By Marien Oommen
February 14 is the day lovers send flowers to each other, little love notes or cuddly toys. My students used to ask me how I celebrated this day and my stock reply is ‘Every day is Valentine’s day’.
Can this ever be a possibility? Never!
The person we live with day in and day out knows us best. He/she knows the other’s weaknesses and strengths and if endowed with wisdom and merciful love, he or she is able to put up with all spousal idiosyncrasies. So how should women consider their husbands? And vice versa?
1. Don’t mock them in a public forum
A WhatsApp group sends umpteen jokes of how smart a woman is, putting herself on a pedestal while making her husband- provider, the butt of the humor. Doubtless it’s funny and maybe true to an extent (!), but a woman who feeds her mind constantly with such denigrating images, is bound to begin to despise her mate or treat him as a lesser.
2. Treat your spouse with honor and respect.
Positive reinforcement beats nagging every time. Behavioral experts say you can’t change others, you can only change yourself and the way you react. So dirty socks and footwear on the hallway is just as much irritants as lipsticks and jewelry spread out on a bathroom counter. Try to make your spouse your priority, connecting with each other on a regular basis, amidst the stresses of work, kids, and home. Encourage each other’s recreational activity. Guy time, girl time and together time. Let there be warm open spaces in our relationships, not overpowering negative ogres.
3. Keep the romance alive
Eating healthy foods, good grooming, sensible shopping and regular exercising makes you the vibrant attractive person you used to be. Learning to appreciate and saying ‘thank you’ puts the joy back in your husband’s heart, the smile in your wife’s face. Also be realistic. We don’t need to hear “thank you” every day from our other half since the husband and wife as two imperfect halves make the perfect circle. Planning a romantic interlude works wonders. Reminding your spouse that you find him/ her awfully attractive does wonders to the relationship.
4. Believe in your spouse
Each of us display bravado in our own arenas and often struggle with low self-confidence and feelings of failure. There are those days we go outside our safe place as a competitor to take on the challenges and return home a failure. Those days are when we need maximum spousal appreciation and encouragement. ‘The quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger’ (George Eliot)
How lovely to sing that song to our better half, ‘you raise me up’ and really mean it. Maybe if we just try we could get flowers of appreciation every day, not just on Valentine’s Day!
