Husbands, do you want your wife to give you more time and attention? Would you like her to have more energy for you at the end of your busy days? Would you like to feel that you are her highest priority - at least for an hour or two? Would you like to feel how you felt when you were first married, before the house, kids, and countless responsibilities took over your lives?
1. Appreciation is the key
Phase one of this powerful exercise is to seek out and acknowledge these things silently to yourself, or possibly even write a list. Phase two is to express your appreciation of the list verbally to your wife, then watch her swoon with love for you. Both phases will create powerful changes in both of your attitudes.
2. Your wife thinks herself into a trap
In order to proceed, a little understanding of your wife's point of view is necessary to your appreciation of what she does for you. As housewives, we women constantly focus on, and even obsess about, countless little chores that demand our attention. We get very good at taking care of details, and we truly enjoy caring for those we love by making life go smoothly for them; so smoothly that they don't even notice all we do. That is the trap we set for ourselves as women; a trap that most men don't even know exists.
From the time we wake up to the time we fall asleep, we are thinking: Do I have time on the way home to pick up the dry cleaning so my husband will have clean shirts for his trip? Do I have enough deli meat for sandwiches to make sack lunches in the morning? What will we have for a quick and easy dinner tomorrow after returning home from parent-teacher conferences? I've got to remember to get C batteries for the smoke alarm sometime today so it won't chirp again at 2 a.m. tonight and wake us up. If I stay up late tomorrow, I will find the extra time to finish the blanket I started for my niece's baby shower this weekend.
On and on we go, like well-oiled machines. Sometimes, we can't stop ourselves. We become addicted to our own super-high efficiency. We can't shut off the never-ending list of details and multi-tasking constantly flowing in our minds and running our lives. We want to do a good job. Yet, when we do, no one notices. Precisely because we've done it so well. Trapped again.
3. Unhappy wife, unhappy life
Other times, we finally approach overload, and one last detail slams us over the edge. Someone doesn't hang up his coat or change the toilet paper roll, and we instantly turn from super mom to crabby, overworked housewife. The whole household knows the tide has turned. Often, however, the family, and especially the husband, is left scratching their heads wondering what happened and hoping super wife returns to sanity soon so life can resume as usual.
4. The two-part solution is simple
Number one
Take your wife out of the house. Take her away from her never-ending list of things to do, phone calls to answer, kids to feed, messes to clean up. Take her out on a date. Take her anywhere: to the park, to a fancy restaurant, to a fast food drive up, to an ice cream store, to a campground, to a hotel. The place is not important. Just know that your wife often simply cannot relax in her own home, which is really her workplace 24/7. To change her mood, simply change the scenery. Release her from her own trap. It will go a long way, and work in your favor.
Number two
Know that feeling taken for granted is a huge energy drain for your wife. Feeling like Cinderella is a complete turn-off for her. This is where your list comes into play; the list you've made of the things you appreciate about what she does for you and your family. You have the power to turn your wife from crabby old Cinderella into a divine Princess. By simply acknowledging her efforts on your behalf, you turn her invisible efforts into visible praise and appreciation. This is what we women live for.
Tell her thank you for picking up your shirts, for making healthy and inexpensive lunches for the kids every day and for handling deli meats before breakfast at 7 a.m. Tell her you appreciate how clean the floor is, the sink is, the laundry is, the bathroom is. Express to her your admiration of how she handles the children's homework, piano lessons, temper tantrums, and schoolyard dramas. Compliment how her eyes look just as beautiful as the day you met her. Tell her you would marry her all over again.
But don't just copy the words written here. Find things you really feel in your own heart that you appreciate, things that you may not have noticed before, things that you haven't expressed your appreciation of to her before. She will intuitively know the difference. Your sincerity will literally sweep her off her feet. Your heartfelt and expressed admiration will give her more energy than she's had in years. And best of all, it won't cost you a dime.
What are you waiting for? Get out that pencil and paper. Start looking for things about your wife to appreciate. And get ready for some high voltage love to start flowing.
