Search Results for: blog sapping self confidence

Sapping Self-Confidence

Are you sapping your spouse’s self-confidence and creating problems in your marriage? Recently I experienced an example of how negativity and negative comments can affect performance. It was on the tennis court. I was not playing with Mick since he’s not back to tennis yet since his health problems and would never have behaved like this anyway. The person I partnered in one set was so negative that an air of tension pervaded the court. I was all the time conscious of the negative vibes coming from my partner. The result was I became tentative in my shot making, found … Continue reading →

Nurture, Yes, but Three No Nos for Marriage

After a brief sojourn onto other topics I’m back with the alphabetical marriage blogs. This time is Ns turn – 1 great one on the positive side and 3 you definitely don’t want in your marriage. Nurturing Each person in a marriage needs to be nurturing and supportive of their spouse. To nurture means the care of promoting the development of another person. Nurturing means nourishing, feeding or supporting. This means more than just meeting their physical need with food but nurturing them by encouraging and helping, praising and building them up. It is supporting them in whatever they undertake. … Continue reading →

Checklist of Things to Discuss before Marriage

Part of the joy of meeting new people and being in a relationship is getting to know them, their likes and dislikes. This means more than just things like their favorite color and movie, etc. It means getting to know their attitudes towards life and how they will react in a given situation. With a marriage partner it is even more important. Yet, I am constantly amazed at how little some couples communicate and talk to each other about major issues before they get married. Do they think they will just all resolve themselves because they love each other? It … Continue reading →

The Importance of Encouragement

It was really brought home to me once again recently the absolute importance of encouragement. Yes, I know I sound like a broken record (showing my age there!) but I after experiencing quite the opposite recently, I felt very deflated. No, it wasn’t Mick but a friend. By the time I’d been on the receiving end of a string of negative comments, I ended up wondering why I had bothered. Beth has covered this topic before in regard to toxic friends who undermine and leave you feeling bad about yourself. The thing is, I’m not sure the person even realized … Continue reading →

Tips for Married Life After Baby

Yesterday we looked at how some new Moms abdicate from normal life when baby arrives. Here are helpful tips and ways we went about preventing this. From the time my children were born, I got them used to noise. The radio or music was always on. We never tiptoed round the house when baby was asleep. They learned to get used to everyday noise. I still went out to tennis, to bible study, to whatever I was involved in. Our daughter was five days old when my husband and I took her to Sunday school with us, where we were … Continue reading →

What Do You See?

What do you see when you look at your spouse? The way we see a person often determines the way we respond to them and treat them. If we think someone is judging us or looking down on us or finding fault with us, we are more likely to respond by becoming defensive. Putting on an act to cover our insecurities is another way people often respond in such a scenario. What you think and feel and see when you look at your spouse matters. Do you see someone you love and someone who is interesting? Do you, despite the … Continue reading →