Come Home from Work With a Compliment and Not a Complaint
I heard this great advice from a speaker several years back. He said that when a husband walks in the house after a day of work the first thing he should do is say something positive. For example, if your wife is making dinner then walk into the house and say “Hey honey, the kitchen smells great.” Or anything really. The important thing is that a husband should not come home with a complaint. The mood for the evening is set based on the husband’s positive or negative attitude when coming home from work. If you want to complain about something at work then do it later in the evening.
This lesson is also important for a wife. When the husband walks in the house don’t welcome him home by complaining about the kids or about how terrible your day was. It’s true that a spouse is someone that you should talk to when you need to vent your frustrations but it just shouldn’t be the first thing you do when you come home.
This may sound like simple advice but it goes a long way especially if you are a complainer. When I heard this advice three years ago, I implemented it right away. Ever since then I would stop myself before walking into the house and make sure I had something positive to say. Sometimes I would say “Hey honey the kitchen smells great” even when the kitchen didn’t smell like anything. We would get a good chickle out of it and start our evening in a positive light.
So if you are really frustrated about the traffic or about something upsetting that happened to you at work. Before you walk through that door get it out of your system. Don’t bring it home with you. Leave it at the front door. Later, after you got home and you’ve had a nice chat over dinner then you can go ahead and vent.
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My wife and I are out there for eachother and understanding about these things. Does it really seem like a good idea to save all your pent up frustrations about work to enjoy LATER in the evening? When I get home, I want to put the day’s negativity behind me as soon as possible and enjoy the evening with family, not discussions about incompetent administrators. If you can’t say anything at work, are we to just contain it? I thought that was part of why we were together, to share and vent things you can’t or don’t want share or vent to about with ANYONE else? The tone for the whole evening is then set by the least understanding person. Tone at my house is always pretty damn good.
Great post. It seems like a peaceful 10-15 minute period is very valuable for us between coming in the house and the “How was your day?” question.
Kids pick up on stress and there’s no faking it around them. The 10-15 minutes is usually enough for us to at least address the day’s happenings with a calmer tone in our voices.
Thanks for the thoughts. They are good ones.
MrDifficult, it depends on the type of person you are and on the relationship. If you are a complainer chances are your wife doesnt want to hear about it every time you walk in the house.
Obviously if you are extremely frustrated about something, then go ahead and vent as long as it doesn’t happen daily.
I totally agree with this post. My husband and I would always spend the first minutes together in the evening complaining about our day. Then we recently decided that we should be a bit more positive. It has certainly made our evenings more enjoyable.
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