Be happy to see him.
Don't greet him with complaints and problems.
Listen to him.
At first I was only going to share my thoughts about the second line, but these seemed to go together so well, that I'm including them all. Is it just me, or aren't these actually good ideas? If you're not happy to see your husband when he gets home, something is seriously wrong with your relationship. Is there something wrong with liking to see your best friend at the end of the day? And who hasn't had one of "those" days when you are counting down the seconds until he gets home and can rescue you from all of the chaos? Believe me, I was definitely happy to see him as he walked through the door the last time I had one of those days! If we want our husbands to continue to come home at the end of the day, doesn't it make sense that he should look forward to coming home? If we never meet him with joy, only disgruntled relief, whining and complaining, or worse, anger, where is the motivation?
As for the second one, our husbands worry about us a whole lot more than they let on. When I was a younger mother (I can still consider myself a young mom cause I don't have teenagers yet, right?) I made the mistake of only complaining about my day. Seth would come home from work and I would only tell him about the bad things. All of the frustrating, aggravating, disappointing, "I can't do this for one more minute", things that happened while he was at work, school, or serving in his church responsibilities. All of the messes the boys made, how hard it was to be home all day without a car, and only the boys company, how tired I was, etc. He was gone a lot, and only had the information I gave him to judge how things were going at home. Every now and then I would talk about having five or six children (we had two at the time), and he would say something about not thinking we could handle that many. I thought he was just joking, or talking about himself. (I grew up in a family with 8 children, he had 4 with a large break between the first two and second two). One day he said "Melissa, I really don't think you can deal with very many more children". When I asked him why, he said it was because all I do is talk about how hard it was, how difficult everything is and he worried about me.
Basically, because all I did was complain, instead of talking about the happy things that occurred - the times we laughed, how fun it was to see my boys learn something new, the joy I found in overcoming a challenge, the "I love being a mom" moments - he had a skewed view of my life, and my abilities. My complaining caused him to worry needlessly about me, and almost affected a very large decision of lasting consequence. So, before you start complaining, take stock, and define what picture you want to portray, and if complaining isn't going to portray that picture, don't! I'm not saying that sharing the hard things, the things we complain about is bad, I just think (and I just came up with this), that complaining doesn't get us the results we are looking for. I think I was looking for compassion, someone to say "that must have been hard, I hope tomorrow is a better day for you". Someone to acknowledge my difficulties, and then help me move past them. I think there is a better way to get the results we are seeking, and that is called communication, something a little bit different than complaining.
Which brings us to the third point on that list, Listen to him.
I was going to go ahead and address this idea in this post, but I find that I have so much to say on the topic of listening and communication that it is going into a post of it's own.
So, until then, be happy, and enjoy painting :)
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