There is something about a new year that makes people want to make changes to their lives. Married couples suddenly feel the urge to come up with a new set of marriage goals and work on their marriage. Sadly, many of these goals and resolutions are usually forgotten within a few months despite the best intentions. Most people just can’t seem to make their resolutions stick.

Making Resolutions as a Couple

Setting new goals for your marriage should be a mutual effort. It’s the only way to ensure that your marriage goals fit in with your personal goals and reflect your individual values. Making resolutions together also increases your commitment to achieving the goals and makes you accountable to each other.

Before the year ends sit down with your spouse, evaluate your marriage and identify areas of your married life that need work. This “evaluation” can be a lot of fun if you treat it as an opportunity to look back at the last year. When you’re done reminiscing, decide the steps that you need to take so as to have the kind of marriage that you want.

Bite-Sized Goals

The main reason why most resolutions fail miserably is because people tend to go big. Setting bite-sized goals takes the vagueness out of the process of improving your marriage and ensures that you are on the same page so that you can work in harmony. So, if you really want to succeed, try making your resolutions small, specific and realistic. For instance, if you would like to spend more quality time together in the New Year, break it down into specifics such as “one date-night a month” or “one weekend getaway every three months.”

New Year’s resolutions may have a high failure rate but they can be extremely beneficial if you get them right so don’t give up just yet. Using these marriage tips you and your spouse can come up with realistic and achievable marriage goals for the coming year.