After reading Eric’s thought-provoking post last week on what happens when you treat your spouse like your enemy, my brain was working overtime. While I definitely think no good can come from forgetting that our spouse is, in fact, on our side, the article made me think about what happens when we treat our spouse like they don’t matter.
For example, every time I’m away from my kids, the scene looks the same when we are reunited. My eyes instantly light up and I am genuinely glad to see them. My kids run to me and grab my ankles. “Mommy’s here! Mommy’s here!” I feel like a rock star knowing that someone is that excited to see me. Chances are, if you have young kids in the house, this sounds familiar to you.
Now compare that to what happens when spouses greet each other after a long day apart. What happens when you come home? How does your spouse greet you? Do they even greet you at all?
We all (and by “we,” I mean humans) want to feel important to someone. We want to feel like we matter. But when the one person in our life that’s supposed to be by our side through thick and thin begins to act ambivalent toward us, it can shake our belief and confidence in the relationship.
If we start taking our significant other for granted, the relationship will surely suffer. How can you get into a spirit of validating your spouse every day? A few questions to ask yourself:
1) How does your day start? Do you kiss good morning? Once you wake up, are you up and moving to the next thing, or do you ask your spouse how they slept? Do you talk at all in the mornings? Try to get into a routine where you start the day focusing on each other. Even if it’s only five minutes before you get out the bed, that time together still matters.
2) When you ask your spouse, “How was your day?” just how intently are you listening? When they say, “Janice was so mean today,” do you know who Janice is? Do you do your usual post-work chat while the kids are awake and running around, demanding part of your attention? Maybe you could spend the first 15 minutes after the kids go to sleep to discuss your day and other pressing matters. You want your spouse to feel like they are important to you – giving them your full attention is one way to make that happen.
3) How do you respond when your spouse asks you to change a habit they find annoying? Are you defensive or brush off their comments? If you look at it through their eyes, the fact that they brought it up means its important enough for them to bring it to your attention. By brushing off their concerns or not taking them seriously, you’re not validating their opinions or emotions.
Have you been doing a good job of validating your spouse’s feelings/opinions/accomplishments? Where could you make some improvements?