Relationships thrive on a felt sense of safety, and safety is what allows two people to drop past their guardedness into real intimacy. In this recording from my 2015 Love, Relationships & You retreat in the Netherlands, I walk through a set of sacred agreements that create that safety, first at the event itself and then, by extension, in any close relationship a person might be in, whether with a partner, a friend, or someone they work with.
Agreeing a purpose
The first agreement is about purpose. I ask people to consider that the purpose of being in relationship, and of being at an event like this, is joy. Some people resist this, insisting the real purpose is to fix something or work on themselves. I would say the fixing and the self work are usually in service of joy anyway, and that holding joy as the intention tends to get people there faster, because whatever is blocking that joy shows up more clearly once joy is named as the aim.
The second agreement follows from the first: the greatest gift you can give a partner is to be a genuinely healthy version of yourself. That means taking responsibility for your own journey into joy rather than making yourself responsible for bringing your partner into theirs.
Sharing what is present
Third is an agreement to be real and to share what is moving in the present moment. This isn't a promise you can break so much as an intention you keep returning to. It's about communicating with presence, sharing what's actually true and alive right now, even if it relates to something from the past. If it is up now, it can be shared.
Presence before advice
The fourth agreement is one of the harder ones: not to fix, offer advice, teach, or rescue each other unless it's invited. Many of us, coaches especially, believe we help others by telling them what to think or do, and this is reinforced because people often ask directly to be told what to do. What I'd suggest instead is that the more useful thing is to stay fully present in your own centre and hold quality space, so the other person feels safe enough to find their own clarity. When we notice ourselves wanting to fix a partner, it's worth asking whether we're actually trying to fix something in ourselves that we're seeing reflected in them.
Fifth is an agreement to offer generous, spontaneous responsiveness as best you can in any given moment, recognising that this will not always feel easy, especially if you are closed down, but that giving what you have available builds a stronger container between people.
Privacy and outside support
Sixth is no third-party talk, which means agreeing with your partner about how you speak of them when they are not present. There is a difference between confiding in trusted friends to process what's unresolved in a relationship and complaining about a partner to people who may not have your relationship's best interests at heart. Shared expectations about privacy can help. Each person must remain free to seek confidential support or advice, especially where there is harm or coercion.
Specific language
Seventh is an agreement to avoid absolutes such as always and never, because statements like "you never do the dishes" tend to produce defensiveness and a search for counter-evidence rather than useful conversation.
Accountability by agreement
Eighth is an agreement not to confront each other or hold each other accountable without invitation. This has two parts. The first is about honouring wherever someone is in their process rather than pushing them further than they're ready to go; people tend to open more readily when they feel accepted as they are rather than judged for where they aren't yet. The second part concerns newly discovered intentions to change. When someone arrives at a fresh insight about how they want to be, it rarely helps for a partner to hold them to that insight like a contract a week later. It helps to agree how accountability will work, including support outside the relationship. This does not prevent a partner from raising harm, asking for change or holding a boundary.
Commitment and conscious endings
There's also a reflection on commitment. Rather than promising forever, which can feel abstract and can quietly invite less presence day to day, agreeing to be fully in a relationship for a defined period, such as a month, and then checking in and recommitting, tends to sharpen attention and care within that time.
Finally there's the matter of closing consciously. When a relationship comes to an end, closing it with spaciousness, rather than drifting into a new connection before the old one has been properly closed, matters because whatever isn't resolved tends to carry over into what comes next, often appearing in a different shape while carrying the same underlying pattern.
None of these agreements are meant to be rigid rules. They work because naming them out loud, making the unspoken spoken, builds a more solid container for whatever a relationship is trying to become.
Sacred relationship agreements
- Agree the shared purpose is joy
- Take responsibility for your own joy, not your partner's
- Communicate what's real and present, not just past patterns
- Refrain from fixing, advising, teaching or rescuing without invitation
- Avoid absolutes like always and never
- Agree how to support change and accountability, while retaining the right to raise harm and set boundaries.
- Commit for a defined period and recommit rather than promising forever
- Close consciously before beginning a new relationship
