How To Create Direction In Your Relationship

So how do you create direction in your relationship? How do you actually implement leadership? Because direction is leadership in action, right? It's leadership in motion. This is probably one of the most important things in a relationship. I don't think most of us are ever taught how to create direction in a relationship. And I think about myself in the past, I didn't want to create direction. I had a lot of boy energy, a lot of teenage energy where I was unpredictable all the time, right? A woman never really knew what she was going to get from me. She never really knew what direction the relationship was going. It was very vague, it was very ambiguous. She didn't know timeline, you know, she didn't know we were going to go on dates or where we're going to travel or any of those things. And I think it worked into my favor for a little bit. You know, in the beginning it was sort of exhilarating, exciting for a woman. And you know, I had some success with that sort of wild, unpredictable, lacking direction, nature. But anytime that I wanted to enter into a long term relationship or, or have a serious relationship with a woman in some capacity, that never worked because I wasn't stable. I didn't feel stable and I didn't feel stable to that other woman. And so she was always trying to grapple, take the reins of leading and like, when are we going to move in together and when is this going to happen in our relationship and when are we going on vacation? What is it going to look like? And I would reject all of those decisions because I didn't want to create direction in the relationship. And so one of the things that I think is incredibly important if you're wanting to lead in your relationship is having the capacity to create direction. And what does that look like? Well, first it looks like having a vision for your relationship, right? What's the vision that you have for your relationship? What do you want to do in the context of that relationship? What purpose or function does that relationship serve? Right. Is your relationship just something that you, that you want to have in order to have some sexual connection with somebody? Or is the relationship about you building something much bigger? Right. Contributing your knowledge, your resources, your time, your talents, and actually building something substantial. So get very clear on what your vision is for the relationship. Right? What rituals and routines do you want to have with your partner? What rituals do you want to bake into the relationship itself? What do you want to do and experience with your partner? Are there certain things that you want to go and see with them? Are there certain things that you want to explore in the world with them? Are there certain things that you know that, that you're going to experience sexually with them? And then finally, what values do you hold within that vision? Right? Do you both value adventure? Do you both value growth and determination and abundance? Right? What values do you hold and what's the vision for the relationship long term? Just like if you were going to have goals for your health or your finances or if you had a business, you would have a vision for it. And so you might even want to look at creating a vision statement for your relationship. Something that sort of encapsulates what it is that the relationship stands for and where it's going. So that's number one, that's sort of big picture. The rest of it gonna be pretty tactical. The next thing is your yes and your no. If you want to create direction when you say yes and when you say no, those things orient you and orient the relationship and your partner towards a certain direction, right? So if you say, yeah, let's go and you know, have dinner with Ted and Julia on Friday night, that's creating a direction, that's saying, Friday night we're gonna go do this at this place at this time. All of your yeses and your nos give the other person, give the relationship a direction of what you're moving towards and what you're moving away from, right? So your no is gonna say, I'm moving away from those things. And the yes is gonna say, I want us to move towards those things. And so start to take stock of what have you been saying yes to, what have you been saying no to? And what direction does that propel the relationship towards or away from? And then get really clear, really, really clear about what you have been avoiding saying yes and no to. You know, what things have you just avoided entirely? Which brings me to my next point. Make informed, stable, grounded and consistent decisions. Make informed, stable, grounded and consistent decisions. So if you are making decisions reactionally, right, you're reacting to stimulus, you're, you know, you're not super stable, you're, you're making decisions emotionally all the time, that's going to create instability within your relationship. And so one of the things that I generally do, unless it's a no brainer, right? If my wife comes to me and she says, hey, what do you think that we should do about this expense? Do you think that we should buy that piece of furniture? Do you think that we should go on vacation here? Every single time she comes to me and she says, hey, what do you think we should do or what decision should we make? Unless it's like, I absolutely know immediately I'll say, give me five minutes. Or if it's a bigger decision, I'll say, give me 24 hours and then I'll actually take time to think about it. Now this is the important part. You need to have space to think about the decisions that you're making for yourself, your life, your relationship, your family. It's incredibly important. What most men do is they'll say, give me 24 hours to think about it, let me think about it. And then they won't think about it, right? They won't journal about it, they won't talk to their buddies about it. They won't have any kind of discourse where they critically think about whether or not that's the right decision or what the right decision actually is. So start to build a decision making process for yourself that works that, that you can use for small, medium and large size decisions, right? Sometimes you might need a week or longer. An example of this is my wife and I have been thinking about where to move and she said, where do you want to live? Where do you think that we should go? And I've taken that decision very, very seriously, to the point where I've been thinking about this and looking at this for a number of weeks, taking in all the factors, you know, what's really important to us, based on my vision, right? Being around community is very important. You know, where we're going to send our child to school, that's very important. Where is he going to get educated? Where am I going to be able to make money and earn and run my business even maybe more effectively than where I do now? And so all those factors come into the decision. So I've set a timeframe of, you know, let's circle back around on this in a month and have a conversation about it. And, and it doesn't mean that the decision gets made right in that moment because there's no sort of constraint on it. But that's a good example. So make informed, stable, consistent and grounded decisions. The last piece I can't stress enough is follow through on your damn word. Follow through on your word. When you say yes to something, when you say no to something, it's not that it needs to be set in iron stone, right? There can be exceptions sometimes, but when you say yes or no to something, when you make a decision about something, you need to honor and respect your word because that is what really creates direction. If you say, yeah, let's Go to that dinner on Friday night, and then Friday night at 5:00 clock rolls around, dinner's at 7, you say, actually, I just don't feel like. Let's just, let's just stay home and like, you know, watch Westworld or whatever it is. That's going to break trust. Your partner's going to begin to see that she can't trust your direction because she doesn't know if you're going to follow through on the direction that you're creating. She's. She doesn't know if you're going to follow through with your yes, with your no, with your word, with your decision. And so she doesn't know what to expect. And one of the most important pieces about leadership, about creating direction, is that you are unpredictably predictable. Okay? You're unpredictably predictable. What do I mean about that? If you are predictable all the time, right? If you're like Steady Eddie and you are always on it, you're always making the same decision and your partner, your wife or girlfriend just comes to know exactly what to expect from you all the time, that's boring, right? It's boring. And women want a little bit of mystery. They want a little bit of excitement, they want a little bit of adventure. They want to. There's this, and I think you do too, as a man. There's something that can sometimes be exciting about unpredictability. And so you need to have consistency and stability in saying yes and saying no, in creating direction, in making decisions. All of those things are going to say, we're moving in this direction. This is the vision, this is what we stand for. These are our values. These. This is how I make decisions in a relationship. This is how I create direction, right? And you can trust that. And it's stable and it's secure. And every once in a while you be unpredictable. Not in an unhealthy way, not, not in a way where you're like going out and you disappear until 4 o' clock in the morning because you've, you know, gotten shit faced somewhere with your buddies and you don't text your, your wife or your girlfriend, she has no idea where you are. Not in that way, right? Not in a way that's unsafe to the relationship. Not in a way that's going to make her worry. But you are unpredictable in the sense that every once in a while you take her out of her element, right? You take her on a date somewhere that she would never expect you to take her on. You make a decision that she wouldn't expect you to make. You go on an adventure. You take her somewhere exciting. You take her somewhere that you've wanted to go that she wouldn't expect. And in that way, right, 80, 90% of the time, you are predictable. She knows what she's going to get. She knows the direction that you're taking the relationship. And. And 10, 20% of the time, it's like, ooh, I don't know what I'm gonna get. I don't know where he's gonna take me. I don't know what this experience is gonna be like. And that's exciting. And that creates vibrancy in the relationship. And so while you maintain direction, make sure that you also maintain a little bit of adventurousness and excitement and unpredictability in the relationship. Otherwise, the fizz will lose its fizzle. It'll all fade out. It'll be boring and not that exciting. Let me know what you would add. If there's anything that you felt like I missed, let me know if there's anything that you disagree with. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.