Marriage Pro-Tip: The Family Meeting

Hello married people!

This tip is really for all people in long-term relationships, and particularly those that involve domestic and other types of practical partnership (financial, etc). The more you have going on (kids, construction projects, moving plans, job changes, etc), the more helpful it might be.

This practice has transformed my marriage and is a cornerstone of our success through infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, building a house, pregnancy, job changes, etc.

In basic terms: have a regular family meeting at a time and in an environment that works for you, with regular recurring topics. The goal is to get everyone on the same page about what is going on in your family at any given time, and to create a dedicated space to talk through challenging issues, which frees the rest of our time to be more playful and present with each other.

We use an agenda book that has every week laid out on two pages, with plenty of room for notes. My husband takes all the minutes, which helps him remember things we decide on. It also has a year-long calendar we review regularly. If anyone is interested, I can send you a link to the book we use, which we get on Amazon.

We usually do Sunday mornings, or Monday evenings if Sunday morning doesn't work for some reason. We have coffee / snacks / drinks and we don't come hungry. We have a recurring agenda that we occasionally tweak:

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1. *BFs* - Bring forward tasks/items from last week that are not completed or resolved.
2. *Week plan* - what does everyone have going on that week? Plans are shared and marked in the book.
3. *Food* - what is our food plan? How will we execute it? Groceries, etc are planned in this spot.
4. *Exercise* - are we making sure we plan for exercise? Does anyone need support in getting the time or space to exercise?
5. *Self care* - what is everyone doing to make sure they are well taken care of that week? This includes scheduling a home alone night for my husband every week, and me making sure I'm carving out both rest and social time.
6. *House* - we have a construction project going on right now, so this is an active item to say the least. Other times it's lower key, but improvement projects and house tasks are discussed here.
7. *Baby* - I am pregnant, so here is where we discuss baby-related items. Last night we had a great discussion about my husband's plans for leave from work, which morphed a bit into career goals, etc.
8. *Pals* - should we make plans with friends? Any friends we haven't seen in a while we should reach out to?
9. *Money* - any finance items to discuss? How's the budget doing? Taxes, etc go in here.
10. *Other/Misc* - self explanatory. Does the car need work, for example.
11. *Gripes/Gratitude* - Rule: you may not give a gripe without a gratitude, but you may offer gratitude without a gripe. Gripes vary, but are often minor. My husband recently complained about where I was leaving my toothbrush on the sink, which was in his way. So I have changed where I leave it. The value of a dedicated space for gripes is very high in our relationship. We try to not to hit each other with gripes in day to to day life.
12. *Favourite memory of the week* - we record our favourite memory of the week in our book. The book is overall pretty mundane but I like to keep them as records of our lives.

We used to include "life goals" and "vacation plans" on the regular agenda. We are currently not planning any vacations (see house and baby) so are leaving it off for now. We are trying a plan where we re-visit life goals in special meetings quarterly, as bringing it up every week was diluting the topic and we weren't paying attention.

Does anyone else do this? Are there any good agenda items/tools/tips/ideas that work well for you?

Edit: I forgot an agenda item. We make sure we have scheduled quality time with each other each week. And yes sometimes that means scheduled sex lol.

Submitted May 28, 2019 at 04:17PM

Hello married people!This tip is really for all people in long-term relationships, and particularly those that involve domestic and other types of practical partnership (financial, etc). The more you have going on (kids, construction projects, moving plans, job changes, etc), the more helpful it might be.This practice has transformed my marriage and is a cornerstone of our success through infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss, building a house, pregnancy, job changes, etc.In basic terms: have a regular family meeting at a time and in an environment that works for you, with regular recurring topics. The goal is to get everyone on the same page about what is going on in your family at any given time, and to create a dedicated space to talk through challenging issues, which frees the rest of our time to be more playful and present with each other.We use an agenda book that has every week laid out on two pages, with plenty of room for notes. My husband takes all the minutes, which helps him remember things we decide on. It also has a year-long calendar we review regularly. If anyone is interested, I can send you a link to the book we use, which we get on Amazon.We usually do Sunday mornings, or Monday evenings if Sunday morning doesn't work for some reason. We have coffee / snacks / drinks and we don't come hungry. We have a recurring agenda that we occasionally tweak:​*BFs* - Bring forward tasks/items from last week that are not completed or resolved.*Week plan* - what does everyone have going on that week? Plans are shared and marked in the book.*Food* - what is our food plan? How will we execute it? Groceries, etc are planned in this spot.*Exercise* - are we making sure we plan for exercise? Does anyone need support in getting the time or space to exercise?*Self care* - what is everyone doing to make sure they are well taken care of that week? This includes scheduling a home alone night for my husband every week, and me making sure I'm carving out both rest and social time.*House* - we have a construction project going on right now, so this is an active item to say the least. Other times it's lower key, but improvement projects and house tasks are discussed here.*Baby* - I am pregnant, so here is where we discuss baby-related items. Last night we had a great discussion about my husband's plans for leave from work, which morphed a bit into career goals, etc.*Pals* - should we make plans with friends? Any friends we haven't seen in a while we should reach out to?*Money* - any finance items to discuss? How's the budget doing? Taxes, etc go in here.*Other/Misc* - self explanatory. Does the car need work, for example.*Gripes/Gratitude* - Rule: you may not give a gripe without a gratitude, but you may offer gratitude without a gripe. Gripes vary, but are often minor. My husband recently complained about where I was leaving my toothbrush on the sink, which was in his way. So I have changed where I leave it. The value of a dedicated space for gripes is very high in our relationship. We try to not to hit each other with gripes in day to to day life.*Favourite memory of the week* - we record our favourite memory of the week in our book. The book is overall pretty mundane but I like to keep them as records of our lives.We used to include "life goals" and "vacation plans" on the regular agenda. We are currently not planning any vacations (see house and baby) so are leaving it off for now. We are trying a plan where we re-visit life goals in special meetings quarterly, as bringing it up every week was diluting the topic and we weren't paying attention.Does anyone else do this? Are there any good agenda items/tools/tips/ideas that work well for you?Edit: I forgot an agenda item. We make sure we have scheduled quality time with each other each week. And yes sometimes that means scheduled sex lol.