Stay alert, with your eyes wide open in gratitude.
Colossians 4:2
“The doors of happiness remain locked,” says our friend, Fawn Weaver, founder of the Happy Wives Club website. “When they are unlocked, they swing open quickly and widely but close right behind them. They must be reopened throughout each day and there is but one key that fits that lock: Gratitude.”
Studies back up this poetic notion. A growing body of research has tied an attitude of gratitude to numerous benefits, including happiness and more.
The Wall Street Journal summarized the research:
Adults who frequently feel grateful have more energy, more optimism, more social connections and more happiness than those who do not. They’re also less likely to be depressed, envious, or greedy. They earn more money, sleep more soundly, exercise more regularly, and have greater resistance to illness.
Not a bad bundle of benefits.
But there’s an even more astounding and measurable benefit to our well being when it comes to cultivating gratitude.
After doing research involving thousands of people conducted by a number of different researchers around the world Dr. Robert Emmons – who has been studying gratitude for more than a decade and is considered by many to be the world’s leading authority on gratitude – says this: Studies show that practicing gratitude can increase happiness levels by around 25 percent.
Not bad, right?
How would your marriage look if over the next few days if you became 25 percent happier? How about if your partner was suddenly 25 percent happier?
It’s impossible to separate gratitude from happiness. You can’t have one without the other. And it’s impossible to exaggerate what gratitude can do to boost the level of happiness in your marriage.
Reflect and Respond
Make a list within the next 24 hours of 10 things you appreciate about your spouse – make the list longer than 10, if you like. Tell us how it changed the mood in your marriage.
Go ahead, tell us in the comments.
Related Resource
Making Happy explores the science, the art, and the practice of happiness in marriage. Drawing from real-life examples, Drs. Les and Leslie offer insights into how your brain and relationship affect each other as you make happiness in your marriage a conscious, delightful habit.
Guess I should be grateful it only takes 3~4 beers before he passes out at 8:30pm (every night), that we can have less than $7.00 in checking & he’ll buy beer on our nearly maxed out credit card (but it’s my fault we have all this debt), every now & then he’ll actually empty the garbage, that he’s so busy at work he’s too tired to even talk to me. Today is our anniversary 7yrs of indentured servitude just another day in hell.
Dear Sister Linda,
Have you ever considered that he is making alcohol his mistress? This would constitute adultery and make you free to gently remove yourself from drowning alongside of him. You do not have to remain miserable. God wants more for His precious daughters!
Been there, been freed from that,
Jenn
Could be or this is how he deals with job stress which he has plenty of. He’s not good with long term relationships & that’s probably why his 1st marriage ended after 20yrs
Linda’s story strikes a familiar cord. I’m not minimizing your situation because that was pretty close to my life. There was a time when I wanted my husband dead!
Back in the 80s when Opera was having all the self-help gurus on talking about bettering our lives; someone suggested keeping a daily gratitude journal. So I decided to do one on my husband.
They were pretty gruesome! “Thank you God for not letting me cut his heart out and hand it to him.” Or “Thank you God for not letting me bite his juggler today.” Needless to say I was pretty miserable! I’ve often thought, I need to find those journals and destroy them so that the kids don’t find them when I’m gone.
Then I finally started into therapy, Later I got into Ala-non and did a number of retreats, workshops and seminars. And guess what? I learned that I couldn’t control his drinking, I didn’t cause it and I certainly wasn’t going to cure it! But what did happen was I learned how to live MY life and let him live his. I stopped nagging him,
The more I did my thing and started treating him as though he had any other disease like say, cancer, the more I was able to focus on myself and my relationship with our children. I also learned that I had some serious issues going on due to buried incest repercussion. I found I had my own problems and that was enough to keep me busy and out of his hair.
Actually, he became my confidant after my therapy sessions and helped me process in between sessions.
It didn’t happen over night, but all that work paid off, after a while it wasn’t so hard to come up with his good qualities, because I knew that I needed five things I was grateful for before going to sleep; so I started looking for the good. I also learned “you get what you focus on.”
This January we will celebrate our 52nd anniversary, and I can honestly say, I’ve given up the idea of finding those journals because if the kids find them they will see that if we put enough work into ourselves they too can have a marriage like we now have.
Did I mention that he now has thirty years sobriety; and I have twenty-seven in ala-non.
My prayers are with you. Mary
Reading the comments above, I wish there’s some kind of a law against alcohol. Let’s say ‘a person spending his income on alcohol should be paying taxes equal to 6 non-alcoholic men’. The day there would be strict laws against alcohol, there will be no accidents, no domestic violence and relationships would improve towards betterment.
I’m a single person and not married yet. And sometimes I don’t see myself getting married. It’s the men especially in our culture who I fail to understand what they want. I’m a muslim-cum-Pakistani woman in late 30s. There was this guy who I met in Pakistan in a library and later I found him on Facebook after 10 years. Though he accepted me after a long time. I even forgot that I sent him a friend request. He was known as a mama’s boy among his friends. I don’t know if it’s my fault to love such a man who is known as a confused suspicious guy. I do understand the problems he has gone through. He wanted to go to USA for his studies but couldn’t get the visa for some weird reasons.As a result, he ended up going to London and so I lost touch with him for 10 years. After 10 years, we met on Facebook but since he doesn’t trust these social medias so he hardly talk. He’d just a 5-letter email in a 2-weeks or probably a month. Maybe he wasn’t interested in me but then his friends say that he’s like that with everyone. He doesn’t respond to some of his friends. According to one of his friend, I know more about him than his friends. So then I realized that he was talking to me more than his friends. So when I talk about this guy, I’d say that I’d have gotten married to him without thinking that he’s a confused, suspicious mama’s boy. But then sometimes I feel that he might not deserve this love. Since I’m living in USA and he’s living in Pakistan, he can’t come here and I can’t go there, so that’s another reason I thought that these long-distance relationships don’t work so easily. So I decided to move on.
A year ago, I was introduced to this guy who is working for an american company but currently not located in USA. He called and we had a few conversations on phone but he made a complain against me that I’m unresponsive. I talked to him and told him that we’re mature enough to talk so if he has some issues against me, he should be telling me directly rather than involving other people. And he was find with that. But then he went away from the scene. Now, after a year, I was told that he’s still looking for girls. The matchmaker told me that he seemed interested in me but he thought I’m uninterested, and on her suggestion, I started talking to him. Again, it was a long-distance relationship but I tried my best to do what he wants and to behave how he wants. I hardly miss his watsapp messages, try not to ignore his phone calls on Facebook messenger, in short start liking him even though he has the ugliest face in the world. I used to appreciate him when he sometimes sing on the phone in his annoying voice. He sent me his picture after he shaved his head. And he looked like an ugliest gangster but I still like him. I don’t know why I was attracted toward him and I don’t know why he started being distant from me.
Enough of it!
I don’t know why am I writing this all but I have been reading Dr. Les and Leslie’s articles and I really love reading them. I’d not mind if I get a suggestion from Les & Leslie how to improve my relationships and to how make a man feel in the same way that I feel for him.
My point is that I try to stay happy in most of the situations, but what do I get. Is there any way how to make others happy?
I am sorry to read these comments but happy for this exercise. I have many things to be grateful for: he supports me financially while i go to school, he cares for me in ways i didn’t know possible, loves me, loves my son (from my first marriage) as if he were his own, and many more. I will praying that other women can find a man like I have and this reminds me to be more thankful for what I have.
-“Happy birthday Marc….Hi baoynbry, John and Marc are my favourite designer as well……. I really like ur style..especially the colours of clothes…I am now studing fashion design in London..and yes my birthday was on 6th of April:-) most of my clothes from Marc…I am so glad that Marc and u are Aries as well…maybe that is exactly what Aries world.lol..”
Sorry I’m late to the party. I think I’m bring something good though.
My wife:
1. Is beautiful. Not only that, she recently lost 25 pounds … not *solely* for me, but she listed that as a reason.
2. Is faithful. We will celebrate 30 years next spring. I have NO doubt that she’s kept herself for me … mentally, as well as physically. I wish I could say I’d done as well for her in that area.
3. Is smart. I’ll have to take some credit for figuring that out before I married her, but it’s really a tribute to her and to her parents.
4. Is hard-working. We have taken on projects that would scare a great many women, and she’s handled them with aplomb.
5. Is talented. You should hear her sing, or hear the songs she’s written!
6. Is sexy. No details to share, but we’ve not stayed married 30 years sleeping in separate rooms. 😉
7. Is caring. She has raised children AND a husband to be much better than they would’ve been without her.
8. Is resilient. She has bounced back from at least one TERRIBLE blow to her life & esteem.
9. Is saved. That part about being faithful? I’m her #2 guy … Jesus Christ has ALL her heart.
10. Is given to God … now, at the end, the secret is out. Marriage was created by God and works best when both parties are living in subjection to Him and His Word. We decided in 1988 to do marriage His way, forever, with Him at the center of who we are. He has provided when we were poor. He has restored when we were broken. He has blessed when we were faithful. All praise and glory to God, the Father our our Lord Jesus, for His glorious goodness to us!