On the first night of our honeymoon we made a decision that every night before going to bed we would express three things we appreciated about the other person. Often it was things the person did throughout the day, other times is was a characteristic we loved in the other person.
This was powerful in three ways:
We looked for and noticed nice things the other person did all day every day.
We lived in a place of gratitude toward the other person.
We made emotional deposits every day, which made it less harmful when we had to bring up something hard. The love was secure; we could handle hearing something negative once in awhile.
We called this "Appreciates".
We did Appreciates every single night for years.
After having three small children, with Geoff traveling almost constantly, and living in Redmond, Washington where the skies were gray, and I struggled with chronic cabin fever, saying, "Thank you for making dinner tonight" just didn't cut it, and I told Geoff so. I told him it needed to sound something like this, "Thank you for making dinner when you haven't had a physical or mental break all day, and thank you for persisting with dinner when you had to stop 10 times because of whining or screaming children and when the house is a mess...." Yeah, I was requiring a LOT more appreciation during those years.
Eventually our appreciates before bed fizzled out, but the habit was largely still there, and we still express a lot of appreciation to each other to this day.
Looking for all the other is doing right and expressing appreciation...it works!
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