couple goals. If something comes up that makes goals hard or impossible to achieve, the important thing is to be honest and talk to your partner about it. Hopefully your partner will be understanding and you can find a way to change the goal to make it more feasible for both of you.

One study examining the effect of spousal contributions on goal pursuit in older couples showed that when someone has higher relationship satisfaction and support, as well as less conflict, they made more progress on their goals.

Benefits of Setting Goals Together

Setting goals together will help you and your partner bond. Making a commitment to a goal together also means making a commitment to each other. Goal setting will help you develop healthy relationship habits and learn how to lean one another to complete something.

One study showed how partner support helps promote making progress on your goals. The study also revealed that setting and working towards your goals will have physical, psychological and relational benefits for both you and your partner.

Overall, regardless of what stage you are it in your relationship, setting goals is beneficial. Working toward mutual couple goals and making progress on them is sure to improve the quality of your relationship and bring you and your partner closer together.