Read on for 3 yearly questions to ask your spouse for a fruitful marriage.
If you are reading this before reading the weekly and quarterly questions to set up a regular rhythm of communication, I would suggest starting there. You can find those posts below:
5 Weekly Questions to Ask Your Spouse
4 Quarterly Questions to Ask Your Spouse
Setting up a safe space to talk about the little things and the big things will serve you well in your yearly action steps for a fruitful marriage. Without laying the foundation of safe communication, it’s likely your dreams and goal setting within your marriage won’t flourish. But if you spend the time and effort cultivating a place in your marriage that supports candid and deep conversations, you will set your marriage up for communication success!
These 3 yearly questions for your marriage focus on dreams, goal settings, and living out purpose within your marriage. The new year is a great time to have these conversations, but if you are reading this in the middle of July, don’t wait for the new year to start. Now is the time!
3 Yearly Questions to Ask Your Spouse
- What are some things you would like to do as a couple in the year ahead?
- What are two or three action steps that would help us hit our goal(s)?
- How can we schedule these to best hold ourselves accountable?
- *Bonus* What have we done to work towards our current goal as a couple and what are our next steps?
What are some things you would like to do as a couple in the year ahead?
This is the best yearly question to start with
because the answer will drive your remaining questions. This is the time where the two of you get to look ahead and think about what you desire as a couple. What excites you to think about doing together? Do you want to take a vacation? Plan overnighters (as discussed in these quarterly questions)? Complete a project together in your home or community? Serve together in your church or community? How do you want to boldly live out your purpose as a couple? Choose a couple things (or one big thing) that you both agree on and use that to guide your remaining questions. Take turns sharing your ideas. Remember to listen with a non-judgmental ear. The conversation won’t go anywhere if you have a rebuttal for every thought your spouse has. This is a safe space. There are no wrong answers.
Eventually, you will need to decide on which goal(s) you are going to set as a couple. This will quite possibly require understanding and patience, but remember the purpose of this conversation is to come up with a shared goal that both of you are excited about. You might even need to weigh it out with a pros and cons list. Don’t forget to consider the time, energy, money, etc it will require as you talk through them and ultimately come to a conclusion.
Here are some guidelines for creating goals:
First, only choose one or two goals to start with. Big goals take time and require effort. Set yourself up for success by working towards one goal at a time.
Then, make your goal as specific as possible. Avoid generalizations like “better”, “improved”, “simpler”, “more”, “less”, etc. The specificity will help you choose the right action steps later. An example would be: “Go on 3 overnighters this year” instead of “Go on more overnighters this year”.
Write your goal so that it can be measured. It’s so much eaiser to make sure you’re on track if your goal is measurable. If your goal is to go on 3 overnighters, and you go on 1, you know there are 2 more overnighters left. I know this is oversimplifying, but it will help with your success!
Make sure your goal is attainable. Maybe you would really like to go on one overnighter a month, but you have small children and that really isn’t feasible in this season of life. 12 overnighters down to 3 overnighters is truly attainable. This doesn’t mean you can’t reach for the stars, it just means to be realistic or let the realist of the two of you shed some perspective.
Write a goal that is relevant. In this case, is it relevant to your marriage? That’s the purpose of incorporating these questions into your communication rhythm, so be sure you are choosing a goal that is relevant to the both of you!
Finally, choose a goal that has an end date. Again, this is a yearly conversation. But your goal doesn’t have to be completed by the end of the year. It could be that you have a goal to go on two dates and 1 overnighter a quarter. Then, at the end of the quarter, you can evaluate if you hit your goals and make any adjustments as needed.
What are two or three action steps that will help us hit our goal(s)?
This yearly question helps you stay on track to reach the goal(s) that you just created as a couple.
It is great to create a goal, but if you don’t have action steps aligned to help you get there, your goal is just a vision. Imagine if the goal is the destination, this second question helps know what kind of transportation, provisions, and map it will take to get there. And because you did such a great job creating the goal by following the guidelines, it will be much easier to create action steps. If your goal is a big one, you might need to create action steps for your action steps, and that’s great, too! One way to tell if your action steps need action steps is to consider how they make you feel. If it’s too overwhelming, see how you can break it down into more manageable steps.
This step might require research. Don’t put all the planning or research on one person. Delegate your research or other action steps so that the work is as evenly distributed as possible. Goals take work, but if you’re excited about them, the work will be well worth the effort!
How can we schedule these action steps to best hold each other accountable?
Since your goal is able to be measured by time, that should alleviate some of the stress of scheduling. Goals take time. If your time is already maxed out, you might have to say no to some good things. If you both agree that this is a goal to be met, you need to hold each other accountable. That means things will need to be put on the calendar. I always say if you don’t schedule your life, your life will be scheduled for you. I know not everyone is a calendar person, but a calendar is a great accountability tool. So while I strongly encourage you to keep a shared calendar, I also encourage you to give each other permission to hold you accountable in other ways. Time is a major hindrance to meeting your goals, so ensure that it doesn’t entrap you!
Bonus Question: What have we done to work towards our current goal(s), and what is our next step?
This is a bonus yearly question,
but it is also a great quarterly question since you probably have action steps that are completed within a quarter. Either way, you need to include this in your conversations to make sure you are still heading in the right direction. This is a bonus question because it doesn’t need to be asked immediately after a goal is set. Rather, you need to ask it occasionally after action steps have been established.
That’s it! I hope you were encouraged to incorporate these questions into your marriage on a weekly, quarterly, and yearly basis. Building a marriage takes time, intention, effort, grace, patience, and so much more. But I strongly believe that with better communication, more efforts toward understanding and working as a team, the deeper and more fruitful your marriage will be.
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