Relationship Problems aren’t what you think:
You may be struggling in your relationship and not understanding why…. There is lots of love for each other. Both your partner and you like a lot of the same things and you feel like you are “compatible”. But you get in fights about all sorts of things….from who does what around the house to whose family to spend the holidays with. You both want to improve the quality of your relationship, but you can’t seem to agree on anything. You can improve your relationship with strong couple agreements!
Like most couples you probably think you have “communication problems”…. Which is understandable. You generally don’t feel heard or understood, and neither does your partner. You think maybe if you both learned how to communicate better, or if your partner would just understand you better, things would improve.
Yes, many couples struggle with misunderstandings and not really knowing their partner.
But there is another key piece that is missing:
Do you have the good agreements in your relationship to have a healthy and lasting relationship? This is the best way to improve your relationship-strong couple agreements!
Agreements about how you will treat each other at all times.
Are there agreements about how to share power and resources and responsibilities? How about agreements about your role in each other’s health and emotional wellbeing? Agreements about how to manage friends and family, or anyone really that is outside your relationship (you know that one friend or family member that you and your partner keep fighting about).
This concept of agreements comes from the PACT Institute and expert couples counselor and trainer Stan Tatkin. Explore more of their resources at The PACT Institute
Some people may say this sounds a lot like rules and they don’t’ want rules in their relationships. But implied or explicit, your relationship has rules. Maybe the rule is that we never tell the other one what to do. Or that we always support our partner, even if we think they are in the wrong. And everything in between. Improve your relationship with strong couple agreements and you won’t feel trapped by rules.
What are your couple agreements?
Many times when I ask a couple in therapy what is their agreement about how to handle a given situation they surprisingly admit they don’t have one. That is not their fault though! We aren’t taught to build agreements into our relationships. But I can help you with that!
I help couples like you establish and then follow through on agreements in all sorts of areas:
Family and parenting styles
Emotional support styles
Sexual relationships
Finances
Roles and responsibilities
Social life and friends (including relationships with ex’s)
Time and personal interests
Future goals and ambitions
The more you can get really specific about your agreements the easier your relationship becomes. They will provide the structure and principles you need in any situation.
So what do these agreements look like?
Consider sitting down and discussing these with your partner to establish your agreements together. Here are some examples from other happy couples that I’ve seen:
- We value each other’s different approaches to parenting and respectfully work through any differences.
- We will always be there for each other emotionally (and physically) no matter what our mood, or how inconvenient.
- We will always work together to make sure our sexual and physical relationship is satisfying to each of us. When it’s not we will discuss ways to make it better that work for both of us.
- We make decisions about finances together and have clear rules for big purchases, “fun money” and transparency versus secrecy around finances. We take a non-blaming & non shaming approach to financial difficulties.
- We govern our home and manage housekeeping responsibilities in a way that works to each partner’s strengths, adapts with flexibility to life changes that impacts designated roles, and we discuss it calmly when tasks aren’t getting done.
- We decide together how much time we spend with friends or together just us. We also discuss how to manage relationships with ex’s or other people that could cause one of us to feel upset.
- We decide together and agree on how much time we allocate to activities together and activities apart.
- We agree as a couple that our goals and ambitions are both equality important and will always work to find ways to support each other’s dreams.
