February was the month Gretchen Rubin in her book The Happiness Project chose to look at marriage. She called the chapter "Remember Love." She felt that she had an above average marriage but too often took her spouse for granted. I agree that it is too easy to fall into the habit of treating strangers better than we do our spouse. It seems to be human nature to let down your guard with the person with whom you feel safest and end up treating them poorly. Too often we get annoyed by their faults and ignore or overlook their virtues.
One of her themes for the month was "there is only love". She chose to avoid criticism and build up tenderness, thoughtfulness, and appreciation. Realizing that "every day matters more than once in awhile" she endeavored to quit nagging and show proof of love often.
One way to quit nagging is to do the task yourself. If something is important to you or bothering you, maybe it is your responsibility. Also, when we ask someone else to do a job we let go of the right to gripe about how they did it. It is now their task to do as they see fit and on their time schedule. All the nagging in the world will not get them to do it our way. Surprisingly, the author found that when she went ahead and did a needed task it brought her more joy than all the cajoling of her husband ever had.
Then she got to the part that stepped on my toes. She discussed the need for affirmation. She said that when she does kind things for others she wants to be appreciated and praised. If she does not get this positive input then she feels resentful of the task. Ouch - I resemble that remark. I too like to get my 'gold stars' as she calls them. I want people to notice what I do and like me because of it. I've always struggled with being a people pleaser. The author talks about a way she reframed her thinking that makes a lot of sense to me. She says that if we say "I did X for him" then we expect the person receiving the action to appreciate us. However, if we do whatever it is for our self then it takes the other person's reaction out of the equation. We simply did a good deed because we wanted to and any resulting affirmation is extra. I would even add that when we dedicate a task to God it does not matter what others think.
Another topic in this chapter was negativity bias. Human nature is to react faster to negative input and to remember it longer than the positive. Therefore, it is more important to reduce negative experiences than to build up positive ones. In addition to avoiding nagging the author also chose to not argue about certain things. Some issues are not really worth it. My mom used to say "If it won't matter in ten years, don't waste time being angry about it today."
An additional way to reduce negativity is to reduce expectations. Too often in marriage we expect that person to fill all our needs. However, relationships don't work that way. For instance women want to share long, deep conversations when men often want to share activities. We think face-to-face is intimacy and they desire working on a project together. It took me a long time to realize that my husband did not want to hear every detail of my day and that was ok. He supports me in the big stuff but gets lost in the minutia.
A couple other tid-bits:
- to see how people want to be treated, look at their actions
- the more readily you respond to your spouse's bids for attention, the stronger your marriage
- remind yourself 'I love _______, just as he/she is.'
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