The Importance of Expressing Appreciation and Gratitude to your Partner

We’ve talked about harsh startups and how in a perfect world we would all be gentler, which is more effective for getting what you want. With the couples that we’ve worked with, we see a lot of pushback on this and a lot of

“buts and objections” to being softer or gentler.

The ones we get most frequently are:

“My partner won’t notice. I would have to do it consistently for them to notice and respond with appreciation. There’s no room for me to be human and mess up.”

“They will not show me any appreciation because this is what I should have been doing all along.”

What we know is that positive reinforcement works! It gets you the best results.

As the person making the request for a different behavior from your partner, it is important to take the time to notice and say “Hey, I really appreciate that.” Your partner will feel their contribution is seen and they’re going to be motivated to continue to do what you asked.

We need to feel that in a world where we don’t matter to most people, to our partners we do matter. That they see even the small things we do to make them happy.

Click on the link (bottom) to watch our latest video on this full topic with our Gottman-Trained therapist at Couples Counseling ATL, Matthew Richardson. Finally, stay tuned these next couple of weeks to learn more about different upcoming topics!