Maybe your spouse has complained to you that he or she just doesn’t feel appreciated. Well, let’s just take that at face value today and work on this whole appreciation thing. It can only help, right?

One of my favorite Bible verses is:

“You must let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is beneficial for the building up of the one in need, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

If every word we spoke in our marriages was tested by this verse, we would see some vast improvements!

What Does Appreciation Look Like?

There is a measurement tool used in research called the Appreciation in Relationships Scale which looks at these items:[i]

Telling your partner that he/she is the best

Telling your partner how much you appreciate him/her

Not taking your partner for granted

Acknowledging and treating your spouse like s/he is someone special

Noticing when your spouse does nice things for you and saying thank you, even for the really small things

Feeling struck with a sense of awe and wonder when you think about your spouse being in your life.

Basically, appreciation is any feeling or expression of gratitude for who a person is and what they do. When you perceive that your spouse sees you as valuable, you feel appreciated. This, of course, leads to a greater sense of security in the marriage and also the feeling that you can be confident of how your spouse sees you.

It’s difficult when you’re not sure what your spouse thinks of you. This may be why your spouse is saying that s/he doesn’t feel appreciated. For some reason, they may not actually be sure of what you think of them.

When you take these needs for appreciation that we all have and you bring them into your marriage what you’re doing is shifting your focus away from your own self-interest and really starting to include your spouse’s needs. This shift in thinking is fundamental to showing appreciation because you have to start to mentally position yourself around what you’re giving rather than what you’re getting from the marriage.

When this shift takes place, you’re now expressing behaviours that help to maintain and build up your relationship. This is the whole point of appreciation!

How Appreciation Blesses Your Marriage

Here are five ways that appreciation benefits your marriage. We’ll show you why this works and what it does for your marriage so that you can really become intentional about putting this into place.

First, Appreciate Your Spouse and Your Spouse Will Appreciate You

A study from 2012 showed that “feeling appreciate by one’s spouse promotes one’s own appreciative feelings….people who feel more appreciated by their romantic partners report being more appreciative of their partners. In turn, people who are more appreciative of their partners report being more responsive to their partner’s needs.”[ii]

Appreciation begets more appreciation. When you appreciate your spouse, your spouse is more likely to appreciate you back. Appreciation starts a healthy cycle in your marriage – as one partner considers the other before self, the other partner starts to do the same, and the relationship as a whole benefits from this.

Second, Appreciation Leads to Commitment and Protects from Divorce

Further results of the 2012 study showed that people who are more appreciative of their partners are more committed and more likely to remain in their relationships over time.[iii] In this way, displays of appreciation are protective against divorce and separation.

Anything that contributes to the happy longevity of your marriage is really worthwhile!

Third, Appreciation Positively Changes How You View Your Marriage

Different research, from 2010, discovered that one of the benefits of expressing gratitude (which is just one way of expressing appreciation) positively changes how each partner views the relationship, specifically in terms of the communal strength of the relationship.[iv]