Most of you know that I am serial planner.  To that end I utilize vision boards and the flower diagram from What Color Is Your Parachute to keep myself on track since I don’t like the feeling of a year going by and not being productive or moving towards my stated goals.

This week my husband and I will celebrate 4 years of marriage and I thought it was a good time to talk about our vision for ourselves and family as I don’t know that we were ever really ever able to come to a consensus on a few things:  where we will live and how many kids we will have.

[Sidebar and Background:  So certain topics in our relationship have been off limits or too sensitive to broach in depth.  This includes whether he still wants to move back to NYC and how many children we will have.  I tell you this now because it's a hurdle we've successfully passed and now able to conceptualize and share it with you, hence the use of this flower diagram ]

I am a psychotherapist hence my use of this assessment tool today at brunch with him.  Of course he knows and likes it when I pick his brain LOL  But in all seriousness,  I wanted to be able to openly discuss where our marriage is going in terms of our goals in different areas.  As I mentioned above, we have a few sensitive topics that I tend to avoid but I figured now would be a good time to talk about it.  We’re in a good place and life is good so I took a stab at it!

Each petal represents an area of our life that we’re targeting, I list the ones that were sore spots to give you an idea of the goals we have set and the compromises we came to today.  Some things are still up in the air like how many kids we will have.  He wants 4-5, I want 1-2.  I really don’t see myself having 4-5 kids but that could change *shrug*  Im thinking 2 and a possible

Geography:

As you can see we finally settled on living in DC Metro for the foreseeable future and this was quite a surprise to me.  My husband, for as long as I’ve known him has wanted to go back to NYC and to live here meant he was doings o reluctantly.  But, something clicked and he’s good with living here now.  He has a great job and has spent the last few years building relationships with people here whereas in the past he really hadn’t focused on investing any time in that area since he wanted to move back.  I am of course, happy as a lark since we live in our DREAM subdivision and looking at purchasing another home within 18 months.

To that end, I’ve agreed to having a home in NYC for when he travels there on business or when we visit for the holidays, a pied a terre to be exact.  He still loves NY and I think having this connection there keps the coals burning, hey if he likes it I love it as long as it keeps me here in DC Metro

Career

We talked about our respective jobs, career goals and where we see ourselves in the next 18 months.  He talked about his current role, goals and recently increased responsibilities.  There are other things in the works and so I was able to coach and support him in his vision around making them happen.  Using this diagram I felt like we were able to have a pretty guided conversation in this area to nail down goals and help him clarify and flush out a few things.

With my stuff, while I can’t get into too much detail here, I will say that he urged me to be more focused on my writing and business development as it relates to this blog and the Meetup.  He thinks I’m a great writer and good things happen when I am more consistent with this blog.  The goal we set in this area is for me to find 1-3 hours of quiet time per week to sit and write articles on a more consistent basis. I hope to carve out more time as the year moves forward and a few things settle into place.

Children

We haven’t agreed on exactly how many kids we will have, just that we will have them.  He wants 4-5 kids and I want 1-2.  Now, before you write passionate letters extolling the virtues of motherhood, I do want children.

I just don’t see myself with 4 children or spending the better part of a decade in my thirties being pregnant with 4-5 children.  He comes from a huge family and I do not so the concept is foreign to me.  The best I can do is 1-2 and that’s really 1 and a possible with that possible depending on how my pregnancy and labor goes with the first one.

Other Areas

The other areas (petals) are Physical / Health, Spiritual, and Relationship.  We didnt get a chance to review these in detail but off the top of my head I think we both need to be more healthy in terms of what we we eat and exercise.

To that end we are now both doing P90x and Ive lost 12 lbs.  He only has like 10 lbs to lose and that’ll be done this week, he drops weight pretty easily.  Spiritually, we do need to be more consistent in church and get more involved.  I am waiting on a few things to get settled in my personal life before I make the commitment because I absolutely hate commiting myself to something and then having to back out.

We are both more settled and established in our careers so this is the next stage for us.  So once that happens, Im good.  Relationship, I’ll say we need to get back to date nights.  I think we do this more often than I’m thinking because we see each other so often during the week for lunch and eat out frequently on the weekends (I know I know,  post on that soon), otherwise we’re great, this was a needed exercise for us.

So this was a long post ehh?  I typically try to stay away from long posts like this but I think it was worth sharing this exercise since we’re now aligned with a singular vision for our marriage.  While we both wanted the same things, there was a time when I felt that we were on two paths with the hope of meeting up down the road somewhere (feminist career minded woman and all!).  Today reminded me that we are indeed on one path, holding hands into the sunset

If you decide to use this diagram, let me know how it works out for you!

How do you discuss short and long term planning in your relationships?  Have you had this conversation yet?