Be a Cheerleader for Your Partner

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According to divorce lawyer James J. Sexton, “In our day-to-day lives as professionals, parents and just plain human beings, there is no shortage of voices telling us what failures we are. We're bombarded with advertisements designed to make us feel inadequate. Whether there selling pistachio nuts or sports cars, the implication is often that something is wrong or missing.

In the face of this relentless onslaught, you are uniquely positioned to be a voice of support and encouragement for your spouse—a shelter in a storm of disparagement. If you want to keep your marriage healthy, don't squander that power. Resist the temptation to compare your spouse to an imaginary ideal you have created or what romance films have told you a perfect spouse would look and act like. Your partner needs a cheerleader. We all do. If there is no major achievement to cheer for at the moment. Cheer for the small things your spouse is doing well. When people have a taste of victory, they often crave more of it.”

Sexton confirms what research has revealed about relationships. Criticism is toxic to marriages. John Gottman, an American psychological researcher and clinician who has done extensive work over four decades on divorce prediction and marital stability, has written about the negative impact of criticism on marriages. If fact, he refers to criticism as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The other three are contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling.

Criticism can gallop into your relationship making you or your partner feel vulnerable, rejected, and inadequate. While feedback is important in any relationship, criticism differs in that it can evoke such hurt, shame, and self-doubt that the effects prevent it from being constructive once the victim begins to feel anxious and defensive. Criticism is corrosive, not only to the victim's self-esteem and your relationship with them, but also to your own self-esteem when you criticize others. Unless you are a sociopath, harsh words or insults that hurt your partner don't make you feel good. We all have a tendency to move away from pain and toward pleasure. We want to flee and escape uncomfortable people and situations. As criticism increases, your partner will begin to create distance if not physically, emotionally. Many people report that verbal abuse is more damaging than physical abuse.

To improve your relationship, remember to encourage your partner. One good way to accomplish that is when possible soothe your anger before speaking harshly to your loved one. When you feel angry or frustrated you may feel the greatest urge to provide feedback, but remember that's also when you're most prone to insult, shame, or criticize your partner.

In any relationship from time to time we all communicate in unskillful ways. None of us are perfect. It takes practice to keep our communication upbeat and to accentuate the positive. Sexton is correct, “when people have a taste of victory they crave more of it.” Positive attention and encouragement are strong motivators. And they help raise your partner's morale while simultaneously improving your self-esteem. So if you want to keep the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from trampling your relationship, look for opportunities to praise your partner for both large and small victories.  

Improve Your Relationships with Compliments

There is a powerful way to improve your relationships. It is not a tactic. A single tactic will not work. In fact, it may make your situation worse because most people can sense insincerity. Without commitment the minute you experience frustration you will abandon the effort to change. This is an attitude and behavior change I'm inviting you to try for yourself. So what am I suggesting? If you want to improve your relationships, increase happiness, and lift self-esteem, learn to give compliments.

Depending on where you're from and what your previous relationships have been like this may prove to be quite challenging. If you come from a family that did not express or provide praise it may feel awkward for you to give and receive compliments freely. I have even had people say that it felt like ass kissing to give someone a compliment. Your history may be such that no one was around to notice and provide you with adequate praise for the things you did. If that was your experience, you very well could be walking around feeling invalidated and insecure simply from receiving insufficient positive attention growing up. You may even find yourself compensating for that by seeking negative attention. As human beings, if we can't get positive attention, negative attention will do.

Praise or positive attention is one major contributor to good mental health. It acknowledges you and reinforces your felt sense of security. I used the term “felt sense of security” here to emphasize the difference between being secure and feeling secure. To compliment someone indicates that you noticed and feel grateful for something they have done. Gratitude must be cultivated to the point of awareness in order for one to compliment another. Well-being is comprised of gratitude. Feeling secure, grateful, and happy all contribute to increased self-esteem.

The opposite of praise is criticism. The opposite of a compliment is an insult. Nothing says abuse like criticism and insults. I'm suggesting that you learn to give what you may so desperately need, more than every now and then: a pat on the back. Learning to give sincere, specific praise to yourself and others is a tide that lifts all boats. By cultivating an attitude of gratitude for the little things, you become aware that gratitude connects you to life and living. It also attracts people to you because they get from you what we all desperately need: positive attention.

One of the first things that lead to our relationships going bad is our inability to see and acknowledge the good that others do. We can only see their mistakes and shortcomings. This happens not only with our view of others but also with our view of ourselves.

Changing your attitude and behavior doesn't cost you anything but time and effort. A change like this does not require any special talent, no merchandise, no skill. The only requirements are willingness and practice. When practiced on yourself it's considered self-soothing and when provided to others it called a compliment. No matter what moniker you use, compliments reduce suffering and serve as an antidote to insecurity and abuse.

On Happiness

One way to seek happiness is through shopping. Consuming your way to nirvana. Spending, gorging, and bling bling’n ‘til your heart's content. When one is regularly moving toward pleasure and away from pain through greed and gluttony one is practicing hedonism.

Another way to seek happiness is to avoid anything painful or laborious. Run, flee, skedaddle from challenges or difficulties. Anything that might promise exertion, avoid at all costs. Or as Bob Marley said, “Don't rock my boat, I don't want my boat to be rock’n.”

But there is a third alternative to consider. Acceptance. With acceptance you don't try to buy your way out of your constriction and you don't dawn your track shoes and start running. When you accept your situation, it doesn't mean you like it or that you don't do anything about it. If you can avoid either of the first two choices, and give yourself a chance to accept your situation, you can begin to change it. You don’t waste your precious resources by running down dead ends.

I’m not suggesting a leap to acceptance to avoid your feelings. Feel your outrage. Experience your internal protest, emotional riot, and meltdown. Don’t fight it. Expect it. Get in touch with your suffering. To experience your suffering fully is a form of compassion. The word "compassion" literally means to sit with suffering. Through self-acceptance you can begin to heal yourself, which leads to happiness. Acceptance is the key.

There are times when buying things will provide some superficial happiness. And other times when avoidance will be useful. My warning to you is, don’t take yourself hostage by using spending or avoidance habitually. Be aware that when you’re purchasing you could be fleeing your feelings, and when you're fleeing your feelings you could be purchasing some future misery. Whenever you try to fix the human condition by using consumerism and avoidance unconsciously you can end up worse off without knowing it until you're out of money and exhausted.

A lot can be gained from people who practice 12-Step recovery. They've learned to accept and avoid using anything addictive one day at a time. That approach provides many of them with a great deal of happiness.

You can try to buy happiness. You can try and run from problems.  Acceptance offers a third alternative.