The Most Under-used Relationship Strategy

Try this at home.

One of the more under-appreciated (and under-used) strategies for maintaining a strong relationship is appreciation. You may be thinking yeah, duh. But most of us don’t do this nearly enough, and we don’t even realize it. We get in our own way in all kinds of ways, and just noticing those traps can help us break out of bad habits. I think of appreciation as three distinct but critical steps: noticing, feeling, and expressing.

Noticing is a surprisingly big barrier for many of us. Especially in long-term relationships, it’s human nature to take for granted things that have become a core part of your everyday life. We have to intentionally work to undo that programming — to notice the routine things that our partner does, and the things that we appreciate about being with them and having them around, especially the things that have become predictable constants.  

Some of the most interesting research I’ve seen on this suggests that the biggest difference between happy couples and couples in conflict isn’t that the former do nice things for each other while the latter don’t. Rather, it’s that couples in conflict have often stopped noticing the times that they reach out for each other, try to connect, or do nice things for the other person. Think about that: 

Even couples who are in a rut often continue to try hard to improve the relationship, it’s just that they’ve become blind to the others’ efforts. I find that heartbreaking.

My husband is always the one to take out the trash, which works well because I can never remember which night of the week we’re supposed to take out which trash, I hate going out in the cold at night, and I really dislike handling compost. It’s a relatively small thing, one of the many ways in which we divide our house tasks, but I really appreciate it, and I try to notice it every week. He also cooks many nights, because he likes cooking more than me and left to my own devices I’d eat cereal at least twice a week. And I try hard to notice and to thank him. 

Sometimes we notice, but we don’t actually let the appreciation sink in. I have a theory that this is most likely to happen when we ourselves are feeling under-appreciated. You can see how this quickly becomes a downward spiral. We feel like we are doing so much and it’s going unnoticed or unappreciated, and so when our partner does something we unconsciously dismiss it as only fair, or worse, the least they could do. But appreciating someone else does not negate our own efforts. 

Perhaps counter-intuitively, you’re more likely to get appreciation from your partner by expressing some appreciation yourself than by silently resenting them and hoping they read your mind.

The other night one of my kids woke up in the middle of the night, woke up the other one, and it ended up taking me a while to get them both back down. The next morning, I let my husband do breakfast while I tried to catch up on sleep. I try hard in those moments to not let the fact that we each took a shift get in the way of appreciating that he quietly slipped out and let me sleep in. Appreciation shouldn’t be reserved for things that are out of the ordinary, or big gestures, or times when one person is going above and beyond. You can feel deep, genuine appreciation for everyday things. And all the research on gratitude suggests more is more when it comes to feeling grateful. It really is very good for you.

Noticing and feeling are great — but you actually have to express it, to tell the other person what it is you appreciate. I don’t know why this is so hard sometimes. Maybe it feels awkward to be saying thank you all the time? Maybe we delude ourselves into thinking that we show our appreciation in other ways? Maybe we assume our partner simply knows, or should know, we appreciate them. I think most of us, most of the time, don’t say thank you anywhere near as much as we should, especially to those closest to us, the ones whose love and support we rely on to such a degree that we stop noticing it.

I may have said this before, but I have found that becoming a parent has brought so many simple relationship lessons front and center for me once again. Most of parenting advice is really relationship advice: when your kid shares a feeling, validate it and sit with them in it rather than trying to tell them it’s not a big deal; when you mess up, apologize and repair; when you feel emotionally dysregulated or flooded, take a breather. It’s all kind of obvious stuff even if it can be hard to remember in the moment, and also just as relevant to any other relationship in your life, perhaps especially the one with your partner.

I bring up parenting because there is a particular strain of parenting advice as it relates to gratitude that I really disagree with. I’ve heard parenting “influencers” say that you shouldn’t tell, or ask, or require that your kids say please and thank you. Instead, you should simply model it for them. Model it, by all means, but in my experience you also have to help them build the habit.

Gratitude is a habit. Or rather, it can become one if you intentionally practice it.

In the same way that I help my own kids build the habit of saying thank you when someone does something nice for them, including routine things that happen all the time, I remind myself that it’s a habit that I am continually cultivating in myself. If saying thank you to your partner feels clunky or awkward, it may just be that you haven’t built the habit. The more you do it, the more natural it will feel. 

Esther Perel has a great example about how we sometimes forget to express appreciation: Say one person has to stay late working, and so their partner is left to cook dinner and put the kids to bed. Often the partner working late will come home and say “I’m so sorry, my meeting ran late and I have this presentation coming up…” and explain why they were late. Except that’s not really all that helpful — it keeps all the emphasis on them and what they have going on. Often what is much more helpful to the relationship is to simply say “Thank you so much for taking the kids tonight so I could finish my work. I really appreciate it.” Ta-da. 

For reflection:

• Spend a few minutes thinking about things you appreciate in your partner, especially things you routinely take for granted. Try to come up with ten.

• Reflect on when you get in your own way of feeling appreciative. Do you hold on to resentments, or unhelpfully keep score, in a way that makes it harder for you to appreciate what your partner does, because you’re too wrapped up in everything you do?

• How often do you thank your partner? Is your sense that it’s really landing — are they hearing you and feeling appreciated? If not, is there something different you could try instead?

• Forward this to your partner and use it as an opportunity to share your list above of all the things you appreciate. If that goes well, ask each other about all the ways you’re feeling, or not feeling appreciated.