Be Her Encourager

Just in case you haven’t noticed, the world is full of people who are quick to put you down, tell you that you can’t do something and otherwise just bring negativity into your life. Actually, I don’t think that there are all that many of them, but they seem to be good at popping up at just the wrong moment; and when they do, they’re so noisy that it sounds like a crowd. Everyone else is pretty much content to sit on the sidelines and see whether you succeed or fail. Even if they’re wishing that you fail, they don’t get in your face about it.

Those few loudmouths can really mess up your day though. Actually, they can mess up anybody’s day; like your wife’s. If you and I have to put up with those sorts of people, don’t you think that she does as well? Of course she does. She might even have more of them to put up with than we do.

Unfortunately, we can’t really do much of anything to shut them up, at least not within the limits of what the law allows. So, we’ve got to come up with something else to do, something to help overcome the negativity that they are sowing in the hearts and minds of our wives.

Fortunately, we can do something about that. We can encourage our wives, letting them know that there’s at least one person who stands behind them, who believes in them, who’s willing to go to bat for them. We can be the ones that lift them up, when others are dragging them down. We can tell them that they can, when everyone else is telling them they can’t. We can encourage them, when everyone else is trying to discourage them.

The key to this is understanding what your wife needs and when she needs it. That can be a bit challenging at times. Most of the time, trying to figure out what a woman is thinking or feeling is beyond a male understanding. However, that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless; just that we have to find new ways of doing it.

Start with the basics. You know when your wife is depressed or in a bad mood; nobody has to tell you that. Most of the time, when a woman is in a bad mood, you can tell as soon as you walk in the door; even without seeing her.

From there, the next step is to find out what happened. She may not be in the mood to tell you what she’s upset or depressed about, but she’ll usually be more than ready to tell you about her day; so, ask about her day. If you pay attention to what she says, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to figure out what has put her out of sorts.

Once you know what caused the problem, you’re in the home stretch. All you have to do is the opposite. If somebody has been telling her she can’t do something, tell her that she can. If somebody has been talking bad about how she does things, tell her how good she is at doing things. Whatever it is, give her the opposite, and keep giving her the opposite until you see that it has made a difference.

That doesn’t mean to sit there and badger her with it. What I mean is to tell her, then come back to that again a little later, from a different direction. Keep coming up with new ways to encourage her, until you can see that she’s actually encouraged. That’s going to take several comments, not just one.

She may not accept what you say the first time, especially if what the others have said has hurt her. It takes a while to overcome that. But, your words will make a difference. So, don’t give up. She needs that encouragement and she’ll appreciate it.

Work Out Together

It’s hard for most couples to find time to spend together or even something that they can do together as a couple. That doesn’t mean that it’s impossible, just that we have to work at it a little more than we might want to. Yet, it’s through the time that we spend together, in a variety of pursuits, that we are able to draw closer together or maintain our relationship.

Simply put, investing time in your relationship is investing time in your marriage. That makes it worthwhile, in and of itself. Your work isn’t more important than your marriage, yet all too often; it’s treated as if it is.

One of the tricks to spending time together is to find something that you are going to do on a regular basis and put it on your schedule. I’ve talked a number of times about making Friday night your date night. For my wife and I, our date time is Wednesday lunch. It’s the same idea, just a different time. We’ve also added another regular activity to that, that of working out together at the gym.

I’ve got to confess, I’m not real excited about this one. While I go to the gym with my wife, I’ll have to say that I do so reluctantly. Not reluctant to go there with her, just reluctant to go work out at all. However, we were forced into the place of making some decisions about our health, and part of those decisions was that we needed to exercise.

Maybe you haven’t hit that point in your life yet, but for many of us, reaching 50 is the great equalizer. Things start happening to the body at about 50, which we never through would happen to us. When they do, we’re stuck with the problem of what to do about it. We can go on like nothing has happened (which many people do) or we can start making some lifestyle changes; especially in the areas of diet and exercise.

While working out together isn’t the most fun thing that I can think of doing, it is something that we can do together. Having an exercise buddy makes working out a little bit easier, as you can encourage one another; and who better to be an exercise buddy, than your best friend, your wife?

Besides the time you get to spend together and the encouragement you can give to one another, there are some very tangible benefits to going to the gym together. More than anything, it will help keep both of you younger, longer. Which is better, gong to the gym, or becoming an invalid in your old age? You see, my wife and I don’t go to the gym to try and get our bodies buff; we go to try and maintain or even improve our health. That way, we can enjoy our life together all that much longer, instead of one of us having to be a nurse to the other.

There are some gifts in life which are even more important than flowers and chocolate, one of them is health. By getting a gym membership together, then using that membership together, you are giving each other the gift of health. That says that you care about her.

Now, if you’re the sports fanatic type or the bodybuilder type and your wife isn’t, she may not see a membership to the gym as a gift. In fact, she’ll probably see it as a complaint; you complaining that you’re not satisfied with her (especially her body) the way she is. Be careful about that. You want to approach it from a viewpoint of wanting her to stay healthy, so the two of you can enjoy your marriage that much longer, not “you need to work out.” By approaching it correctly and being patient, you can convince her.

If you do work out together, never forget to encourage her. Don’t expect her to be as strong as you, able to lift as much weight as you or to have as much endurance as you. Women aren’t built like men. Their bodies have a different type of strength. Compliment her on what she does and on the progress she makes. A switch from 5 lbs. to 10 lbs. on a particular machine is still a 100% increase, no matter how you look at it. That’s worth celebrating.

Be an Encouragement

It’s very easy to get into a mode of being negative about everything. Many couples suffer from this negativity, where they are putting each other’s ideas, actions and accomplishments down, instead of building each other up. Yet, of anyone in the world, the one person we should each be able to count on for encouragement is our spouse.

Now, before you go off on a tangent, grumbling about how your wife isn’t encouraging you; I’m not talking about her, I’m talking to you. Whether or not your wife encourages you is another issue entirely. What I’m concerned about right now, is whether or not you are encouraging her.

Actually, the best way to get her to encourage you is to start encouraging her more. Women are created to be responders; that means that they will respond to what we do as men. If we are constantly negative, it will make them all that much more negative. However, if we are positive, it will pull them towards the direction of being positive. You may not be able to change her all the way, but you will be able to give her a gentle push in the right direction.

Not only that, but the more positive and encouraging you are, the less likely you are to be bothered by any negativity she displays. The worst thing in the world is two negative people, who feed off of each other, making each other more and more negative.

Once upon a time, you thought that woman you married was the most wonderful woman in the world. There was something there which you liked so much, that you ended up falling in love with her. I’d venture to guess that whatever that was, it’s still there. Maybe it’s been covered up a bit by the busy-ness of life, but that doesn’t mean that she’s changed; it just means that you need to draw that out of her.

The problem most women face is that they are inherently negative. If a man passes a mirror in a department store, he looks at himself and says, “Yeah, I’ve still got it” (whatever “it” is). When a woman looks at it, she sees Medusa. All she can see is that she isn’t as pretty as she wants to be, her hair doesn’t look like she just came from the hairdresser, she’s not as thin as a supermodel and her clothes aren’t designer specials. Society tells her that she has to be pretty and to do so requires all that. So, when she sees herself, she doesn’t see anything that makes her think she’s pretty.

Okay, so she’s not a supermodel. There are only eight of those in the world anyway, and none of them look like their photos. Real life doesn’t come with PhotoShop. Even so, there are a lot of special things about your wife. It has to be true, or you wouldn’t have married her in the first place.

Remind yourself of those things which caused you to fall in love with her. Then, remind her of them as well. Don’t say, “you used to…” instead say, “I love this about you…” That’s what she needs to hear. She also needs to hear that she’s good at what she does. She needs to know that at least one person sees her efforts and thinks they are good. That person is you.