Originally posted on 2 February 2017.
I’ve recently entered the world of the hashtag. Took me a while to really get my head around it, but I can now admit that I am a hashtager. And I like it! Some of my most used non-nike list ones are #fallinlovewithlife #teachergoals #friendshipgoals, and on at least one occassion I’ve used #relationship goals and #couplegoals. But really, this last one is one that I don’t tend to post too publicly. And that’s because my #couplegoals wouldn’t accompany what you’d normally see it with… those pictures of couples cutely hugging, a screenshot of a sweet message, an epic video of some couple work out. Mine are not what you’d see social media crown #couplegoals #relationship goals. It is a list. A simple list that Josh and I put together months after we got married. At the end of each year we revise it, but this year I decided I wanted to revise just a little more than usual. Which brings us to *drum roll please* number thirty seven… companionship goals poster.
I was the girl who grew up wanting to get married and have a family. Being a little older now I can see that marriage for me at 18 would have been waaaay too young, and am happy to have ended up with a slightly older married at 22. This did give me plenty of time to set myself up. I had a glory box. Boxes. Lots of boxes. Needless to say my future hubby was amazed at how much I brought to the marriage… well, for the house. Josh was a man’s man so he didn’t have a glory box, just a lunch box, his clothes, a surf board, exercise gear, books and two whiteboards.
Let me tell you about these whiteboards.
He’d use them to write up inspiring quotes. Cute, right? In his handwriting. Even cuter? His very boy handwriting. Yeaaaaaah.
I wanted to pinterest the heck out of those boards. If they were going to be up on display I wanted gold calligraphy and vintage floral borders and arrows! Obviously not all at the same time. But, he was a boy and it was his thing, and I think he was proud of it. So they stayed. Boy handwriting and all.
Two years of marriage later and we’ve used those trusty whiteboards to write up our companionship goals. These were just a few things we wanted to focus on to help strengthen our marriage and relationship. A few months ago there was a little accident with the whiteboards and some permanent marker that couldn’t be undone.
*It wasn’t done on purpose, I promise*
I asked Josh if this year he’d mind if I made it up into a poster and mount it in a frame instead of replacing the whiteboard. And he said yes!
I got onto my trusty website canva.com and started postering away… my problem was that I only had a fuzzy idea of what I wanted it to look like and my graphic skills didn’t match up. Long story short, got discouraged, stopped, weeks later remembered I should #justdoit and smashed it out in a day and walked into Kmart to get it printed. Winning!
To be completely honest, I would often get embarrassed when people came over and saw them. Not because of the whiteboard (maybe a little because of the whiteboard), but because I’d never seen anyone else ever do it. I thought people might think we were weird. I thought that they might laugh. In fact, today when I was walking out of Kmart with the print in my hand I started to wonder how many workers had seen it and if they’d thought it was odd. I wasn’t 100% proud to be bearing those goals for the world to see.
At the same time a quote entered my mind and made me smile.
“If you want something to last forever you treat it differently. It becomes special because you made it so.”
F. Burton Howard.
I knew I needed to stop worrying about what others thought and more about what I thought.
I LOVE these goals.
I feel like they help me and Josh to better understand one another and to grow together. I have spent my whole life believing that my family can be together forever and to me its not just a beautiful thought. It’s something that I can make happen every day. It’s not always easy.
Social media and #relationshipgoals posts can often make a relationship feel inferior. Mine just looks different because I choose different. Some of those include:
counting to ten before speaking in a disagreement
communicating in a way that I say exactly what I mean
ditching the mind reading game and saying when you’re upset
not interrupting your spouse when in a disagreement
expressing affection in ways that are valuable to your spouse
Those are what I call #companionshipgoals #relationshipgoals #couplegoals
