What Are You Looking Forward To Together?

Why Anticipation Deserves A Place In A Lasting Relationship

There is a question I wish more couples asked each other, especially couples who have been together a long time: What are we looking forward to together?

Not what needs to be fixed. Not what is on the calendar because somebody has to do it.

Not where the relationship is going wrong. What are we genuinely looking forward to?

It sounds almost too simple to matter. I do not think it is.

A Relationship Needs a Future, Even a Small One

When a relationship is new, anticipation comes almost automatically. You look forward to the next date, the next weekend, the next trip, the next time you will see each other. There is a natural sense of movement toward something.

As the years pass, life becomes fuller and more complicated. Work, family, health, money, caregiving, household responsibilities and plain old routine take up more space. Couples can become very good at running a life together while gradually having fewer things they are excited to experience together.

Nothing has to be terribly wrong for this to happen. In fact, that is why it can be easy to miss. The relationship may be stable and loving. It may simply need a little more future in it.

Anticipation Is Part of the Pleasure

One of the ideas I keep coming back to in the research on happiness is savoring. We usually think of savoring as enjoying something good while it is happening. But there is another form of savoring: anticipation. Part of the pleasure of a good experience can begin before the experience itself.

Think about a vacation you were excited about, dinner with friends you love, a concert, a weekend away, or even a favorite meal you knew you were going to have Friday night. The enjoyment did not begin when the event started. Some of it happened while you were imagining it, talking about it and looking forward to it.

Couples can use that same psychological process deliberately. You do not need Paris. You need something on the horizon that belongs to the two of you.

It Does Not Have to Be Big

This is where I think couples sometimes make the idea harder than it needs to be. Something to look forward to does not have to cost much money or require months of planning.

It can be breakfast at a place you both like on Saturday morning. Trying a new restaurant. Watching the next episode of a series you have agreed not to watch without each other. Having two friends over. Taking a drive somewhere you have never been. Planning an afternoon by the pool. Going back to a place that mattered early in your relationship.

The size of the event is not the point. The shared anticipation is.

Keep Some Mine, Yours, and Ours

There is another piece of this that matters. Healthy couples do not have to look forward to everything together. Each partner needs a life of his own as well as a life with his partner. I like thinking about this as Mine, Yours, and Ours.

You should have things that energize you. Your partner should have things that energize him. And the relationship needs a few things that belong to the two of you.

That balance protects companionship without turning togetherness into obligation. It also gives you something to bring back to each other. Curiosity stays alive when two people continue having lives worth asking about.

Try the Three-Horizon Question

Sometime this week, sit down together and answer three questions: What is one thing we are looking forward to this week? What is one thing we would enjoy doing in the next month? What is one experience we would like to create in the next year?

Do not turn it into a planning meeting immediately. Start by imagining. Let yourselves want something. You can figure out logistics later.

And if you are single or recovering from a relationship, the questions still work. Ask what you are looking forward to in your own life. A healthy future relationship should add to a life that already contains curiosity, friendship, pleasure, meaning and anticipation.

Love Needs Something Ahead

Long relationships naturally accumulate history. That history matters. Shared memories give a couple roots. But roots are not the whole plant. A relationship also needs somewhere to grow.

After decades with the same person, I still think one of the healthiest things two people can do is keep giving themselves reasons to say, “I am looking forward to that with you.”

It is a small sentence. But it says something important: We are not finished. There is still more life ahead of us. And I still want some of it to be ours.

Be Well

Dr. Steve May

Dr. Steve May, PhD | Psychologist, Author, Speaker, and Relationship Educator

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