Create your personal Marriage Manifesto (MM) to infuse your relationship with intention and direction.
This is an opportunity to explore and and DECIDE how you will bring your best self forward in your relationship, no matter what situations or challenges arise.
Your MM will express expectations you have defined for yourself and, if you wish, include mutually shared expectations to nurture a thriving relationship.
Your pledge to live up to values and ideals.
If you wrote your own wedding vows, you may see some similarities because you are pledging to live up to certain ideals.
Wedding vows typically share heartfelt expressions of love and loyalty promises to loftier ideals: to be there through think and thin, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, but they rarely describe specifics about how to behave as your best self.
Wedding vows often include a humorous promise or two that recognize your partner’s “charming” idiosyncrasies and preferences. Like the groom’s promise to always give his beloved foot massages during TV sports marathons. Or the bride’s promise to keep her penchant for decorative throw pillows on the bed to a minimum.
They may include a heartwarming recounting of a pivotal moment when you fell in love. When you knew you had found “the one.”
Your Marriage Manifesto focuses more on your values as expressed through your behavior within your relationship.
It highlights how you are choosing to live within your marriage on a day to day basis.
In effect, your MM lays out what I like to call “guard rails” for your day to day, year to year interactions.
These are the principles that you’ve defined for your own happiness within your relationship and for what creates a marriage rich with love, intimacy and connection.
It’s always the right time to examine your vision for the quality of your relationship. And it’s never too late to begin.
Your MM will help you nurture and strengthen your partnership.
Your MM expresses how you commit to approaching your day to day life within your marriage.
It’s a declaration of the values and intentions you cherish most. The ones you intend to prioritize in order to enhance the well-being of your relationship.
It is a living document that benefits from being reviewed and revised periodically.
As you wend your way through life’s changes and challenges, you may need to reexamine previously held beliefs and expectations to update your MM.
Want to see my Marriage Manifesto?
I see my responsibilities in my marriage as always answering this question: Am I bringing my best self to the relationship today?
Some days I’m a splendid example of all that I am striving to achieve, other days I fall short. But what’s important is that I have established my own set of “guard rails” that keep me on the path when things get tough.
While these are written in the form of statements, when I’m struggling with an issue, I turn them into questions as I ask myself if I’m following these ideals.
- Check in with myself frequently about the thoughts and feelings and ask if they’re serving me.
- Choose love.
- Support his relationship with his children and grandchildren.
- Always remember we are on the same team.
- Express gratitude and appreciation daily, for all things large and small.
- Choose curiosity rather than judgement.
- Offer the benefit of the doubt.
- Support without having to fix or agree.
- Strive for win-win solutions.
- Extend compassion.
- No calculations or keeping score.
- Choose to show up as my best self.
Have you thought about your own unique Marriage Manifesto?
If you need help identifying what’s of top importance for you or envisioning your own responses, let’s get coaching.
Reach out to me right here.
Let’s figure out where to go from where you are right now.
