The turn of the year encourages reflection on the past and hope for the future. For your relationship, it's a moment you can use to take stock of how your romantic relationship did this year. It allows you to review your situation and decipher options for growth and development. Whether you have been together one month, one year, or ten years, a relationship stocktaking is helpful because you review your connection, progress, and response to challenges. You can observe your couple's strengths and opportunities for growth. You can evaluate the gaps your relationship needs to fill and the external pressures like work, family, economic factors, and relationships that might challenge your progress as a couple.

You're right if you're reading this and thinking that stocktaking is an analytical process. Every couple can do it, and there's no perfect way to do it. This assessment has a lot of emotional content because it means taking the view of the highs and lows of the time you have been together. It calls for reflection and evaluation on how you did as a couple responding to pressures you put on each other, or ones you faced together. Stocktaking might include looking back and assessing how your relationship did with births, deaths, and marriages. If one or both of you were unfaithful, and how you responded. How you parented, solved problems, created opportunities, and how your sex life was. Every experience your couple had is available for insight and awareness expansion if you want it to be. Viewing your couple, don't be surprised if you find you overlooked strengths and positive qualities during the year.

Relationship stocktaking is a joint exercise to reflect, learn and set new goals for your relationship based on what you experienced and learned this year. Partners can work alone and then come together or work jointly. If this sounds like teamwork to you, you're right. Relationship stocktaking provides abundant energy and experience to develop your couple's vision for next year. Set ground rules for your stocktaking conversations like:

·       Communicate gently

·       Listen without judgment

·       Learn before challenging

·       Summarize situations

·       Accept each person has their own experience

·       Use experience to grow from

·       Maximize learning before deciding on goals

Gottman-trained counselors can build on your relationship stocktaking using the Gottman Relationship Check-In to develop your Gottman Sound Relationship House. You can also use high-impact couples therapy practices to complete a relationship stock take. If you are stuck and unsure how to get started, Contact Kelsey Ruffing Counseling and ask about relationship stocktaking for couples.

Authored by: Dr. John Coumbe-Lilley, Phd, LPC, ALMFT