photo credit: Gen Bug

Do you love your spouse?  Does he love you?  Every day, can you do three little things to show each other how much?

I’m not talking about mints on the pillow or lipstick notes on the mirror, here.  Instead, I challenge you to make a mental list of your husband’s pet peeves (and vice versa).  For example, let’s take mine. 

We all Have Pet Peeves in Life

It drives my husband nuts, when, among other things:

• I leave my hair in the shower.
• The bed is still unmade at 10PM (he leaves the house before I’m even awake)
• The kids have papers strewn all over the kitchen island.

I, on the other hand, cannot stand it when:

• the dishrag is left, sopping wet, crumpled up in the sink (ewww, bacteria, right?!).
• Also, not a big fan of finding socks lying around beside the couch, in the bathroom, or, God help me, on the kitchen table.
• people don’t rinse their dishes before putting them into my 13-year old dishwasher!

photo credit: gcfairch

When I stop to think about life and love and the larger issues that loom, it doesn’t seem that difficult for me to make the bed, straighten some papers, or clean out the shower drain.  But here’s the thing that’s hard about paying attention to your spouse’s pet peeves:  he may not thank you.  In fact, he may not notice at all.

Do We Notice the Little Things?

If all of my children (and my husband) rinse their dishes and put them in the dishwasher?  Well, great.  That’s what I expect.  I wouldn’t necessarily notice that they made the effort to rinse them off—I’d only notice if they didn’t.  Ditto for my husband when I clean out the shower drain.  How on earth can I expect him to thank me for my extra effort when there’s no evidence, really?  I mean, even I think it’s fairly reasonable for him to expect a clean shower, don’t you?

So the trick is to for us to notice the little things that bug our spouse and to make the effort not to do them without expecting a bevy of thank-yous.  Just paying attention to three little things a day is a lovely gesture.  And years of lovely gestures add up to a big difference in any relationship!