Woman Drafts 17-Page 'Relationship Terms & Conditions' After Two Weeks Of Dating
And it has kept them together!
Darius Bashar / Unsplash Law student and TikTok creator Annie Wright (@anniesright) often posts videos about her relationship with her boyfriend, Michael Head, and receives a lot of positive comments from her over 300k followers. Perhaps her most viral video details what she did at the beginning of their relationship after two weeks of dating.
Wright shared her 17-page 'Relationship Terms & Conditions.'
“I made the idea as a joke, then he said, ‘No, seriously. We can do that and talk about it,'” said Wright during an interview with The Sun. "I felt like the biggest issue I had in my last relationship was it felt like boundaries of mine were crossed that I never established. I was like 'this time I'll write them out and no one can cross my boundaries.'”
As a result, her “Relationship Terms & Conditions” contract was drawn up, as was his “The Important Pack of Information,” and they “came together like on The Apprentice and presented them.”
Her contract came with a table of contents and talked about boundaries, objectives, family stuff, as well as their future plans and goals for the relationship.
The four main ‘Objectives’ of the relationship are to maintain: honesty, communication, awareness of each other’s needs, and clarity and alignment in their intentions. These are fairly reasonable requests for any relationship, especially the first three.
Her contract continues on to talk about her boundaries, which include, “Saying ‘No’” and “Prying” as well as the mention that “Emma comes before anyone and anything in my life” — Emma being her dog. Head’s boundaries include his alone time and sleep schedule, as well as asking for any accommodations that might make their relationship feel more comfortable for her.
In both of their ‘About Me’ sections, they included their OCEAN percentiles, which stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. They also included pros and cons lists of each other, and talk about the things that they want their partner to do with/for them.
The relationship contract has worked so far.
The 17-page contract, Wright has said, is a large part of their successful relationship.
"This has been a game changer. I'd recommend all couples have one,” she said, referring to the contract. “It's the best thing ever.”
We asked our experts at YourTango, and some of them agreed. Clinical Hypnotherapist and Spiritual Life Coach, Keya Murthy, said “Setting boundaries and making rules early on in a relationship is a brilliant idea,” adding that “A relationship contract is like a prenuptial agreement or an expectation packet given by a landlord to a tenant, a teacher to a student, etc. You have it in writing what’s ok and what’s not ok. If it’s a mutually drawn-out contract, it’s ideal for both parties involved. This contract can be revisited once a year or as often as needed.”
But not everyone feels the same way. Marilyn Sutherland, a Relationship & Communication Coach, says it's not natural.
"I think a written contract in the first two weeks may be overkill. I think it’s important to watch someone and see how they conduct themselves," Sutherland told us. "If you give them guidelines on how to interact with you, you don’t get to see how they naturally would show up. I’m not saying to have no boundaries but early on it’s best to see who they are."
But even Wright said it’s all business in their relationship.
"We treat our relationship almost like a business interaction,” she said. “We deal with conflict like partners in business would. We sit down and treat it more like we're partners in life and love is an added bonus.”
Considering they announced their engagement in October of 2023, it seems to have worked pretty well for them.
Maybe every relationship should come with a “Terms & Conditions” checkbox of its own!
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice and politics.