Honoring your husband when you don’t feel like it can be challenging and draining some days. With a few of these creative tips, you can turn your whole day around and keep your marriage strong.
Honoring Your Husband When You Don’t Feel Like It
Read More: Honoring Your Husband with Your Homemaking
1. Look through old photos or pictures on your phone.
Let’s jump right in with the the technical science of the brain. Getting your head in the right frame of mind is truly beneficial and scientifically backed. Check out this Harvard study:
“Photos of people they romantically loved caused the participants’ brains to become active in regions rich with dopamine, the so-called feel-good neurotransmitter. Two of the brain regions that showed activity in the fMRI scans were the caudate nucleus, a region associated with reward detection and expectation and the integration of sensory experiences into social behavior, and the ventral tegmental area, which is associated with pleasure, focused attention, and the motivation to pursue and acquire rewards.” (emphasis mine)
Further in the article, the study associated oxytocin with the dopamine effect:
“Oxytocin, known also as the love hormone, provokes feelings of contentment, calmness, and security, which are often associated with mate bonding.”
So pull out your phone or photo album and enjoy looking at pictures of your husband. Get those hormones and chemicals pumping to feel more love and motivation.
Even if you aren’t struggling to honor your husband, go ahead and look through photos to cash in on our amazing bodies’ reactions anyway.
2. Tell him one thing you are thankful for about him.
Before the oxytocin and dopamine wear off from looking at pictures, tell your husband one thing about him that you are thankful for. Call, text, write or tell.
Gratitude is another action that triggers awesome chemical reactions in our bodies.
3. Speak well of him to your friends.
I’m not a gushy person so I didn’t think I could do this. But then I realized I don’t have to be gushy, over-the-top descriptive of how in love with my husband I am.
Simply committing to not saying anything negative about my husband, I thought, was enough. But then I wasn’t really talking about him at all.
By adding a few feelings to the beginning of my day-to-day normal stories, I realized I could honor him. Instead of saying “We went to a water park for a night” I would add my feeling: “I was so surprised when my husband said we are going away for the night!”
Or “I love when my husband stops in to pick us up and ride in the tractor with him.”
4. Write down 10 things you love about him.
You don’t have to give this to him, but you could! Otherwise, keep it in a place where you can go back and reference it often and keep adding to it. Like your journal
5. Write down 10 things that attracted you to him when you were dating.
This is similar to the last challenge. But different in that you are reminiscing a time when you were over the moon in love. A carefree, fun filled time full of feelings and love you were experiencing for the first time.
6. Make a special meal for him.
Whip up his favorite meal or dessert. This will please him and also have you thinking about him all through cooking.
7. Practice gratitude.
This is a personal practice that will change your mindset and has nothing to do with your husband.
I was greatly challenged by Ann Voskamp’s book One Thousand Gifts
If you don’t have time to read a whole book, check out Rachel Cruz’s Contentment Journal
Read More: How to Be a Joyful Homemaker
8. Handwrite a note.
Grab a scrap of paper or a sticky note and jot down a joke, a fun memory, an inside joke or scribble a picture to your husband.
Tuck it under the blanket on his pillow, slip it into his pocket, his wallet or his lunch box.
If you don’t care that your kids see the note, scribble it on the bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker
9. Shoot him a thoughtful text.
During these busy months on the farm, my husband can take and make up to 200 calls a day. If I call, I usually get cut off by the feed guy, the hired guy or a milker with a question. So I shoot him texts with pictures or funny and embarrassing little things in my day.
A word of caution:
Know your husband’s cell phone habits and his surroundings before you shoot him a racy or suggestive text! Or do it anyways!
10. Post on social media.
If you or your husband are on social media, post him a compliment or something about him you’re thankful for.
I’m not into social media much and neither is my husband. I’ll leave the social media embarrassing up to his mother on his birthday!
11. Surprise him for lunch.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m planning a secret, my heart races and I get a little giddy anticipating the moment. Even if I’m only surprising my husband with an ice cream!
Take your husband a picnic lunch or meet him at the office with a lunch destination picked out. Have all the details planned so he doesn’t have to make a decision.
My husband would sooner eat a meal at a table than go adventuring, so the extent of my surprises is ice cream or a frappe.
Honoring your husband when you don’t feel like it is challenging. If you aren’t able to be near him at the moment, start with the suggestions for personal change. Look through photos, jot down some dating memories, remember what you are grateful for, and write down some qualities about him you like.
These simple exercises will get your dopamine and oxytocin flowing and flood your mind and heart with changes.
Be protective of your marriage by honoring your husband when you don’t feel like it.
