A small effort with a huge return

One of the basic findings in psychology is that rewarding a specific behavior increases the likelihood of the behavior being repeated… recognition and acknowledgement are an important reward and motivation for good work and strengthens the relationship in many ways. The more genuinely self-confident your partner is the better they are likely to perform in life and within your relationship. A key component in this particular case is raising your partners self-esteem by the appropriate utilization of praise. You can do a lot for your partner and your relationship by helping them to do so, as people want to know that their contributions are appreciated and valued. The failure to do so provides a situation for growing frustration and alienation, which can be enough to permanently influence an individual’s view of their own abilities, self-worth and self-respect.

Praise is judgment

Praise is a form of positive judging your partners performance based on how well it matches up to your internal sense of how the job should be done. If you are not conveying that, you are giving little guidance and providing no leadership within the relationship. The notion of not providing praise isn’t just bullshit, it is vastly unfair and disrespectful. Your partner should not have to be your mind reader and should expect the same consideration or better, than what you expect for yourself in the form of recognition and acknowledgement. You should be setting the tone for it in your relationship.

Timely

In order for praise to be effective it must be done in a timely fashion and delivered as soon as possible. When you notice results, tell them. Take the two seconds to stop whatever is going on and acknowledge them and their actions. This will not only signal your value of the experience but add to their own savoring of it by your enthusiasm and attention that is bared upon it. Even if it’s just a place holder for further appreciation, do so immediately. There are few situations or times when an honest “you fucking rock!” and a high-five isn’t appreciated.

Genuine

An essential element that separates praise from flattery is the fact that it is genuine, it is laden with value, earned and has context or meaning grounding it. You want to avoid flattery, which is a false or excessive praising or fawning which is to seek out the other person’s approval or attention by acting ingratiatingly. These will be seen for what they are patronizing, hollow, meaningless and inconsequential.

Specific

Spending time reviewing your experiences with your partner is an important step in not just celebrating the mundane and obvious elements that you value them for, but for what often goes unspoken or unrecognized. What are the things that you values that comes to mind? Not what could be, but what is already there, what already attracts you, what readily keeps your attention, those things that made them different from every other woman. These are the foundational elements upon which your relationship is built. She should be well aware of your appreciation of them and your acknowledgment of them is essential to this.

Reasonable

People can be conditioned with hopelessly demanding standards. Repeated failure at winning approval teaches your partner that there is no appreciable relationship between effort and reward. The desire to be recognized, valued and considered is one of our deepest needs, if you are not providing it, they will naturally seek it elsewhere. Your failure to provide earned and justifiable recognition is an overt form of neglect that ultimately will not go un-noticed or un-resolved. Eventually everyone will turn to someone, or something else to have their needs fulfilled. Prevent this by having reasonable standards, expectations and provide recognition and show appreciation where it is earned.

4:1

In numerous third-party exit interview studies, researchers find that most parting employee’s feel ignored or taken for granted. When researchers actually tabulated the number of times praise was merited out compared to criticism and noted the ratios they found that when the ratios was 1:1 people felt as though they had a negative relationship. When it was 2:1 (praise to criticism), they still felt their manager was all over them. It wasn’t until it was a ration of 4:1 that people felt good about their relationship. We can’t expect our partners to be batting 1.000, but what we can do and make practice of is noticing the daily things they do, do and calling attention to them. Everyone loves to hear that they’re awesome, even if it’s just because she’s yours.

Varried

Providing simple praise, recognition and acknowledgement isn’t nearly enough. Your appreciation of them and their efforts must be evident in your body language and facial expressions when you provide it. Being comfortable and varied in your expressions of it help frame the context and attach meaning to the expressions given. Beyond that, the methodology of providing such forms of recognition and praise should be varied as well. Spend the time to create unique and differing ways to communicate this. Yes, cards are appreciated and valued, more so when they are unexpected and don’t fall on commercialized holidays of remembrance or acknowledgement. They don’t have to be fancy. The most caring are not. A meaningful, touch, a caress, a smile across a room can have and leave profound and meaningful memories.

Public

You should be as enthused about your partner playing for your team (relationship) as you would be supporting any team or sport. How different would your relationship be if you were truly their biggest fan and supporter and overtly so? Providing public praise, talking her up with your friends, family and co-workers is a proxy for such, more so if the individual your espousing her qualities to is some other woman. After all she’s the one you chose. (If you can’t do this we need to be having a different conversation). Sadly in most relationships this doesn’t typically occur until after the relationship has failed and she’s moved onto a new relationship and new cock… then everyone hears about how wonderful she was and how endeared to her you were… which is far too late. Vastly better to have made those sentiment know well in advance of any turbulence in the relationship.

Prizing

In intimate relationships we should be going well beyond providing frequent, timely, varied and public praise. We need to be finding those elements that we highly cherish, hold so dear that they make our partner completely unique, valued and we should be expressing them. Yes, this is a form of pedestalization. It should be, otherwise you shouldn’t be in a relationship with her. We put things on pedestals that we hold dear, that are highly valued, appreciated and ultimately want to protect. Our relationships should be one of our many treasured possessions, that matches our own sense of self-worth, self-respect, and self-esteem through living a life we desired and acted on to create. Do any less is acting ignobly.