The Relationship Program

There has been much discussion about relationships in the past and some excellent advice has been passed on. I would like to share some insight in regards to marriage from a customer that I hold in very high regard. It conveys a similar message simply presented differently. During a run with the gentleman a few weeks ago I made an attempt to get him to commit to a destination; the problem is that he is out of town nearly every weekend at his family’s cabin. I continued to press the issue and insisted that he simply needed to stay in town for a single weekend so that he could complete the run / hike / or whatever he was interested in. His response: “There’s a lot more to it than that. The expectation from my wife is that we will go to the cabin every single weekend unless an emergency presents itself. And I’ve got to keep her happy”.

This individual is on his second marriage but has now been happily married for over 20 years. He certainly has a myriad of experience when it comes to business, athletics and relationships so I thought I would take the opportunity to pick his brain and receive some counsel. I extended the question: “If you could give me one piece of advice about marriage what would it be”? Not even a second later he responded with one of the most succinct and clever answers that I have ever heard.

His message about marriage:

A relationship is similar to a health and fitness training program.

If you stop working on the relationship progress will not only end, the strength of the bond will regress. Similar to a muscle a relationship will hypertrophy if you are consistent and follow an appropriate protocol. If you stop working out and overloading a particular muscle it will atrophy. In other words if you fail to devote time to improving your relationship continually you will become stagnant, get bored and eventually lose interest.

It’s all about the little things (sound familiar!?) It would be excruciating if your workout regimen consisted of squats and push-ups every single workout. Variety, progression and challenge reduce the risk of plateau. Furthermore it’s imperative that you plan surprises for your loved one and keep things exciting. Routine is nice because it’s comfortable and easy but it’s even better to be suprised by something that was absolutely unexpected. Plan surprise dates, give your loved one a card just to say how much they mean to you and remember that there doesn’t have to be a reason to do something nice.

There will be temptations to find the path of least resistance and take the shortcut to success but this will be your demise. Performance enhancing drugs are undoubtedly effective when it comes to results but the risks outweigh the reward. What’s the point of being bigger, stronger and faster if you are cutting your lifespan short by 20 years due to health complications? Not to mention the increased risk of injury and moral/ethical issues. Similarly, there may be times when you wonder if the grass will be greener on the other side but unfaithfulness is a cop out. It will not address the deeper, suppressed need that you may be feeling and misinterpreting.

I challenge you to analyze the relationship that you are in (or have previously been in) and compare the dynamic to that of a training program. We are all very knowledgeable when it comes to applying principles of physiology, biomechanics and programming so you will likely be able to come up with even more parallels between the two. Often the depth of understanding is deepest when you can apply concepts to different situations that are most important to you so give the topic some thought and see what you come up with.