Monthly Archives: December 2017

Feeling Unappreciated in Your Relationship? Try This!

Feeling Unappreciated in Your Relationship?

Feeling unappreciated can happen in an instant. Let’s say you are the cook in your relationship. You plan a meal, make the food and expect that your partner will arrive so everything will come out exactly so. But then they don’t and the minutes go by and you start to worry that the food you prepared so well will be cold and not as good. This causes you stress and now you feel as if your partner doesn’t care and you are now feeling unappreciated.

I know how this can happen because my husband is the cook in my family. I have in the past taken longer at work than I told him and when I finally came home he said something like, “I thought you would be home sooner.” He just sounded so bummed and sad. Then he said, “I wish you would let me know when you are going to be later.”

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Why We Give of Ourselves

Why We Give of Ourselves

I think all of us have some sort of expectation when we do something nice for another. I think it’s pretty human for us to expect to feel something good when someone receives what we have given them. But I had an insight recently that challenged that notion.

I was thinking about a couple of times when I made an effort to be gracious to another, yet after the exchange I felt empty. I realized that I was waiting for a great response and since I didn’t get it, the experience was lacking. That’s when the insight kicked in. And I thought, the giving is the gift.

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Ask for What You Want in Your Relationship

Ask for what you want in your relationship.

I had this idea recently and it came to me while walking my dog. She is an old girl, a small white little one. I was noticing as we were just wandering down the sidewalk that we were in sync. Both of us were stride by stride.

And that’s when it hit me, we have cultivated this ease at walking together by doing the same thing over and over again. And in that moment when I was noticing it, it felt like the best thing in the world. Just the two of us, just us.

Then I flashed to other habits that I enjoy in my life, and I immediately thought of the time I spend in the morning with my husband, just sitting in our den, reading the newspaper, drinking tea or coffee and just being.

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