5 Easy Ways to be Thoughtful
Life seems to get busier and busier. I can only imagine it to be true for those of you who also have children while managing to prioritize your marriage. If you don’t nurture your marriage first, your relationship will begin to wither, become distant, and cold. It’s important to not only pay attention to the major needs of your spouse, but also to the little things. More often than not missing out on the little things like the small acts of kindness and the brief moments to show love, consideration, and affection will snowball into hurt feelings as well as not having one’s needs met. This leads to an empty love tank. While we should not act purely on the idea of reciprocation and should be doing these things for our significant others regardless of what they do for us, we all know that we are more prone to think about and desire to do nice things for our significant other when our love tanks are full and we repeat the pattern we learn.
[Please note – a covenant love & marriage focuses on putting our spouse/significant other first, putting their needs before our own, seeking to bring out the best in them, and to help them become closer to God. It is not about what our significant other can do for us.]
Today I’m sharing five quick and easy ways to show thoughtfulness.
1. Send them a text, email, note in the mail, or call them. What if you set a reminder to prompt you to do one of these each day or each week? I firmly believe in sincerity, so I do not suggest pumping out insincere notes/messages to anyone. But, a reminder is helpful to get your brain to reflect on reasons why you love them, can compliment them on, and/or why you miss them.
2. Pick up a random treat, have a courier deliver something, or order something online to be delivered. A surprise gift or sweet treat will brighten anyone’s day. Or if your person is busy with work or sick, you can send a care package of sorts. IE: using the Favor app to deliver coffee and a sweet, to deliver chicken soup and orange juice, to deliver lunch or dessert. You can also use services like Instacart.com to deliver these types of goods to them such as: OJ, soup, Airborne, and Zicam if they’re sick.
Favor - you can sign up using my promo code REBEB3X
Instacart - you can sign up using my promo code RBRITTAIN22
3. Invite your significant other to do something with you as a means of quality time together that would also strengthen your communication and relationship. IE: bible study, read a marriage book together, create date night idea cards to randomly draw from so that on date nights you both won’t know what you’ll do until you randomly select a card – keeps things fun!
4. Keep an eye out for upcoming events, plays, movies, concerts, or sports games that you know they’d like to attend. That way when the time comes to discuss planning for that day/time period you will have options to suggest that they likes to do. This shows them that you’re considerate and thoughtful in looking out in advance for things they enjoy.
5. Be affectionate! Men and women have different emotional and physical needs, but one thing remains constant…we all have a need for affection to build closeness with each other. Non-sexual affection is one of the most overlooked factors required for bonding. Hold hands, put your hand on the small of their back, hug (hug, hug, hug), kiss their cheek, stroke their hair, link arms while walking. These things bring closeness and comfort, bonding and security. If you’re married, it will also tend to lead to other stuff too. I think it is a great misperception that non-sexual affection isn't important, especially for females. We need that to feel close and build intimacy. If your spouse doesn’t naturally reach out to do those things, then take the initiative yourself. You will still feel better with physical touch as well as initiate a pattern for it that will soon become more and more natural for the spouse who doesn’t instinctively provide affection.
I hope you found this post helpful. I've previously shared other topics about marriage that you can review as well as ways to ways to show someone that you care. Advice and beliefs I've gathered from resources I've read and studied can be found in the books section on my blog.
Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead as we power through to the weekend!
XOXO
