When you feel like you’re in the middle of the hard part of marriage, you may wonder how to encourage your husband. Encouraging your husband can take on a lot of different meetings, depending on what you feel is missing.
Yes, it’s true that every marriage goes through hard times, but that doesn’t help you with where you’re at right now.
You want to jumpstart change in your marriage and you’re just not sure how to get there. We cannot promise that these ten recommendations will change your marriage. But, we can give you some advice that will go a long way toward changing your perspective on your marriage.
When you read through this blog, remember that you have a tremendous impact on your husband.
There’s no more perfect time for you to start showing your great husband how much you love him than right now. You’re on your way to a more loving, beautiful marriage just by wanting to show your husband how much he matters to you.
This post is all about how to encourage your husband.
HOW TO ENCOURAGE YOUR HUSBAND:
1. Send him a text message (it can say anything!)
Let your husband know you’re thinking about him. The beauty of a text message is that you can make it as short and sweet as you like, or opt for a more developed, longer message. Anything you send him will make him realize how much you think of him and value him.
This is the type of thing you want to do every now and then. The more frequently you do it, the more he’ll get used to it—which isn’t a bad thing! You want to avoid texting him once and never do it again.
This type of encouragement requires so little energy from you that it’s one way to encourage your husband that you can do regularly.
Plus, when you stop and ask yourself what to say to your husband in the moment, it gets you in the right mindset for gratitude and love, which are both crucial to encouraging your husband. Sometimes, a text message is the best to create change in your relationship.
Anytime you change up the dynamic and introduce something new to your pattern, you create the space for something new to happen.
When you ask how to encourage your husband, breaking old patterns plays a major role in that, especially if you’ve felt that your husband has been discouraged lately.
2. Go out of your way to make his favorite meal
Nothing says love like someone surprising you with a homemade version of your favorite meal. Sure, ordering takeout can be just as thoughtful and surprising.
However, there’s beauty in learning how to make something your partner loves. Something is beautiful about putting the time and effort into making one of your partner’s favorite things out of nowhere.
It can take a lot of work and consideration to identify your husband’s favorite meal so that you don’t end up making something for yourself. This meal is about showing your husband that your marriage is the most important thing to you.
So, this meal is a great way to show him that you value your years of marriage together. There’s no better way to encourage your husband than to demonstrate how much he means to you by doing something that takes hard work, planning, and thoughtfulness.
Challenge yourself to go through your memories and his stories to find the perfect dish that will surprise him with great cooking and great nostalgia.
3. Remember the power of physical touch
Here, at Knockoff Therapy, we don’t subscribe to gender stereotypes like “Men want sex and women don’t” or “Women get too attached after sex.”
Instead, we like to think of the ways those narratives affect us and create new narratives about ourselves that fit our identities and the way we experience the world. In other words, think about the role that physical intimacy plays in your relationship.
Ask yourself how you feel about sex and how your husband feels about sex. You can connect physically without it always being sex, but it’s still a good idea to think about your relationship to physical intimacy in general.
Regardless, this is one of the best opportunities to consider how physical touch can encourage your husband. Think about the ways that you can increase the physical contact in your relationship that feels authentic and organic while also encouraging your husband.
When you think about your relationship to physical intimacy, think about the different factors that play a role in that relationship.
You can think of factors like messages from society, the relationship between your parents and physical intimacy, and anything else that comes up for you. Remember that, if you struggle with it, it’s likely a result of an external factor.
Avoid shaming yourself for the way that you relate to sex and physical touch. Instead, try to come at it from the perspective of curiosity and exploration.
4. Carve time out of your day to spend quality time with him
When you decide to work on encouraging your husband, you have to think of the kind of wife you want to be. The goal is not to shame your husband into becoming a better husband. You want to have an altruistic reason behind caring about your relationship and your husband as a person.
If you focus on encouraging your husband for the wrong reasons (i.e. he’s a terrible husband who you will divorce if he doesn’t improve), it’ll show. Your husband will feel the disdain and resentment behind the actions you take to encourage him.
That’s never more true than when you’re dealing with quality time. The basic fact, as uncomfortable as it might be to read, is that you have to like your husband. Encouraging him is not about transforming him into another person and one that you know you didn’t marry.
Instead, encouraging your husband should be rooted in your existent love for him and the belief that marriage can truly improve. Having said that, quality time is a big part of encouraging your husband because you lead by example.
You can show him that you value his presence in your life beyond what is mandated by living in the same home or being married. You get to spend quality time with someone you like and you can show your husband this by wanting to spend time with him.
5. Give him words of affirmation
Unfortunately, many men, especially men of older generations, have grown up with the belief that affirmations and mental health are for everyone else but them. Affirmations sound like silly little phrases that people use when they’re not “strong” enough.
The truth is that everyone has an affirmation or two they’ve been wanting to hear their entire life. Maybe it’s specific to something a parent has never said (sorry to invoke thoughts of Freud, but it’s often true).
Or maybe it’s something that your spouse hasn’t said in a long time because you’ve been together for such a huge part of your life that you’ve both changed and gotten used to each other. The odds are that you know the phrase or affirmation your partner wants to hear.
You likely know their insecurities and the one phrase you could say that makes them feel better about them even for a moment. Say them and say them with intention. Pick the right time, which can look like a time when your spouse is upset or paying particular attention to you.
Say them frequently enough that they begin to realize how much you see them and their insecurities.
If you don’t know what phrase they need to hear, then listen to them. Oftentimes, we give away our insecurities with the throwaway sentences we say when we’re emotional (whether we’re angry, sad, or hurt).
6. Leave little notes around your house for him
The keys to encouragement are meaning what you say and changing up old habits. This means that you find new ways of encouraging your husband that you haven’t practiced before.
Something like leaving a note in the house to randomly remind your husband that you love him and you’re thinking about him will mean the world to him. It’s amazing how easily one action can change your whole marriage.
In this case, that one action would be you leaving a note for your husband, and him then paying it forward with more positive encouragement for you. Maybe, when he gets the note, he will get you flowers that day or he will send you a text message or he’ll smile and kiss you randomly.
So, find a cute place to leave him a little note, whether it’s a sticky note or a notebook piece of paper. Let him know that you care and that you’re thinking about him. It can be a sweet and simple way of accomplishing your goal.
You get to make your husband feel special and act as a powerful tool. Often, the encouraging words that we use to make our partners feel our love don’t help as much as we think they do.
Those kind words are things that they’ve heard many times, and it can be difficult to use those words of encouragement to spur a change in your relationship. So, remember that something as simple as leaving a note for your husband is helpful.
It will positively affect your marriage because the power of your words is based on the love you two share. You will encourage him, and therefore improve your marriage by showing him that you put effort into showing him you care.
7. Pause the to-do list
There will always be something else to do. Whether you need your husband to fix the washer, or your car is making a weird noise, there will always be more to add to the list.
Say you’re focusing on getting through day-to-day and you just want to wash your clothes or drive to work. It can be easy to forget that your husband is your husband first.
One of the most important pieces of encouragement is showing that you’re willing to put effort into proving that you love your husband. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t believe you love him, or that your marriage is no longer the safe place that used to be.
It does mean that your relationship changes, you go through difficult times, and you love each other in a different way. A happy marriage can look like a lot of different things. That’s why you want to make sure that your marriage looks like a place of love and safety for everyone involved.
That might mean pausing the to-do list on occasion. Yes, there is always more to do. But, you have one life with your husband, and the best way to encourage him is to show that you appreciate the one life you have with him.
8. Remind yourself of the good times so that you want to encourage your husband
It might seem obvious to you that you want to encourage your husband for the right reasons and you want to improve your marriage. If that’s the case, that’s fantastic. However, we still have to address it for the sake of people approaching it with complicated intentions.
Encouraging your husband is already a vague phrase and it can mean something different to everyone who reads this. Some people will want to read this blog so that they can fix their marriage without doing the more deep, painful work that it takes to vitalize a broken marriage.
Other people will read this blog because they’re feeling disconnected from their partner and they want to change that. There’s no wrong way to approach the concept of encouraging your husband.
But, there is a wrong way to think about it because will likely hurt you and your husband in the long run. When you think about encouraging your husband, ask yourself why you want to do that.
Maybe you think of some good memories that you used to have when your relationship was more lively or a little different. Perhaps you think that your marriage is in danger of ending and you are doing this as a way to save it.
Or maybe you want your husband to realize that you still exist and you still have needs. All of these are valid feelings and valid thoughts, but they’re not all going to help you improve your marriage and make your husband feel truly seen.
A good place to start is to make sure that you are coming from a place of love. Think back on the times you had when you were first a married couple and start there.
9. Plan a cute date night with some of his favorite activities
Show your husband that you pay attention to him and care about the things that he likes by planning a date for him. This date night will be something that you both enjoy and it should include things that you’re willing to do with him without making him miserable.
But, the night is geared towards him. The things that he enjoys are the things that you should be doing together. The odds are that you have each done something that the other person prefers. So, this concept may not be very new.
But, it will show him how much you pay attention and care for him. That feeling alone will encourage him to think differently about your marriage and to be more intentional.
While the goal of encouraging your husband should never be to affect his actions, it’s worth noting that you will be changing the dynamic. This means that you are improving your marriage just by the small steps you take to encourage your husband.
At the end of the day, you want your husband to know that he is your best friend and that you think he is an amazing man who is worth staying, married to. No matter how long you’ve been married, both of you deserve a marriage to enjoy spending time with each other.
Showing up for each other gets to be the best thing you could possibly do in your day. There’s no better way of proving that than planning a date. He will enjoy having fun with him while you do it together.
10. Always remember that it’s the little things that matter
It is cliché to say that the little things matter. However, clichés tend to be more true than not. In this case, the little things do matter. In a lot of ways, the little things matter more than the bigger things because small things happen on a regular basis.
They are more sustainable to keep up and they feel more rewarding for both parties because they can be done more frequently. When you focus on the big things, like planning a whole date night for him, it will be hard to maintain that same level of planning, energy, and enthusiasm.
That’s why it can be so hard to maintain your motivation when trying to encourage your husband. You may feel like all you do is think of ways to make him feel seen, and it’s not going anywhere. If you find yourself feeling like this, remind yourself of two things.
First of all, you aren’t doing this for your husband to pay you back or to make you feel seen with some reciprocal, supportive action. Second of all, you don’t have to make big swings every time you want to encourage your husband.
The small things can be even more meaningful than the big things because they stand out. They stand out and they happen so much more often than the big things happen.
You’ll be amazed at how easy it gets to think about small ways of making your husband feel seen and loved throughout your day the more that you remind yourself to do in the first place.
