See if this sounds familiar: you grew up imagining that you would find your one true soulmate. That the two of you would complete each other. That you would live happily ever after.

Even if those things aren’t one hundred percent true for you, chances are good that – at least in some ways – a part of you has an idealistic view of what a strong relationship should look like. It’s almost impossible not to because we’ve been so saturated with unrealistic depictions of romance in media and society in general.

For most people, reality does not work this way. This doesn’t mean that you will not experience amazing love, but rather that things are rarely as simple as they are in stories. The pressures of life accumulate, leaving even the strongest relationships feeling stagnant or strained. Responsibilities like bills, childcare, chores, and personal pursuits overshadow our connection, fostering feelings of emptiness and distance. Instead of journeying together, we find ourselves walking parallel paths – or worse, paths that are slowly diverging.

This narrative is all too common: the initial spark of romance fades as daily routines take precedence. But it does not have to. You can achieve your dream relationship.

How?

Working Together to Give Your Relationship a Purpose and a Meaning

Without purposeful direction, relationships can drift aimlessly, leading to disjointed attempts at conflict resolution. What once united us in shared dreams may now clash with individual desires, making it challenging to align separate visions into a coherent reality.

What’s the solution?

You need to deliberately craft a shared vision for your relationship with your partner. When you do this, you will be able to refocus on a brighter future, because this collaborative endeavor merges your individual aspirations, values, and needs into a unified vision. This can help both of you in working to make it your conscious reality. 

In other words, each of you came into your relationship with a unique idea of what that perfect relationship – that “dream relationship” would be. But you’re different people with different goals, so if you continue working toward those goals separately, those dreams are practically destined to come into conflict.

But when you work to create a shared vision of your relationship together, you have the opportunity to co-create a new ideal dynamic that works for both of you. It might not replicate your initial “dream,” but in many ways it has the potential to be even better.

Crafting a Shared Relationship Vision

The initial step entails defining individually what each of you desire from your relationship. Reflect on how you want to feel, the activities you want to share, and your vision for various aspects of partnership, from intimacy to finances to parenting. Express these statements in the present tense, as if they're already a part of your reality.

Afterward, set aside time with your partner to exchange these statements. Identify the ones that resonate with both of you and combine them to create a joint "Relationship Vision." Then pledge to recite these statements to each other daily for a month.

Obviously, these are only the initial steps. You are setting your joint intentions for what you want to work toward – you’ll still have to actually put the work in and do it.

But these preliminary actions establish the groundwork for cultivating a relationship that strives to be the one you both envision.