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Are You on the Same Page? Dreams, Goals, and Your Marriage Quest · Doing Marriage Well

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  Doing Marriage Well for May 26, 2026 Are you on the same page?
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  Dreams, goals, and your marriage quest.
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  Think about those visions you have for your marriage. Are they dreams,
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  goals, ambitions, aims, targets, or maybe even quests?
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  Hat tip to Jessica Stillman for this question. It would be more or less accurate
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  to say these words are synonyms, but they actually mean different things.
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  How we see our desires and how we present them to our spouse matters.
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  Dreams are long-term visions you kick around, such as what if or could we?
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  I dream of traveling the country someday, for example.
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  You both have a number of dreams, and you know many of them won't come to pass.
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  Goals are things that you are actively working towards, such as saving for a
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  down payment on a house, or for an RV to travel the country.
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  Aims are a general direction or intent. These are lifestyle intentions to guide your daily choices.
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  We aim to make our home a place of hospitality, for example.
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  Ambitions are about an internal drive to achieve something significant.
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  For example, building a family business that you can pass on to your children.
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  Targets are specific, often numerical, and generally short-term.
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  Targets are the rungs on the ladder to the larger goal. So, for example,
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  our target for this month is to have four tech-free date nights, or to get the RV running.
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  Quests are a transformative journey towards a noble or spiritual end.
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  A quest is as much about the person you become along the way as the destination.
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  For example, our quest is to foster children and provide a stable home for the vulnerable.
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  A healthy marriage has all of these, and it's important to know which are which
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  and to be on the same page about them.
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  Lori tells the long version of the story of our traveling the U.S. by RV.
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  Early in our marriage, I shared my dream of walking across America.
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  Lori wasn't into that. Later, I suggested doing it by bike, something Lori was also not down with.
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  However, at that point, she realized this was an aim for me.
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  When I suggested we do it by RV, she was good with that. It became a shared
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  goal, and within a year, we were doing it.
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  Communication along the way is how we got from my dream to our shared quest,
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  and it's how you do the same in your marriage.
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  Identifying things as goals, ambitions, or quests will help you.
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  A couple might argue, for example, because one thinks they are discussing a
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  target, something that's immediate, while the other thinks it's just a dream,
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  something that's theoretical.
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  This is Paul reminding you that doing marriage well looks different for every couple.
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  Speaking of fostering children, It's been way too long since I mentioned the
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  effort to build the Humphrey family a home for their eight foster children.
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  If you're looking for a good cause to support, check it out.
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  There's a link in the show notes.