Appreciation

Everyone likes to be appreciated; at least, everyone I know likes to be appreciated. I suppose there’s somebody, somewhere, who at least pretends not to like being appreciated, but I’m not sure who they are or where they are. Nor for that matter am I sure why they would pretend to not like being appreciated.

Expressions of appreciation make everyone feel good. It makes them feel like what they’ve done is valued, and by extension that they are valued as well. On the other hand, when we forget to express appreciation, we send a message that they aren’t important, they aren’t valuable, and what they’ve done really doesn’t mean much of anything. That might not be the message we intend to send, but we send it nevertheless.

A few years ago, when we were buying our house, my wife was in a furniture buying mood. I don’t know what put her in that mood; after all the new house was going to be over twice the size of the rented house where we had been living. But, for some reason she decided to buy some furniture. The only thing was, in the area where we live, Craig’s List doesn’t have much good furniture.

No problem for her; she just decided to range her searches a little farther afield. She found what she wanted, all right, but the two places she found it were 250 and 300 miles from our home. So, I’m sure you can guess who got to take a road trip for our furniture. Yep, I think I hold the world record for a husband who’s been sent the farthest distance to the store by his wife.

I started out one morning at seven o’clock in my old van, with a trailer behind it, to get the furniture. I managed to get home the next morning at about three o’clock. The entire time I had been driving, or loading furniture. I was exhausted.

After loading the furniture in the house, so that nobody would steal it, I crashed. I couldn’t crash for long though, as I had to wake my wife up at six, so she could go to work. She got up, all excited to see the furniture, and headed off to work. There was only one detail that got overlooked. She forgot to say “thank you” to me for going to get it.

Now, I’m not blaming my wife for anything here. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m merely illustrating a point. Because she forgot to say “thanks” the devil was beating on my head for two weeks about how she didn’t appreciate me; how she didn’t love me; and how she was using me as a slave.

Okay, here’s my point. How many times have we forgotten to say “thank you” to our wives, and the devil has done the same thing to them? It’s really hard for anyone to feel loved, when they don’t feel appreciated and valued.

We could say that appreciation is an integral part of love. If we want our wives to feel loved, we need to make sure that they feel appreciated too. We need to make a habit of thanking them for all the little things they do. When she cooks a great meal, thank her. When she washes your clothes, thank her. When she takes the kids to their practice, so that you can relax after work, thank her. It doesn’t matter how big or little the act is, it’s important to thank her.

There’s another category of things that we should thank our wives for as well. I’ll call these the general appreciation category. They aren’t so much thanking her for a particular act that she’s done, as thanking her for being who she is. That’s important as well. Things like:

• “Thank you for loving me”
• “Thank you for being my wife”
• “Thank you for being such a good mother to our kids”
• “Thank you for overlooking my faults”
• “Thank you for not saying ‘I told you’”
• “Thank you for being you”

These are the type of thank you messages that can be sprinkled like salt, to flavor every day of your life. Don’t just limit yourself to that list, either. I just gave you those, to give you some ideas to get you started. Think of your own; and when you do, be sure to thank her.

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.

Home Décor

You know, it may not be all that important to you, but how your home looks is really important to your wife. While you can be happy anywhere, with any type of furniture, with or without pictures on the walls, to her those things are important. The home is the place of the family; the most important people in your wife’s world. So that makes her home important to her as well.

Women like to decorate their homes. I can just imagine a couple of birds, building their nests. The guy would be making sure that the sticks they use are strong enough to support the weight of his family and are well attached to the branch, for security. On the other hand, she’d ignore all that and be concerned about how soft it was, putting a leaf here or a flower there. In fact, if you counted on her to build it all, it’d probably be beautiful, but missing the floor. He’d be sure to have the floor, but it would look like a garbage can.

Well we’re really not all that different. Women complain that they could leave a basket of clean laundry in the middle of the living room for a whole week, and as long as it wasn’t in the way of the television, their husbands would ignore it (except to step over it). We just don’t pay that much attention.

I’m not saying that you should become an interior decorator, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for you to open your eyes and see what your house looks like on the inside. You might even see something that you like (that is, something besides your wife).

It would also do wonders for your wife’s appreciation of you if you took a bit of an interest in how the home is decorated. No; I’m not talking about hanging a deer head over the fireplace. I’m talking about figuring out what she wants it to look like, and helping make it that way. Is she going for a modern look? Or, maybe she’s into antiques? How about retro, is that her look? You don’t know? Not surprising. You know, you could always ask.

Yes, believe it, or not, you can ask your wife what decorating style she’s going for. And while that may make you look like you don’t know anything about interior decorating; it’ll also make it look like you are interested in her and what she wants. That’s the important part.

Okay, now that you know what style she’s after, what can you do to help? Does some wall or some room need to be painted? Does she need a knick-knack shelf for the wall? Could you maybe find something decorative on e-Bay that would fit the style she’s going for?

Remember, when you take an interest in what she’s interested in, she sees it as you taking an interest in her. So, your taking an interest in how the house looks directly translates in her mind to an interest in the family, along with you valuing her opinions and desires. That’s important, because that’s dealing directly with who she is.

More Than Ever Before

Do you remember your dating days? You know, that time when the two of you were just having fun together, enjoying being together, talking together; enjoying each other’s touch. What ever happened to those days? How did we lose those great feelings that drove us to being together?

The answer to those questions is really rather simple; reality raised up its ugly head to bite us. That’s right, the culprit for losing those wonderful feelings of being in love is reality. You see, when we’re dating, there’s really no reality involved. It’s all a dream world. Everything is like living in a fairy tale, where they live happily ever after.

Then, once we get married, we find out that there are bills to pay, that she doesn’t wake up in the morning, looking like she stepped off a magazine cover and problems to deal with. All of a sudden, those wonderful feelings vanish, like a puff of smoke.

Actually, those feelings don’t vanish, they just get covered up by dealing with reality. We don’t stop loving our wives. We don’t stop wanting to be with them. We don’t stop wanting to touch them. We just get so busy dealing with reality, that we don’t have enough time for the things which were so important when we were dating. Then when kids come along, it gets even worse.

Have you ever felt like your wife doesn’t love you as much as she did before? If you’re like most of us, you probably have, more than once. Well, guess what, she feels the same way. She wonders if you love her. She looks back to those dating days, remembering how the two of you were (and she remembers it much better than you do), and wonders what happened to make you fall out of love with her.

Now, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here; I’m pretty sure you love her as much as you did then, or even more. Otherwise, I really doubt you’d be reading this blog. So, what went wrong?

What’s gone wrong is the expression of love (or lack thereof). Here comes reality again, to give us another bite. Because of dealing with all the problems and whatever of life, we stop spending so much time expressing our love and spend more and more time expressing our problems. That’s nowhere near as interesting for either of you; but, it’s necessary.

This is why it’s so important to tell your wife that you love her. She hears so much negativity out of your mouth that she needs to hear something positive; specifically something positive about your relationship. That means a lot to her.

In fact, don’t just tell her you love her; tell her you love her more than ever before. Tell her you love her more than the day you were married. Tell her that every year you love her more. She feels like you don’t love her as much as before, so destroy that negative thought with a positive one. Give her the message that your love hasn’t diminished, but instead has grown as you’ve come to know her more.

What’s so Beautiful About Her?

Most women struggle with their self-esteem; especially their self-esteem about how they look. Although beauty has always been an issue, today’s society has put such a premium on it, that women are constantly challenged to make themselves into supermodels. Only, the supermodels you see on the magazine covers are phony, everything is makeup, hairdressers and of course, Photo Shop.

While I have nothing against women being beautiful, I firmly believe that women don’t have to be artificial to be beautiful. Nor do I always see what the world calls beautiful as being so; especially when the beautiful exterior is just covering up an ugly interior.

Every woman has the capacity to be beautiful, even without all the phoniness that goes on with the supermodels. The most beautiful thing any woman can put on her face is a smile. Couple that with a look of love coming out of her eyes and you’ve got a true winner, every time. She may not be a supermodel to others, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be to you.

Why did you marry your wife? Was it only for her looks? Or did you see something inside her that spoke to your innermost being? If all you did was marry her for her looks, you’re probably not still married; especially if you’ve had kids since then. However, if you married her for what’s inside, the outside will stay looking beautiful to you, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Really, isn’t your opinion more important than all those others?

When was the last time you told your wife how beautiful she was? When was the last time you mentioned something about her that attracts you? How long has it been since you said that you love the feel of her skin when you touch her?

Why don’t we say these things? You know, she really needs to hear that; not just once, but over and over again. When she wears a new dress, she needs to know you like it. When she comes home from having her hair done, you need to notice. If she does something different about “her look” you need to be the first to comment (positively) on it.

My wife and I are middle age. She doesn’t look exactly like she did when we got married. But, then again, neither do I. But you know what? She’s still beautiful, especially when she smiles. I’ve always thought my wife was beautiful and if you don’t agree, you can just keep your thoughts to yourself.

We have a woman in our church who has several physical problems. I really don’t know what her problems are and I’ve never asked her. They cause her to look different and talk different than anyone else in the church. But that woman always shows up well dressed and with her hair nicely done. Every once in a while I say something about her dress or her hair. Every time I do, her eyes light up. I get the feeling that not many people look past her problems to see the true beauty she has.

It’s important to make a point of telling your wife that she’s beautiful. She needs to hear that and she needs to hear it often. She needs to know that she still catches your eye, not that your eyes are wandering all over the place. She needs to know that she’s the only one for you.