31 Days to a Better Spouse

June was spent doing lots of traveling, so much so that we spent Father’s Day en route back home. Needless to say it wasn’t a great, memorable celebration for my husband. In true ‘No Spin’ fashion, I considered doing a post about all of Jeffrey’s qualities I appreciated, along with all of the habits that were far less appealing...just to keep things real. Since he spent this Father’s Day weekend helping out family, doing odd jobs around their house, AND fighting an oven fire due to my lack of knowledge with high-altitude baking, I decided that I needed to take a much more appreciative approach if I was going to post anything about him.

So here’s what I did...

I took the idea from this movie:

(If you haven't seen it, you should)

and decided to spend the entire month of July contributing to my marriage; I wanted to do things every day to be a better spouse. We hardly ever see each other, and lot of our time together gets divided with all the multi-tasking we have to submit to, so I thought what better way to show my love than by sacrificing the one thing that I already have so little of to demonstrate my love/appreciation/gratitutde/etc. for him.

There were 6 things I wanted to improve on...

1. Get up every morning and make him breakfast before work (6 A.M.-hence why I haven’t done this yet)
2. Compliment him every day
3. Initiate intimacy- hugging, snuggling, actual legit conversation with eye contact
4. Avoid negativity
5. Finish the dishes every night before bed (my friend Heather is SO much better at this!)
6. Stop talking about my weight, exercise, how well my clothes fit, etc.

I’ve done....ok. :)

About half way through the month we had a major meltdown and I caved and told him I had intentionally been doing extra things to improve what little time we had together and I was frustrated because I felt like it didn’t matter. We have a pretty sturdy relationship, I think, and we can communicate about things fairly well. He listened, and started trying to aid me on the one or two days a week where he had extra time.

After those first few weeks, I stopped worrying about checking off the list because getting up every morning started becoming habit, one that I carry out about 80% of the time (unless I’m sick or he leaves earlier).

(Actually, that has morphed into waking up at 5:30 AM now so that I can have breakfast prepared the second he wakes up, allowing us to chat a bit longer.)

The dishes are about 60% of the time, which is an improvement non the less! As far as intimacy, we had a lot more rough-housing and towel swatting at the beginning of the month, but it’s gone back to hugs more so, but he has actually started randomly cuddling up to me! (And I love it!) As I have started going to bed before he gets home, I’ve begun leaving him little love notes for when he gets home. I’m finding those have a greater impact than staying up an extra hour and half later just to ‘see’ each other. He seems to wake up in an amazing mood the mornings after I’ve left a note the night before. :)

As for the negativity/weight deal...I’m a female, what can I say? Although, I do believe that every excuse is a choice to fail, and I was doing a much better job with this particular challenge in the first few days of the month in comparison to now, so it’s obvious I just need to kick my own butt and get in a better habit of being positive.

Complimenting- I’ve always been really good at saying ‘thank you’ and ‘I really appreciate you doing -----’ but true compliments seem so blatant, it was weird sometimes. One day I thanked him for not getting upset that I was emotional and letting me talk out my feelings. He asked if that wasn’t how he had always been in which I replied that, “Yes, you’ve always been this way, but just because someone always does something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t thank them for it.” At that point he immediately walked out of the kitchen over to me with a very sincere, cherished look on his face and gave me a hug. It was pretty awesome, (even if it was a ‘thank you’ and not a real compliment).

I want him to always feel that way. I want him to always know that I truly appreciate him. He won’t get that by reading this silly blog, and that’s not my intent for posting this. He’ll only know how I feel through my actions, and so I hope to maintain these new ‘better spouse’ habits. I feel like so much gets lost in the hustle of life and so many of us forget about what we (husband or wife) used to do, and focus more on what they used to do and what they no longer do...what about us? Shouldn't we first take responsibility for ourselves? I mentioned this little project to a few friends, (and I hope I didn't offend anyone in doing so!) and some of which were grateful for the challenge. Others might or might not have takent the challenge, as marriages are private and it's not for everyone to always know the goals of a relationship. And then some others were silent as I personally shared with them my plan, quietly fuming and then stating to me they felt that their spouse was the one that needed to start putting forth more effort, not themselves...(whatever, we've ALL been there, myself included! lol)

It’s not for me to say what way is the right way to be or not to be for any marriage, but what I do know is that I had a great experience with this challenge. It was really trying at first, and I found myself miserable with frustration in the first few days until I let my feelings go and just worked.

HARD.

Slowly I became a little better version of me.

And it was so worth it.

Because (to me) he is so worth it.

What about you? What’s a habit you want to change to improve your relationship with your spouse? Or what’s something you stopped doing and want to start up again?