87. Spring Clean Pt. 3: What are Your Plans For Next Month?
Meet the Host
Five years ago, after achieving my degrees and teaching as a professor, I was feeling proud that I had checked everything off my life list. But, I wasn’t satisfied in my marriage.
Today, I’m a relationship coach on a mission to resurrect the side of you that got lost in your relationship and responsibilities teaching you how to stop arguing and have more sex. Millions of people around the world soak up my content for advice on how to have a more satisfying relationship.
Welcome to Part 3 of our latest series, Spring Clean Your Relationship! This week, we are asking our partners the question: What are your plans for next month? We’re going to work on your short-term goals to see if you can do life with this person in the long term.
Because when you’re deciding if this is the person you want to do life with, the emphasis is usually on long-term goals. What do we want to do in five years, in ten years, in fifteen years? A lot of big ideas come into place.
But when you are making long-term goals in your relationship, they’re still a fantasy. You both have to take very small steps in order to watch these big goals be achieved. If this is the person you want to be with for the rest of your life, you have to see if they can handle the short-term plans.
Check out this week's episode to hear how focusing on short-term plans can give you the answers that you need and how I help my clients navigate these short-term plans in their relationships.
Click the link to listen below and email me back with your thoughts, I want to hear from you!
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Episode Transcript:
Karina: Amigos, welcome back to Relationships. You Understand? with your host me, Karina F. Dave's speaker, relationship expert, and podcast host of this dope podcast. So today we're going to continue our series spring cleaning your relationship. This is part three. What are your goals next month? So I've been doing a series called Spring Cleaning Your Relationship where I am giving you tools and steps to be able to stop and basically ask your relationship, what are we doing here?
We spent some time talking about our values, which was last week. And then we spent some time talking about like, how do we imagine growing old together, loving each other? Like, what is it that we want right out of this? Because sometimes you can be on. a sort of content ride with your partner where you just become used to being with them and you don't ask the harder questions.
So this series is meant to ride y'all through how to ask the difficult questions and how to navigate those conversations. And for the sake of time, they are very short episodes. So we're just going to get right into it. Spring cleaning your relationship. What are your goals next month? So let me be clear why I call it next month.
You see, most couples create goals in advance. And what I mean by that is they tell themselves, okay, what do we want to do in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years? Right. And so a lot of. Big ideas come into place. And by big ideas, I mean, also big purchases. We want to buy a home in five years. We want to have our first kid in seven years.
We want to be able to, you know, purchase our dream car in, you know, the next five years, we want to be able to, you know, uh, move up the corporate ladder to a VP position in five or seven years, like things of that nature. Your couples will automatically create goals very quickly. Now, that is not a bad thing, however, when you are trying to figure out if this is the person for you, you need to be able to measure and assess your, um, productivity, your commitment, all of those things, much more quicker than five years, 10 years, 15 years down the line, you understand?
And so I'm not saying. That the five and 10, 15 year goals of the huge purchases and the huge promotions and the dream house and everything that you want, that's not a bad thing. But when you are making these in advance goals in your relationship, they pretty much still are a fantasy and you are creating very small steps in order to watch them be achieved over a period of time.
And what happens, especially relationships, when you've been together for a while, three years, five years, 10 years is. You might forget those goals, right? Or you're like, Hey, remember, we wanted to buy a house. Like, what are we supposed to do with that again? And so there's a lot of recalibration and then that plays into the role with you of deciding if you want to be with this person, you're like, yeah, yeah.
But we have this goal. We have this goal, but that goal. Takes years to achieve and is going to be more difficult for you to be able to decide now if this person is the one that you want to end up with. If the person now is the one that you want to be with for the rest of your life. You understand? And so what I'm offering as a relationship expert and what I offer my clients is for you to start making goals next month.
So what I want you to do is sit down with your partner and decide what are your goals for next month. Okay. And what that means is y'all taking time to be able to measure How much you can accomplished in the next month, right? And here's the thing, like you may call it goals. Other people may call it achievements.
You can call it whatever is comfortable for your relationship, but when you are spring cleaning your relationship, the reason why you need goals that are for next month is for three things. You need to be able to see if you can take action as a couple. Right, or as an individual, right? How, how do you work together?
You need to be able to see commitment as an individual and as a couple, and you need to be able to see if you can hold each other accountable. When you are creating goals, In the next month, you can quickly see each other's commitment, each other's action, and how you hold each other accountable individually or how you hold the other person accountable.
Now, what happens when you set goals for the next month is that it adds sort of a layer of pressure. This is my favorite part. This pressure is a good indicator. It allows you a tunnel vision into your relationship to be able to see how you all both handle pressure, tension. How do you handle those conversations?
Are you controlling with these goals next month? Are you a micromanager? Are you the type of person that sits back and forgets about them? Or do you work as a team together? Are you a unit? Are you cohesive? Do you communicate? Do you see how having goals in your relationship next month create answers for you that you need now, rather than creating goals that can't be attained over the next five or 10 years.
And it's very difficult to measure and give you the answers you need now. Now, do you understand, do you see the difference there? When you create goals in the next month in your relationship, you are able to see each other's commitment, each other's, um, action steps and each other's accountability for how you hold each other accountable or how you hold yourself accountable.
Those right there will give you the answers in your relationship immediately to tell if this is the person for you. Again, I do not want you to stop setting goals, bigger goals in 5 and 10 years. Those goals are very beautiful goals. But setting goals so far in advance, especially when you are trying to figure out if this person is the one, doesn't give you the answers that you need.
Instead, I want you to create goals next month, right? Um, in order to be able to tell what to do with your relationship now. Okay. And it's going to give you the answers of like, not just how do we work together, but, uh, does this person commit to their goals? Does this person commit to our goals? You know, how do they treat, how seriously do they treat what it is that we've decided we're going to do together?
Karina: All right. You understand it's a very simple way to spring clean your relationship. Okay. Now we're going to get into the question of the week that was sent to me. Um, that says, here we go. This is actually a good one. It's called, it's about long distance relationships. It says I'm in a long distance relationship for about three years and things are going pretty good, but sometimes we fight about the smallest things and I feel like it's because we're long distance and sometimes we don't have a lot to talk about, which frustrates her.
Do you have some tips? on communication. Okay, this is so good. So this person is in a long term, sorry, long distance relationship for about three years. Things are usually pretty good. They fight about the smallest things and they feel like it's because they're long distance and don't really have much to talk about, which frustrates the partner and they want tips on communication.
So this is really good. Here's what I'll say. Yes, You both not being physically together, um, is something that could cause, you know, arguing and frustration and tension. But I'll tell you this, it isn't the core issue. Because even when y'all are together, you will also spend a lot of time apart, right?
Let's say they decide to get married or whatnot. You will need this training of not being together. So I don't want you to focus so much on the fact that being long distance is a problem. And here's not just that version, not just that answer, but here's also why I also don't want you to focus on the fact that long distance is a problem because you decided to enter a long distance relationship.
Okay, the reason why it's the first thing that you, um, make it a problem as, the fact that you're long distance, is because the intentions in the relationship aren't clear. When the intentions and the setup of the relationship are very clear, you won't argue so intensely about that being a problem. If you and I both know that we are committed to having a long distance relationship, and this is what we do.
Yeah, it might frustrate us in the sense of like, I wish I could see you. I wish I could hug you. I miss you so much, but it is not the core issue. Okay. And so he says, I feel like it's We don't have a lot to talk about. Listen, the reason why you have a lot to talk about, I'm going to tell you why is because everybody grows and changes.
And even me, who's known my husband since I was 13, we've been married for 12. Um, don't worry. There was a lot of time in between. He always says that I've been married to 20 something versions of you. And that's the reality. You are married to different versions of a person because they grow. And so in your relationship, you grow, they grow.
There are things that you are doing on a daily basis. That are the things that you can talk. Those are the things that you can talk about. You can talk about each other's goals. You can talk about visions. You can talk about your family members. You can talk about your values. You can talk about money values.
You can talk about dreams. You can talk about the next time that you will meet up and how that will happen. You can talk about a lot of different things. And now I hear this person saying, we've already done that. Okay. That's great. There's more, right? Your money all because all of these things can also change.
And so Some tips that I will say that you can start to even talk about with your partner is how do you imagine this relationship working out? Right. Am I still the person that you want to be with? And here's the thing. You're like, that's really deep. Yeah. It's important. It's three years in, I want you to have these conversations about is about the deepness.
If we actually want to be together, if you know, if we nitpick so much and it creates huge blowups, is there something clearly Uh, bigger wrong in our relationship that we haven't tackled yet. Let's talk about that. And the only way that we can do that is over the phone or on FaceTime. Okay. Um, and I think a lot of the times, especially in long distance relationships, it's really easy to feel like an afterthought because you want that person because you can't physically see that person.
You want that person to make you their world, their priority. And what I want you to understand is like, Their commitment to you is definitely a priority, but necessarily it doesn't mean that you need to be the first person that they think about the first person that they, you know, take action for like, allow this partner to breathe and you to breathe too, because that's how you can remain in your individuality.
You understand? Okay. So I hope that answers this question. I'm going to contact this person back. If you have questions about your relationship, you can DM them to me. You can email them to me to team at Karina f daves. com. I want you to know if right now you are having trouble communicating with your partner and Deciding whether or not this is the relationship for you.
I want to work with you in my private one on one coaching program over the course of the next three months to figure out the exact communication strategies it's going to take for you to figure out if this is the one I want to figure out, you know, how to rediscover your values, how to rediscover your identity, and really how to rediscover your standards for relationships and love.
You understand? Okay. My name's Karina F days. I'm a relationship expert, a speaker, and a podcast host of all. This dope podcast relationships you understand And the last thing that i'll do is pray for y'all really quick. So father god, thank you so much for Bringing all of us together lord. I asked for such a heavy spirit of discernment to be over us and clarity Not only that lord, but I think it's really important to know that how much you give us discernment And tell us what we should be doing but that can only be matched with obedience So today I pray for clarity and obedience, um, for us to be obedient to the path that you have for us.
All right. I ask all of this in your name. Amen. Okay. I love you so much. If you love this podcast, make sure you subscribe to it on, uh, Apple iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Um, make sure you leave a review, make sure you share it with all of your amigos. I primarily live here on Instagram or Tik TOK.
Um, and yeah, I'm really excited, um, to be here and. You know, really have the opportunity to continue serving y'all. So next week we have our last part of the series, spring cleaning your relationship. And I can't wait to work with you. I can't wait to see you and meet you. Any questions you have, please send them my way.
All right. I love you so much. Bye.
