When was the last time you and your spouse spent some time dreaming about your future together? Dreaming together as a couple can be one of the most exciting and uplifting conversations you can have. You did a lot of it when you were dating and engaged…dreaming about your future, family, home and career. Sharing dreams strengthens your commitment to one another as a couple because it unifies the vision of your future together. It keeps your lives moving forward in the same direction, and it helps you see and understand your spouse’s heart and desire. So how do we start dreaming? Here’s three steps to get you going…
Start a conversation. Plan a special date night to go out and talk about your future. Asking questions is a great way to begin the conversation about dreams. Questions like…What do you want our marriage to look like in five years? What do we enjoy doing together? What would that look like? What kind of house and neighborhood do we want to live in? Where do we want to retire? Let this be a time of free flowing ideas. Make a list of your dreams and don’t spend time now evaluating the pros and cons of each one. You can do that on future dream dates.
Keep them real. Why? Dreaming is fun. You want to keep them realistic. Do you have or can you develop the abilities to make these dreams happen? Your dream of living in a fully staffed multimillion dollar mansion is probably not reality, but owning a four bedroom home in a nice neighborhood is. Unrealistic dreams can become unrealistic expectations and turn out to be more hurtful than helpful to your marriage.
Start planning to make your dreams come true. So if our dream is to own a four bedroom home, how are we going to make that happen? Well, we’re going to do some research, find out how much money it’s going to take to buy that dream house, open a savings account at the bank and put a percentage of each paycheck into that account. And so we start having enough for the deposit. We work overtime or do whatever we need to do to get to where we want to be. Then we find a real estate agent. We look, look, look and ultimately close on our dream house.
Remember, the goal of dreaming is building intimacy. So start dreaming and planning your future together…Today!
