It’s never too late to check in with your relationship. No matter how long you’ve been together or if the relationship is fresh, you and your partner can find use in this relationship values worksheet by asking questions that may never have occurred to you.
We focus on six main categories of relationship values that have the most impact on relationship success. Looking for a worksheet to fill out with your partner?
Find a free downloadable PDF at the bottom of this page to work through the major relationship issues that a couple faces before they become an issue for you.
This post is all about the relationship values worksheet.
How to Use This Worksheet
Consider this relationship values worksheet as an affordable, therapeutic approach to improving your relationship. The worksheet is divided into six main categories that reflect the six main areas for you and your partner to identify your values.
Each of the categories is explained in detail in this blog post so that you know exactly how each of them fits into your relationship and how to talk about them as a couple.
Keep in mind that this worksheet is most effective when you do it with your partner and you have established mutual respect. This worksheet is one of the most effective methods when you approach this worksheet from a compassionate perspective.
Each of you needs space to take breaks, process your emotions, and become truly vulnerable. It might be helpful to start with a conversation about safety.
Get Vulnerable
Ask the question no one wants to ask, “Do we create the type of environment where we both feel comfortable being honest with each other?” As you talk about this question, remember that you can be honest with someone without being cruel.
The moment you criticize someone because you are feeling threatened, you are being cruel even if you’re also being honest. Consider jotting down a few notes on the free PDF attached at the bottom of this page.
Note your conversation as you talk about how you can create a safe environment while you get vulnerable about your relationship values. This worksheet is an open-ended way for you to learn about yourself, your partner, and how your relationship fits into both of your lives.
Think of this as an opportunity to create healthy boundaries and see the positive change that happens when you become vulnerable for the sake of a better relationship.
RELATIONSHIP VALUES WORKSHEET:
1. Communication
Growing up, most of us don’t learn how to communicate. We don’t learn that it’s possible to communicate in a kind way that still communicates honesty and promotes openness. This is one of the most significant factors in why relationships fail.
Two people interpret the world differently, have different values, and don’t know how to communicate their differences. So, you need to think of communication in your relationship, now, before it becomes a problem.
Address the communication struggles you’ve experienced and acknowledge that these hurdles are normal. We can’t read someone else’s mind or live their experience, which is why we end up in these confusing places.
When you’re working through this question on the worksheet, keep in mind that the ideal form of communication is different for everyone. The goal is that each of you feels safe when you’re arguing and you can be completely honest with your partner.
Strong communication skills do not limit the amount that you will argue, but it does make it easier to argue. Think about communication in the context of this relationship values worksheet.
Arguments, in the context of personal growth and growth as a couple, are always about negotiation. Whether you realize it or not, you are trying to get your partner to see that your needs are not being met properly.
They’re doing the same for you. When you think of communication and conflict in this context, it makes sense that conflict escalates so quickly and feels so personal.
So, ask yourselves as a couple how well communicate and answer the questions on the worksheet to dig into your communication skills as individuals and as a couple.
2. Friends and Family Members
Our friends and family play a big role in our relationships. We learn a lot about relationships from watching the people we love exist in their relationships.
For better or for worse, we observe the relationship between our parents, between our siblings and their significant others, and between our friends. There’s no way to avoid the effect that our loved ones have on our definition of love.
So, instead of denying it or working around it, we need to tackle those definitions head-on. Luckily, not all of them will be bad and we can learn how our families and friends influence our relationship without us even knowing.
When we are children, we don’t know what is normal and what is not. We know what hurts and what makes us feel good. So, it’s easy to internalize it when we see people practice unhealthy habits in their relationship, like contempt, stone-walling, criticism, or defensiveness.
We learn that those are ways of communicating. It takes effort to form healthier habits when we’ve only witnessed the unhealthy ones. We may not even realize we do this, which is part of the reason this worksheet is so helpful.
Applying the Relationship Values Worksheet
It’s a great way to take a temperature check of our relationships and our personal values that impact them. Keep in mind that if you are not in contact with your family, that’s still going to impact your relationship with your partner.
So, walk through the questions on the worksheet to get a better idea of how you and your partner bring others into your relationship. Create a safe space for yourselves when you answer these questions.
It may be difficult to be honest with yourself about how your relationship with love is affected, negatively or positively, by the examples you’ve seen all your life. That’s okay and you may need to take a break from the worksheet.
This does not mean you’re giving up on making progress in your strong relationship. It does mean that you value this process enough to recognize that assessment tools will bring up painful emotions and you both deserve time and space to process those emotions.
3. Intimacy
Intimacy is a broad category and it encompasses multiple types of intimacy. For the purposes of this relationship values worksheet, we are going to focus on physical and emotional intimacy.
Physical intimacy refers to physical touch, cuddling, sex, and any other type of touch that makes you and your partner feel close. Emotional intimacy refers to openly sharing your emotions and communicating your feelings to your partner to feel close in that way.
Stereotypically, men find it easier to engage in physical intimacy and women find it easier to engage in emotional intimacy. However, these stereotypes do not take into account attachment styles.
They also don’t take into account the harm that negative social conditioning does in teaching perpetuating these stereotypes. For example, people who struggle with emotional intimacy are likely to have an avoidant attachment style.
On the other hand, people who are securely attached will struggle less with types of intimacy. In terms of social conditioning, it’s common for men and masculine people to be taught that showing emotions and talking through their emotional landscape is a sign of weakness.
Therefore, these people will sincerely struggle to open up about their emotions whereas physical intimacy will be much easier to initiate because it aligns with the stereotype of the “strong man.”
Use the relationship values worksheet to talk about the ways that you’ve been affected by social standards in different ways. You and your partner have both grown up with the same conditioning based on your presenting gender and you both are aware of that conditioning.
Open up a conversation and use this worksheet to develop some emotional intimacy in the moment. By addressing these issues now, you can reveal your true core values and improve your healthy relationship with vulnerability.
4. Household Tasks
Relationship worksheets from fifty years ago likely would not have included a section about household tasks.
However, with the advent of double-income homes, systems like Fair Play, and the desire to help women maintain their mental health, we can’t avoid talking about household tasks in a relationship values worksheet.
Traditionally, women do all of the household chores, from cleaning the home to caring for children. Men work outside of the home, which means they are automatically exempt from household work.
Whether this has ever truly worked is debatable, but it certainly doesn’t apply anymore. While there are women who choose to be stay-at-home moms and enjoy it, even they are taken for granted.
Applying the Relationship Values Worksheet
There are still so many issues that couples have yet to discuss when it comes to household work. In the case of a stay-at-home, she still deserves to take breaks throughout the day and stop working and 5 pm like her husband.
Systems like Fair Play can help us reimagine the way we talk about chores. Fair Play is a “card game,” for lack of a better term that includes task cards you divide between you and your partner.
The goal is to even out the mental load so that women and mothers are not the ones shouldering all of the housework.
One of the fastest ways to burn out a relationship is to allow one partner to remain ignorant of all of the work that goes into maintaining the home, which is why it occupies its own category on the relationship values worksheet.
This category encompasses all of the decisions made in the house, from who washes the dishes to who buys birthday presents, so that both partners have the space in their lives to be people with aspirations and goals outside of the home.
5. Financial Habits
Couples will celebrate major milestones before they talk about money. There are lots of couples who don’t talk about the subject, which means that they are not united in their financial goals. There is no wrong way to approach finances as a couple.
Maybe you want to separate your accounts or you want to pool everything together. Maybe one of you gives the other an allowance because that partner makes more than the other one.
Whatever arrangement makes you and your partner feel good about your finances is a personal decision and it differs for everyone. However, you can’t avoid talking about your financial goals.
The longer you and your partner are together, the more intertwined your financial futures will be. Even if the law doesn’t get involved and you are not married, you need to address any debts you have, how much you like to spend, and if you have savings goals.
Applying the Relationship Values Worksheet
Most people will assume their stance on money is the same way that others approach money. But, there is no standard way of learning about money. Just like we learn about relationships by watching our parents interact with each other, we learn about money from our parents.
We observe our parents talk or not talk about it. We may have grown up with no clue about how to save money, the fact that savings are crucial to providing us with a safety net, or what a budget looks like. Everyone is different and everyone has different goals.
Some people don’t have the privilege of saving money. This is why you can use this space to talk about your money values now to make sure neither of you is surprised when your partner’s values are completely different than yours.
6. Spirituality
Spirituality refers to any type of religious beliefs or values that you have. This may come in the form of organized religion, like Christianity, Catholicism, or Islam, or it may look like spirituality that is personal to you.
Depending on your religious background, your experiences may have had a huge impact on your values, especially in a relationship. Marriage may be one of the most important things to you and not your partner, who didn’t grow religious or with the reverence around marriage.
From different religious to religious trauma, there’s a lot of variation in what people experience around spirituality. It can be difficult to initiate conversations about religion.
People who are not religious either harbor resentment against religion for a negative experience or have no context for understanding what religion means to their partner.
However, since about 47% of the population identifies as religious and 33% as spiritual, it’s impossible not to talk about religion. As you enter this conversation, consider ways to make your partner feel comfortable in sharing their honest religious beliefs.
Applying the Relationship Values Worksheet
Assume you two have different experiences and approach them with an open mind. It’s okay to have different religious beliefs than your partner, but you have to accept their religious beliefs as is.
This is one of those good times to ask yourself if their religious beliefs or lack thereof will affect your relationship negatively and to ask what each of you needs in a relationship in terms of spirituality.
It’s okay to end a good relationship because you realize that you and your partner are too different to make a relationship work long-term.
While you can grow and change in your relationship, neither you nor your partner should enter into a relationship or continue a relationship with the belief that you change the other person. This will end up causing both of you pain.
