How do I set the default sort order through personalization in fields, for instance start date in ot

Hi,
I have noticed that after I have done some sorting of some data, for instance,  Customer Online - look a customer - Relationships - Other, and then enters one of the relationshiprecords and then goes back to the relationshippage, then the sort order is gone and I have to do the sorting again. This unwanted behavior has led me to try and  change the default sortorder, the field Sort Allowed from Yes to descending, through Personalization but with no success. I have changed the value for the specified field, in this case start date, and cleared the global cache, but