From a very young age, many people are taught to say “thank you” when they receive a gift or a kind gesture. However, even when gratitude is a reflex with strangers, we sometimes stop doing it with the people closest to us. We offer our gratitude to the person who holds the door at the grocery store, but we save our breath at home.
It may feel unnecessary—or downright ridiculous—to thank our partners every time they make dinner or take out the trash, but consider flipping the script for a moment. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone say a quick “thank you” as they sit down to the meal you made after a long day of work? It feels good to be acknowledged for the small things we do. Appreciation goes a long way to helping us feel happy to contribute to the household instead of resentful about it.
In longer relationships, it is easy to assume our partners just know we’re grateful without us having to say or do anything. This is a commonly held misconception. We do have to say things out loud, and “thank you” or “I appreciate you” are especially helpful in strengthening our romantic bonds.
Some strategies for strengthening or maintaining our relationships require buy-in from our partners. However, others are all about how we think about the relationship. We have control over how we react to our partners and what we focus on in our day-to-day interactions with them. Gratitude is one of the individual strategies that we can try by ourselves without needing participation from anyone else.
We generally think of gratitude as a reaction when someone does something nice for us, “Hey, thanks for doing the dishes.” But it doesn’t have to be a response to a specific event. We also can feel and express a general tone of gratitude toward our partners. We can look for the parts of the relationship that are working and cultivate a sense of gratitude for those. Is your partner great at making you feel supported? Do they bring you coffee? Do they make you laugh? Do they deal with all the bugs you hate?
Even if we don’t explain or express this specifically to our partners, our gratitude and appreciation may shift how we interact in a positive direction.
When we build the habit of expressing gratitude for our partners, it can help our other relationships.
Getting in the habit of saying “thank you” more often may mean acknowledging our partners or children for doing things we expect them to do—and that’s OK. We don’t need to reserve our gratitude for grand gestures. Many small expressions of gratitude build up and spread out to make everyone feel a little more appreciated for what we do.
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