First – I want to extend my sincere thanks to you, my valued community, for being a member of My Best Relationship and keeping up with what I have to offer here.
I know you may not read all of my posts or find them all relevant or useful, but I so appreciate you for being here. I have some plans I’m excited about for 2014 and am looking forward to sharing them with you!
And of course: Happy Thanksgiving
It should be no surprise that I will be writing about gratitude today.
Many studies have demonstrated that people who express gratitude and give thanks are happier than those who do not.
Take it from the great Willie Nelson:
When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
Simple exercises such as writing down 5 things you are grateful for on a daily basis have been shown to improve people’s happiness.
How can this apply to your relationship?
Easily.
Unfortunately, many couples overlook the importance of the small things in relationships, like giving thanks on a daily basis.
They may treat each other like garbage and then try to compensate for this with large demonstrative acts of affection.
Think: fancy jewelry, lavish dinners.
Those things don’t hurt, of course. But…
When the little things aren’t present, the big things don’t really matter.
Often partners screw up the even big things. I hear about it all the time:
He gets a piece of jewelry for her and she gets angry he spent the money. She doesn’t even like it, and feels that he wasn’t even thinking of her, just trying to prove to her that he’s not a scumbag.
He misses the mark, yet again.
She feels that he doesn’t really care or understand her; he feels that he can never get it right.
How can couples get past this?
The good news is that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to make your partner happy.
Try something much easier:
Express thanks.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina studied gratitude within relationships and found the following:
Men and women with grateful partners felt more connected to the partner and more satisfied with the romantic relationship,
as written in the Journal of Personal Relationships.
Who doesn’t like feeling appreciated?
Hopefully, once you start showing your partner your gratitude, you may get some yourself as well.
For every 100 positive things in distressed relationships, partners tend to focus on the 1 negative thing.
Change that around by appreciating the smaller, less obvious more positive things.
Give it a try for 2 weeks and tell me what you think.
Write down 3 things every night that you appreciated about your partner. And let them know.
If that’s too hard, give them thanks about something once daily.
You can even let them in on the fact that you read this blog and challenge them to an experiment.
Then, tell me what happened after the two weeks in the comments below.
Give thanks not only today, but every day.
As the University of North Carolina pointed out,
‘The little things may make a big difference within the daily lives of individuals in romantic relationships
Thank YOU for reading!
Happy Thanksgiving, today and every day.
Cheers to your best relationship,
Leave a Reply