How to Set Healthy Relationship Goals This Year

January 1 has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean time is up for setting goals for the new year, especially when it comes to relationships, which require year-round maintenance. 

If you caught more than a few “this is my last year being single” posts on your social media feed at the top of 2024, you might think uncoupled individuals are the only ones who need to create relationship goals, but the reality is everyone should be thinking about them.

“No matter where you are in your journey, you should always be setting relationship goals,” says Marissa Nelson, an intimacy and relationship expert for the dating app Blk. “Our relationships are beyond just romantic ones. What kind of friends and friendships are nurturing us and feeding our soul? Think about family relationships as well. What dynamics are really serving us and in which ones might we have to flex a little bit more boundaries to protect our energy? How can you move forward and know that you’re building positive, wonderful, loving relationships with people who care about you, and are also being reciprocal with their love and their time and their care?”

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The answers to those questions start from within, explains Nelson, who notes she’s an attachment-based therapist, meaning she examines people’s childhoods and the relationships they had with their caregivers growing up to understand how they learned to love and who they trust and are attracted to as adults.

“Many times we’re attracting partners into our lives, not because it’s the healthiest of relationships but because we may have grown up in a very dysfunctional environment or within a very dysfunctional system, and it feels familiar to us.”

One important question to ask as you begin that self-assessment is are you in a place where you can be receptive to love? The other, Nelson says, is, “What are the goals that you have for yourself as far as your own wellness and well-being? How are you nurturing your own soul care so that you can take care of yourself before you’re inviting and wanting somebody else to come into your life and having expectations of another partner?”

“What I see as a couples therapist is that many times when clients are not tending to their own care, they’re tasking their partners and other people to fill the gap for things that they’re fully responsible for, things that are within their wheelhouse to take care of,” Nelson adds. “That’s why I recommend a holistic approach to say, yes, let’s vision this out and see what are the experiences that I want to have with someone? What kind of partner do I want to have?”

For single individuals looking to be in a relationship, a vision board is a great way to begin crafting that visual representation, Nelson says. It can also help safeguard against unhealthy expectations that can come from being too stringent when goal setting and focusing on a specific timeline to find a partner versus overall progress toward that desire.

“If you create an inflexible goal where, if I don’t achieve this goal in six months I now feel guilt, shame, and bad about myself because it didn’t happen that’s not helpful,” Nelson says. “We have to also build in the flexibility that life is going to unfold the way that it’s going to. The only thing that we can do is have intentional actions towards that goal.”

To that end, “Being in a relationship is not the end goal, at least as far as I’m concerned,” Nelson adds. “I want to make sure that you build discernment through therapy, through spiritual practice, through doing your work to know, I could be really attracted to this person, but I have the discernment to know whether this person is going to be the right partner for me or not. And if I’m doing my work, then I’m filling my life with joy and with meaning so that I’m in a receptive mode, so that I’m in a space where I can have and attract the love in my life that I deserve and I don’t have to be afraid. I don’t have to be nervous or feel anxious as I’m waiting for this person to come into my life because my life is already filled with meaning. This person is just an addition to that.”

When it comes to couples, a healthy way to begin goal setting is by looking at different areas of your lives that you might want to improve. 

“I call them domains,” Nelson says. “You can have your financial domain where you ask, what are your financial goals as a couple? If there has been a financial trauma or a person hasn’t managed money in the ways in which you would have approved, it’s never about the money. Money is merely a vehicle. It’s about our relationship with money. How did we grow up? What are our values around money? What do we believe about work and money and the life that we’re supposed to have? Couples need to get on the same page or close to the same page about this.”

From there, Nelson says, couples can establish more concrete goals like being debt-free in X amount of years, paying off student loans, or purchasing a new home.  “Whatever those goals are, it’s much better if couples are rowing in tandem as opposed to, ‘you do your own thing, I do my own thing, don’t tell me what to do,’” she explains.

Another important domain for goal setting within a relationship is sex and intimacy. “As a licensed AASECT-certified sex therapist and sexuality educator, this is where a lot of my time with couples is spent, really thinking about the way in which couples do intimacy,” says Nelson. “How are we tending to affection and attention? Are we spending time together and scrolling through Instagram and TikTok? Are we spending time together and your mind is somewhere else? Am I going through something and are you there for me in an emotionally present way? Are we only physically affectionate when it’s leading to sex? Is there tenderness outside of sex or is sex the only way that we get tenderness and together time and cuddling and all of those things?”

Answering questions like these can help couples identify what’s working for them in the present moment and assess whether they might be working with outdated scripts to shape their sexual behavior. “It’s really rethinking a lot of our assumptions or belief systems, updating it as a couple, and boldly moving forward in goal setting for your intimate life that both of you can get on board with,” says Nelson.

Like for single individuals, this type of goal setting doesn’t involve putting finite rules in place, like having sex four times a week, for example. “I’m talking about what does intimacy look like for us?” Nelson explains. “What does sexuality and eroticism mean to you? I prefer cuddling. I prefer this. I don’t like talking much during intimacy. I do. I want to feel more free. These things should not be a mystery for couples who’ve been together for a very, very long time, which happens. You could be with somebody for 10 years and barely talk about your intimate life. So how might we be able to open space in our relationship for us to have an expanded definition of intimacy and expanded conversations?”

Conversation will continue to be a key piece of staying on track towards reaching set goals. But rather than focusing on keeping your partner accountable, Nelson says a better way to achieve the endgame is to check in with one another.

“Usually when people try to keep each other accountable it’s you said this, this, and this, and that’s not what I’m seeing. It’s coming through the lens of judgment and accountability and judgment, for me, are two things that don’t mix. They’re like oil and water because what ends up happening is that you then start building up shame because if I had a goal and I didn’t meet it, and now you’re telling me that I didn’t meet a goal, how’s that going to make me feel?

“The way that I think that we should frame it, and, personally, I practice this and I believe this and I share this with my clients, is we’re only going to strive for and attract things and go for things in our life that we believe that we’re deserving and worthy of having, and many times we have internal resistance to being able to get to that next level or that next goal,” explains Nelson. “Being supportive is saying, ‘Talk to me about some of the blocks that are coming up for you. Tell me how I can support you. Is there something that I can do to work alongside you to support you in this goal? Do you just need space and time right now?’”

As tempting as it may be to offer suggestions and advice, Nelson adds that it’s important not to impose on our partner’s individual process for creating the changes you’ve agreed to make within your union.

“We have to hold space for where our partner is in their journey because change is a process,” she says. “It may happen overnight, and it also may not.”