Relationship Visioning for the New Year and Beyond

Kids. We only have them under our roof for a decade or two if we're lucky. And we tend to want to really focus on them and what we're going to do for them and what we're going to do with them and making memories. And so we wind up having goals around that. But the relationship is kind of background. A lot of times, even if we value it very deeply, we just figure it's going to take care of itself. We figure that if we're pursuing our other goals together, then that's enough. But I want to invite you this year to think of the relationship as its own visioning area, to really take the lid off what you imagine as possible for the two of you in terms of closeness, in terms of partnership, in terms of erotic fulfillment. Regardless of how old you are or what's been going on in the past, you can have a relationship that might be better than any other relationship you've ever seen and better than what you've imagined before.

Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they.

Really want in bed and in life.

Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here.

Today we're talking about crafting your relationship vision for the new year. I want to be invited into your living room as you review the past year and craft a vision that will take you into deeper love, more delicious sex, and greater connection in the coming year. So I've invited you into my living room today and I'm just going to walk through with you a couple of the ways that I've been helping clients for more than 20 years to review their old year and vision their new year. We're going to cover how to become more growth oriented in your marriage without your partner feeling like you're all up in their grill about them changing. We'll talk about how to use your relationship desires as catalysts for your own deeper growth. And we'll talk about how to break down a great big evolutionary goal into the very next step. Now, Kurt and I have been visioning together for 25 years for one reason and that is that I am crazy about these processes. I always want to review what's been going on, look at what I want next, and talk about it. He, on the other hand, is not so into these things. He's warmed to them over the years. But I've always had to adapt my process or the ways that I invite him into it to where he was and what he was up for. So I know a lot about how to help you do the same. Regardless of how into planning you are or how not into planning your partner is, we can create a way of engaging with your vision that works for the two of you. Now, you may know that for, I think 14 years now, I've been adapting my process in a free guide that I call for shorthand, the Couples Guide to Planning an Amazing New Year, or just the Couples Guide. And it is available@couplesvision.com for free for you and anyone you want to send there so that you can get my I think it's 31 pages this year. You know, it varies by year. I adapt it every year. But we've got this guide that will help you both review the past year and dig into what you want for the future. This episode really talks more about the second half. This is a partner episode to one that I produced last year. It was published on December 31, 2021, and it's called Reviewing youg Year in Love and Sex. So that correlates roughly to the first half of the Couples Guide. And I highly recommend that you follow that process at the beginning of the Couples Guide, either using that episode or just using the guide itself, and then listen to this episode and do this process. Of course, you're welcome to keep listening now if you want to just hear this first, but this is what we're going to do is use these two episodes to go through the entire Couples Guide so that you can look back and then build your vision for the coming year based on what you've learned this year and what you desire in the long term. What I know for sure is that making review and visioning a lifestyle a decade after decade commitment, something that you do annually, quarterly, monthly and weekly, will transform the trajectory of your life and of your relationship. That's something that I've done for a long time and it doesn't bear its greatest fruits in the immediate term or even the mid range. It's over the long run that these learning processes, these reflection processes, this process of listening more deeply to yourself really bears fruit. So this is one of the foundations of legacy love, creating that relationship that's not just good, not just great, but builds your impact in the world. The legacy you want to leave behind for not just you and your beloved, but your family, your community and the greater world. Because that love is so rich and deep and wide that it fuels you. And that passion spills over into the other things that you might want for the world and it raises your sights to more of what's possible for us all. So that's my vision for what visioning can do for you. But the sad fact is that most people, even people who are in love and in a good relationship, don't give attention to the vision for the relationship. Their relationship is kind of an afterthought in their visioning processes. Even if they set goals every year. I mean, think about it. You know, money is one of the things that we think of as like, this is going to give me security in the future. This is going to give my kids more opportunities. This is going to open the doors for me. So people do a lot of visioning around their career, their income, their investments, and then health is almost the opposite. A lot of us have been so busy with our careers and our kids that we've done some benign neglect on our well being. And so a lot of people have sort of remedial goals. I'm going to lose that ten pounds. I'm going to exercise more than I did last year. They want to tune up their fitness or their eating. And I can hear my daughter playing piano. I told her I was making a video. But maybe piano is a positive addition to the video. We'll just hold it that way. So, and then kids, we only have them under our roof for a decade or two if we're lucky. And we tend to want to really focus on them and what we're going to do for them and what we're going to do with them and making memories. And so we wind up having goals around that. But the relationship is kind of background. A lot of times, even if we value it very deeply, we just figure it's going to take care of itself. We figure that if we're pursuing our other goals together, then that's enough. But I want to invite you this year to think of the relationship as its own visioning area. To really take the lid off what you imagine as possible for the two of you in terms of closeness, in terms of partnership, in terms of erotic fulfillment. Regardless of how old you are or what's been going on in the past, you can have a relationship that might be better than any other relationship you've ever seen and better than what you've imagined before. And that's what this episode is about. So we're going to bring your relationship off of that back burner onto the front burner. We're going to turn up the heat under it. We're going to start adding some spices. Let's get going. So I have in my hands the couple's guide to planning an amazing new year. And we're looking into the back half of it, looking at your desires. So the place I want you to start in your visioning is just kind of pie in the sky. What do you want for your life? Sometimes people call this your bucket list, which is short for things I want to do before I kick the bucket. That is to say die. And I'm a big fan of stoic philosophy and thinking about our death and our mortality as a great tool for creating the kind of life we really want to live. I actually have an app on my phone called Days that gives me a count up since some of the things that matter a lot to me, like my recovery, abstinence, and days I've been a mother. But it also tells me how many days until Kurt turns 90? How many days until Cooper graduates from high school and probably goes away to college. How many days until Mira does? So I'm very aware of the finitude of my relationships as I know them, you know, in the shape that I'm used to them being in. So that's one of the pieces I recommend for you, too, is start to get into relationship with how long you're going to have mom and your dad. I know that's morbid to think about, but it's also really useful. It helps me be present to people who are really precious. So start by listing your desires, and there's room for that in the couples guide. And both partners can take their time to do this, or if you're doing this as a family, you can make space for each person in the family to think about some of the things that they'd really like to do be have created this lifetime. You know, I'd like to get better at ukulele, and I tried that a couple years ago. Kind of lost focus on it. So now it's out there in my eventually when I have more space kind of list. Not something that's going to be a goal in 2023, but it's just out there, and it's a kind of thing that's fun to share with your partner or your family. What are Some of your things that people would be like. Really? That's something you're into? Yeah, that's something I'm interested in long term. So once you've got your picture of what you want in the long run, or, you know, regardless of the time frame, it might be something you want in 2023 for 25 or 35, but list all your desires and now boil it down. Think about what you really want to create in 2023. And this is why I invited you to look at 2022 before you did this. Because a lot of times we want to build on what we've done in the past year. What were the best things that happened in 2022? How can you capitalize on that? What do you wish you'd done differently in 2022? And how can you make those tweaks? So often our greatest transformations do come on the margin just by changing one thing. If it's well chosen, we can dramatically change the trajectory of our lives and our relationships. So begin to think about that. And then one of the exercises I invite you to engage with in the couples guide is creating a treasure map. So I think of as a treasure map as kind of a poster board size. You could do it on an 8 and a half by 11 page, whatever size you want. You can do this digitally, but you can create a collage with words or pictures. And I tend to use the word God or universe or life itself. You can use whatever language you want. You don't have to name any particular thing you're talking to, but you can just say, I give thanks for at the top. But I would say, thank you, God, for this experience. And then at the bottom, I'll say, may this or something better unfold for the highest and best good of all concerned, in perfect divine timing. So may it be. And so by creating a treasure map like that, you're sort of turning it over. You're saying, this is my desire. This is what I know about it already. And you're kind of double checking it with the universe or with whatever you conceive of as your higher power. You're saying, let's hope that it unfolds this way, or maybe even better. And I trust that this is forthcoming through my own efforts and through all kinds of help from places that I can't even anticipate necessarily. So that's a great way to create a visual of the coming year and to invite in more resources than your own. Then the next piece we want to look at is, how are you going to make space for the two of you in the coming year and particularly when we have kids. But regardless, between your careers, your friendships, your community involvement, and your own well being is easy for the relationship to get crowded out. So what kind of space do you want to make for the two of you in the coming year? Now, I think of this on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis because there are different sizes of connection that are really useful on those time frames. So you might look at, is there a new morning or evening ritual or both that you'd like to engage in that has the two of you connect daily? Even smaller than that, do you reach out to your partner during the day when the two of you aren't together? And what would happen? What would be different between the two of you when you reconnect at the end of the day if you did? If you set an alarm during the day? My husband is very head down in his work all day, and he used to never reach out to me during the day until he decided to operationalize the wisdom that he'd heard time and again that I would feel thought of and cherished if he did reach out to me during the day. So he didn't. He stopped relying on his own brain to think of me. It's not that he doesn't love me, it's that his brain's somewhere else. So now he sets an alarm that inserts me into his consciousness and then he reaches out and I do feel more loved, even though I know about the alarm. So you can think of some things you might want to do, and maybe it's only on Tuesdays that you'll do that. But. But what can you build in that will have you make more room in your consciousness for your partner and more loving action toward them in your behavior? What would you like to do that you know will make a difference with your partner? Maybe reaching out to them during their workday is the last thing your partner wants from you, but maybe making them a cup of coffee is the first thing. So really think about what that is and the two of you can talk about it together. Then think about what kinds of things could you do weekly? A weekly date night is something that we started when we were pregnant with our first child because we took advice that we got then that making time just for the two of us was really important. And we still consider that weekly date night to be like a little mini vacation that we take together in the middle of the week. If the two of you don't create pleasure and relaxation alone Together, you won't think of each other as a resource for that. And then when your kids move out, you'll be really used to getting your nourishment, your relaxation, your play, your pleasure, your fun with other people. And you kind of won't know what to do with each other. I've coached many couples through that, and there are ways to rebuild, but far better to create the habit of vacationing together every week in that little way that we've been doing, usually on a weekday evening for the last almost 15 years now. Highly recommended. And it can be something as simple as going to a movie or going to dinner. A lot of times we like to go to the beach in the summer and just take beach chairs down and sit by the water together and talk, go to a game store. There are lots of different things that we do that let us be together, Relax, laugh, remember why we fell in love. If you do it every week, you don't forget. Then monthly, you know, what kind of review do you want to do? What do you want to do to check in together? I think of every couple as kind of running a business together, the business of your household. So how are you handling tasks together, and what do you want to do to celebrate that? And what do you want to do to keep process improvement going, just as you would in any other kind of organization that you want to operate in an excellent way? So thinking in terms of business meetings is something that you could think of on a monthly basis. And then also on a monthly basis, it might just be like, what great memories have we created? When did I feel most loved by you? How can I love you better? Are questions that you can ask. And that kind of monthly review. And then quarterly, having time away together, doing something that shifts gears for the two of you, whether that's spending a night away together or a whole weekend, or if you don't have that kind of space or those kinds of resources, it might be more about having a special date, you know, getting a little bit more creative than you usually do, or a little bit deeper resources. Something we've been emphasizing lately is that we really love live music and theater, and we got out of the habit of being planful enough to do that for a while. And then, of course, Covid hit, and so we didn't do it. I think that's probably the biggest culprit. But this year, that's something that Kurt and I definitely have plans for already. You know, a lot of those things take lots of advanced planning. So getting on the Ticketmaster mailing list so that you know when your favorite band is coming through. And doing that kind of advance planning, the sitting online for Taylor Swift tickets, which was not for us as a couple, but for our daughter, was one of the things that we did that, you know, sets us up for next July being a lot of fun. So looking at what you're going to do quarterly is useful. And then annually, we're doing it right now. This is your couples review and visioning. It's a great thing to do. And you might also think in terms of, do we take a trip together annually? If you've listened to my podcast for a long time, you know that I've done episodes on that, how important and valuable that is for me and Kurt to have adventures together. And it really keeps me feeling like he's my lover, he's my adventure partner. Not just the dude who's the father of my kids, but he's someone who's exciting to me because we do exciting things together. And in the guide, we talk about the couple Stroking practice. So that's something that definitely makes space for the two of you. And you can reach out. I may or may not have my program getting to sex or my training the Couple Stroking practice available publicly right now, but if you're interested in it, reach out and let me know and we can find a way to get you connected to that resource. So I teach couples an erotic practice that just takes 15 minutes, but it isn't sex. And so it doesn't require either of you to be in the mood for sex itself in order to deepen your erotic connection any day. And it's made a huge difference in our lives since 2010, when we first learned it, and we've been evolving it since then as a practice of. Of intimacy, of spiritual connection, of mindfulness. And the communication skills that I teach inside that practice actually feed communication in lots of environments and situations that go way beyond that practice. So that's making space for us in the coming year. And then we want to look at aspirations. So what are some of the things that you want to do in the couples guide? I talk about love goals. Do the two of you need a goal to help you secure your future financially? To reduce stress, for one or both of you? To smooth out your logistics, to establish a rhythm of going on meaningful dates that make you feel closer to travel or staycation or relax together? To feel more supported, more seen or more appreciated, to feel more cherished or adored, desired or prized? You want a goal that will help you contribute more in your community or feel more connected as an individual, a couple, or a family to other people? Do you want a goal that will help you create amazing memories or events with just you or with a larger group? Maybe you want a goal for expressing your shared values or clarifying them. Maybe you want to have better sex. Maybe you want to adapt to the life chapter that you're in. Maybe your bodies or your libidos have changed and you haven't yet adjusted to that the way you'd like to? Do you want to play with the polarities of masculine and feminine dominance and submission, or other fun games? Do you want to create a goal that helps you take good care of your physical and mental health? Or maybe create healthy, meaningful connections and times with extended family? You could set a goal around getting on the same page about how you share the labor of your family and caregiving. You could create a goal to help you see yourself as your partner sees you through their eyes. Or how to initiate conversations more gently, or clean up your missteps better, or pause when one of you gets emotionally overloaded. Or maybe you want to create a goal around creating mystery, surprise, and newness together and for one another. So all these prompts are in the couples guide, but those are just some of the kinds of goals that I help couples set, and you get to articulate what your relationship aspirations are. But imagine if you took on even one, two or three of those, how different your conflict would be next year if you took on a goal around that, how many new adventures you could create if you created a goal around that. There's so many possibilities. Life could be dramatically different. And then the ripple effect of that would impact all your other relationships, your health, your finances, your spiritual growth. It's amazing how much wanting more, allowing ourselves to reach, can open up possibilities. So create some love goals for yourself and write them down. And then we want to boil it down. What's the one thing you know? Close in the focus, tighten up the aperture so that you can really prioritize the biggest thing. It's amazing to me, year after year, if I make a big list of 10 different aspirations and then I narrow it down. It's amazing how far I get with that one by virtue of the focus that I placed upon it. And I'm also blown away by all the things that are sort of unexpected, almost accidental, that happens with the other nine simply because I chose them and wrote them down. I hope the same can be true for you. One of the reasons that tightening your focus makes a huge difference is that you can create a habit. You know, goals are one thing, but habits are how transformation really happens. Creating something as a practice is how you get to become a different person. I've done this in many ways in many areas. If you've listened for long, you know that I made a huge change in my body simply by changing how I ate. It was bigger than that. It's a spiritual program of recovery for me to stay on that path. But I know that lives can change. My body changed by £95 and has stayed that way for almost four years now. And that's the outward change. The inner changes are even bigger. So I encourage you to think about, if you wanted to be dramatically different in any way, what would somebody who already has that? What would you see in their daily habits? What do they do without fail? How do they show up every day for the kinds of results that you'd like to have that they have? And it can be really daunting to think like, oh, I can't do that forever. You know, the changes that I've made, I couldn't countenance as a lifelong change. So I had to focus on one day at a time. So that's the question to ask yourself, is what can you do today that matches where you'd like to be a year from now, and can you do it again tomorrow? So making those choices, these are the habits I'm going to cultivate, is how we take a great big vision and boil it down to a starting place. You've heard the adage, journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What is that single step for you? And then how could the two of you encourage one another in those single steps? Because that's the real beauty of having a vision for your relationship, is that each of you then gets this guardian angel for who you're becoming. You partner together to bring about what you most want in your shared life. And when two or more encourage one another, they become unstoppable. So I want that for you, and I hope that this conversation helps you begin to get there. So I've shown you how to craft your relationship vision for the coming year. But now you have a choice to make. Are you going to keep settling for pretty good and appreciating that you have a relationship that's definitely worth keeping and a partner that you love? Are you going to reach for legacy love? Allow yourself to envision what might really be possible if you are willing to focus on it? If you dared to dream that you could have a greater love than you've ever seen, either in your relationship or anyone else's. If you're ready to reach for it, then use this episode. Use the Couple's Guide and reach out and use me. Ask any questions that you have. I know that it's possible to transform a painful relationship into a good one and into a great one. I've done it myself and I've helped many couples do the same. So regardless of where your relationship is today, today I invite you to get visionary about it, to ask for more from yourself, from your partner, and to really deepen into that vision that's written on your heart already. Enjoy the process. Let me know how I can help and have an amazing new year. I'd love to hear what you're taking.

Away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My Free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear.

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