Give Appreciation
One of the dialects of Words of Affirmation is to give appreciation. This is according to the book The Five Love Languages from Gary Chapman and other dialects of this love language is giving compliments and giving praise.
I learned so much from reading this book and also from John Gray‘s book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus where he talks about men needing appreciation more than women, and I can say that this is true for me although my wife needs appreciation as well as I’m sure all women do to.
To give appreciation means to acknowledge that your wife is doing what she is doing and that you appreciate it and that you realize you’d have to do it if she didn’t. It’s the same for your man, you need to acknowledge and appreciate the things he does that you’d have to do if he wasn’t doing them.
Don’t take for granted
It’s so easy to take things for granted which simply means to not acknowledge and appreciate things done by our spouse. We tend to feel that we don’t need to acknowledge and give appreciation because they (obviously, right?) know that they are appreciated. I’m just as guilty as the next of doing that. Another reason is that we feel it will not be received and instead we will get the “well, yeah, you should appreciate me” response because we’ve gotten it in the past.
So, remember, give appreciation all the time. If you’ve not given appreciation in a while, then you may get a resistance to it so you can try to prepare your spouse first – tell them you want to give them appreciation and you’d appreciate if they were able to just receive it, that will help and as you practice this so it becomes a habit for you too.
Let me know how you give appreciation and what your experience is on this. Tell me how you liked this post by commenting below.
