Why Your Relationship Should Have a Contract

When we think of a relationship contract, we think of a prenuptial agreement, money, lawyers and often, a lack of trust.

But, there is a different type of relationship contract. My husband and I have been doing this type of contract annually for many years (we've been married almost 25 years and I can't remember what year we wrote our first contract in). It’s been amazing in terms of helping us become more self-aware individuals as well as partners.

We call it the “Needs Contract”.

The point of the contract is to answer three needs-based questions:

1. What do I need as a human?

2. What do I need to accomplish?

3. What do I need from my partner to help me make point 1 and point 2 happen?

First off, you will need to rephrase all the negative have-nots in your personal and relationship life into clear needs. If you can’t do that, then there is no point in continuing because NO ONE can give you what you need if all you tell them is what you don’t need. For example:

You give me a pair of jeans for my birthday. I tell you I don’t want jeans and ask you to exchange them for another article of clothing. So, you go to the store and you stand there, stumped, because I didn’t tell you what I actually want. Is it a t-shirt? A skirt? What color? What style?

It’s exactly the same when it comes to relationships. You tell your partner they don’t communicate well. Ok….but, what is good communication in your opinion? I know people who feel they get too riled up in arguments so they actually leave the argument, sit down and write down their thoughts in a letter to their partner. This allows them to look at what they wrote, think about it from the reader’s perspective and edit their thoughts and words prior to giving the letter to their partner. It works for them. However, it definitely wouldn’t work for me. If my husband began writing me a letter instead of talking to me, while I was sitting right beside him on the couch, I would be highly annoyed.

A big reason why attempts at communication flop is that we tend to assume that everyone thinks like us. Well, they don’t. Our thoughts are only ours. No one knows them unless we verbalize them. And oftentimes, verbalizing your thoughts and needs makes you actually figure them out yourself. Do that with the contract, starting with the first two questions: What do I need as a human, and what do I need to accomplish? These two questions you need to answer individually, without any discussion or input from your partner.

***As a side note, this is not a lifelong contract. Life changes and therefore, we change. With that in mind, you should answer these questions annually.***

So,

1. What do I need as a human (this year)?

You can expand this question to ask, “What do I need to feel better as a human being this year?” When you try to answer this question, you will most definitely start with identifying the things that feel wrong. That’s ok. Write a list of them, and then rephrase them into clear needs. For example:

a) I’m often grumpy. I’m grumpy because I’m sleep deprived. I need more sleep.

b) I’m stressed out. My partner does chores/necessities, but only if I say exactly what needs to be done. To have to always be the one to plan everything that needs to be done and when, and then remind my partner to actually do those things on time, is just as stressful as doing them myself. I want to stress less and in order for that to happen, I need to plan less and follow up on less.

c) I feel like I always get guilt trips when I spend time with my friends. I feel like I have to beg or make excuses for a night out. This ruins the actual night out. I want to feel good about spending time with my friends when I actually get to.

2. What do I need to accomplish this year?

a) My mother is aging. I need to spend more, quality time with her while I still can. I need one evening per week to spend with my mom.

b) I never have time in the evenings to finish writing my book. I want to finish writing my book. I need uninterrupted, evening time.

c) I want a promotion at work, but I need to be successful at an extra project I took on. I don’t have time because of household expectations. I need to work late 1–2 times a week for the next couple of months.

You can identify as many needs as you want, but I suggest, the first time you do this, identify the needs that you feel would make the biggest difference in your personal and relationship well-being. At the end of this article, I’ll discuss the “Points of Bickering”. These are things that feel small and yet we can’t stop bickering about.

3. What do I need from my partner to help me make point 1 and point 2 happen?

This question also starts out as an individual exercise and then moves on to a partner discussion. The discussion part is where you might have to negotiate what is doable for your partner. To answer this question you will oftentimes need to make your personal answers to the first two questions more specific. They need to be specific to the point that your partner will NOT need to put ANY guesswork into how to do it. I’ll use some of the previous points as examples.

a) I’m stressed out. My partner does chores/necessities, but only if I say exactly what needs to be done and when…I want to stress less and in order for that to happen, I need to plan less and follow up on less.

I’m going to assume that the partner is not lazy and they do care about you and want you to stress less and thus, be in a better mood overall. They are simply not the most organized person, or perhaps not always the most observant. So, how do you work out a plan that will work for both of you?

· If there are things that need to be done on specific days, can you set up google calendar reminders for the entire year, in advance, so that they serve as the reminder, instead of you?

· Can the two of you ‘exchange’ some duties? For example, your partner pays the bills…always late. But, you always procrastinate with the dishes…because you hate them. Can you exchange dishes for bills?

***Sometimes, your needs might be related to your partner’s needs, which may start a discussion. For example, you might say that you stress because you always have to remind your partner to do things. Your partner might respond that you actually stress them out because you always remind them about everything beforehand, with the assumption that they will forget. This also makes them feel that you are unable to let go and actually trust them to do things. So, why do you always remind them ahead of time? Do you assume they will forget because they have forgotten in the past? Did they forget multiple times or just once, and for some reason, years later, you still can’t let go?***

b) I never have time in the evenings to finish writing my book. I want to finish writing my book this year. I need uninterrupted, evening time.

You notice how I highlighted the word ‘uninterrupted’? I had this exact issue in terms of both writing a book and finishing my Doctorate. It wasn’t that my husband didn’t want to give me time. The problem was that if I’m home, our son always comes to me, not my husband. And it doesn’t matter if our son interrupts just once an hour. I’m the type of person that needs to get in the zone when doing desk work. If you pull me out, it takes me another 30–40 minutes to get back in.

We found a couple of different solutions. To start with, we agreed that I get one evening a week completely for myself. I finish work and do my own thing, not coming home for anything. This helps me decompress after my day job, before starting on the writing.

Then, we thought about where I could go. Here are the things we came up:

· About once a month, I get a hotel room and I sleep over. This not only gives me the evening, but also an entire night of amazing sleep and a peaceful morning (my husband gets to do this once a month as well btw.).

· Sometimes, I go to a friend’s house who is childless and doesn’t mind that I ignore her the entire evening in her spare room while I write.

· Sometimes, I go to a coffee shop and stay there till our son goes to sleep. Then I come home to a peaceful house and continue working.

· Sometimes, I get the keys to my husband’s office and work from there until our son goes to sleep.

Oh, and very importantly, my husband is not allowed to call or text with any home-related questions. If the house isn’t burning down, I don’t care. To be honest, this was also a great exercise for me, in letting go.

The last example is the most complex one:

c) I feel like I always get guilt trips when I spend time with my friends. I feel like I have to beg or make excuses for a night out. This ruins the actual night out. I want to feel good about spending time with my friends when I actually get to.

This example is complex because it includes potentially unpackaging a number of issues. You and your partner will need to start the discussion by agreeing on what a reasonable amount of time is to spend with your own friends. However, this leads to the question of whether you spend far too much time with your friends (and why) or if your partner doesn’t spend time independently (why not?) and therefore doesn’t understand your need for it. Or, does your partner object to just those, specific friends? Or, perhaps they object to your behavior when you go out? Is your behavior actually objectionable or does your partner have trust issues in general? If so, why? Etc…

In all the above, there may be issues of jealousy, avoidance, abandonment and possessiveness. All those will need to be unpacked prior to the two of you being able to agree on what you are both comfortable with in terms of the amount of independent time each of you gets.

So, let’s say you both finally agree that you get an evening per week to do your own thing. Once you have reached that agreement, you need to come up with rules for the evening out. In what instances can you call each other? Is there a general curfew and if you end up staying out later, do you then touch base so the other person isn’t worried?

By now you should have gotten the point of this annual contract: you make a list of everything that isn’t working and then think about how it relates to each of you as a person. Then, you help each other be healthier and more fulfilled as individual human beings, in this way creating a healthier and more fulfilled relationship.

You might be thinking that you discuss these things regularly. Well, if that’s the case, then that’s the issue. If you are ‘discussing’ the same problems ad nauseum then are those really discussions that you are having, or are they bouts of bickering that never go anywhere, as you are running out the door?

A discussion is making real time to think, to listen to each other, and ultimately to come to a solution.

Like I said, life changes and therefore, so do people. So no, creating this contract won’t prevent you from ever having issues in the future. But, if you do this right, it will prevent you from having the same issue every week.

I suggest setting aside at least two, separate days, with a break of a couple days in between. The first day will be for each of you to individually make your lists. Then, you will take the time to sleep on those lists, adjust them and make them more specific in terms of doable needs. After a couple days, you will come together and discuss them.

Extra — Points of Bickering

If you were successful in the first section, you can add Points of Bickering to your contract. Points of Bickering are those little things that really shouldn’t matter, and yet…they do. They are our pet peeves; those things we can’t help but act OCD about. And yes, we all have them, regardless of how laid back your personality is.

For example, my husband does the recycling. And the man is REALLY into his recycling. But, what he thinks is an acceptable amount of recycling to be sitting in the kitchen prior to being taken out, is much more than what I think is acceptable. We’re never going to agree on this. So, we have placed the recycling in a cupboard that’s completely separate from where the garbage can is. The cupboard closes, so I can’t see how much is in there, meaning that I don’t care. If it’s overflowing to the point that we can’t open it, I tell him and then start throwing recyclables in the garbage (which he can’t handle), and that makes him take out the recycling very quickly. We don’t bicker, or even talk about it. That’s the deal.

That is the last, and most important, point. Once you make the contract, you are each, individually accountable for sticking to it. That includes not nagging about things you promised you wouldn’t bring up.

The truth is, this is sometimes the hardest part; to learn to keep your mouth closed. This is because the things that you will put in your contract are the things that have been nagging at YOU for some time now. So, bringing them up has become a habit. It’s like those wheel grooves in the snow when you drive in the winter. Your car automatically falls into them and you don’t even think about it. A long-term relationship remains healthy only if you think about it, and don’t just drive in the same grooves for years. You need to consciously decide where the wheels should go, and you consciously place them there, changing the placement as you both grow and change.

Original published in Medium