How to Cherish Your Spouse in 4 Steps

Cherishing your spouse might be something that is overlooked in many marriages, not necessarily because we are unappreciative people who don’t cherish those close to us but more so because we sometimes get caught up with our day to day life that we forget to cherish our spouse.

But cherishing your spouse and ensuring that your spouse ‘feels’ cherished can take a marriage from average to magical and that too with minimal effort.  The rewards both for yourself and your spouse are high and cherishing your spouse is a great lesson to teach your children too.

Learning how to cherish your spouse is easy, but there are a few challenges such as; 

1. The difference – cherishing your spouse and making them feel cherished

An often overlooked factor when learning how to cherish your spouse is that ideally, you want your spouse to feel cherished.  

Sure, the fact that you cherish your spouse even if your spouse doesn’t realize is one thing, and a good thing at that.  But finding ways to make sure that your spouse knows you are cherishing them will take your marriage to a whole new level! 

2. Remembering to make cherishing your spouse a habit

Making the act of cherishing your spouse a habit is going to require effort when you are learning how to cherish your spouse.  Daily life will often get in the way and cause you to lose focus if you are not careful.

Here are some of our best tips for helping you remember to keep up the good work.

1. Start small and don’t try to switch up everything in your relationship immediately – you’ll soon become overwhelmed or frustrated if you do.
2. Think of just one way that you could cherish your spouse to get started and implement that. Just make sure it’s one that they will recognize or appreciate.

If you can think of more ideas write them down for now and pick out one thing you can begin to do.

1. Turn learning how to cherish your spouse into a project and build routine and ritual around this practice into your life to help you to remember and create new habits.  
2. Stay present and focus on how much you love and appreciate your spouse when you are trying to demonstrate this to them – your efforts will be much more potent!  
3. Create a ritual for first thing in the morning or last thing at night where you write down your intentions, and include all of the ways that you are grateful for your spouse and family. 

This will help you to remain focused in the future. 

3. Your spouse’s surprise when you start cherishing your spouse

Another factor to consider when learning how to cherish your spouse is that when you start to change your ways and demonstrate your love, affection, and care for your spouse more explicitly your spouse might start to wonder what is going on, even becoming concerned that you are feeling guilty or something.  

The best way to deal with this situation is to communicate to your spouse that you love them and feel that you could do more to make them feel cherished.

Let your spouse know that things are going to change and that they are going to enjoy it.   

4. Finding ways to cherish your spouse

So now you know how to deal with making the changes to cherish your spouse, so here are some ideas for how to do so.  

1. Listen to your spouse and hear them.  Reflect back to them that you acknowledge what they are saying and stay on their side in public.  
2. Show your spouse affection and care in public or when they are least expecting.  
3. Acknowledge the efforts your spouse makes toward your married life and attempt to alleviate them in some way. Such as taking over preparing dinner one evening and or cooking a nice breakfast every Sunday.  
4. Remember to ask your spouse how their day was and invest in paying attention to their answer.  E.g., Stop what you are doing and look at them when they are talking to you.
5. Try to get some alone time just to be together.
6. Smile at your spouse.
7. Pray together.
8. Tell your spouse what you appreciate about them regularly.
9. Ask your spouse ‘what can I do for you today?’.
10. Tell your children how much you love and appreciate your spouse and why.
11. Respect your differences

It might seem a little one-sided, especially if you feel that you could benefit from being cherished too.

But the chances are, by taking these actions you’ll inspire your spouse to follow your lead and steer your marriage into new waters where both of you mutually cherish each other.

The post How to Cherish Your Spouse in 4 Steps appeared first on Marriage.com Blog.

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