Why You Should Always Appreciate Your Spouse

I know the title seems obvious. Of course you should appreciate your spouse. But I had this crazy realization this morning when I woke up to a house that smelled like dog poop.

While I was lying in bed sleeping, my oldest puppy, Kira, had gotten the stomach flu and had diarrhea — all over our carpet. Instead of waking me up to help, my husband took care of all of it by the time I rolled out of bed to get ready for work. He had taken her out, cleaned her up, and scrubbed the carpets clean. I did the usual: asked how she was, told him I didn’t want to go to work, and started getting ready. It was done, right? And it was taken care of.

He made me coffee, made me a smoothie for a quick breakfast, and took Kira out one more time (mind you it was 40° and raining this morning). I was continuing to whine about how I had a bad day yesterday and was tired and didn’t want to work and he just stood there and smiled and told me it was going to be okay.

That’s when I realized.

How often do I come home from work and complain that I’m tired and don’t want to cook dinner? How often do I hold things off until he gets home so I don’t have to do them alone?

He had just come off a 14 day stretch of working 12 hour shifts, moved the entire contents of our house to our new apartment nearly by himself, made sure to do a list of things that needed to be done with the move, did all of his homework (since, you know, working full time isn’t enough), and I hadn’t heard one complaint. Not one. He was comforting me.

And I know I work as well. I know that I contribute to our home and our family and our income. I know all of this. But I do all of it dragging my feet.

I realized that I’m not appreciative of how strong he is. I don’t appreciate how hard he works for us and for me. He is my rock in every possible way and he has never ever given up on me. And it kind of hurt to realize this. It hurt to know that I had overlooked everything because I was so caught up in my own emotions.

The lesson I learned this morning was that, not only is it important to know that you appreciate someone, but to let them know. Tell them everything is going to be okay. Make them that coffee. Show them how important they are to you — even if it’s as simple as cleaning up dog poop.