How you can poison your own attitude that ruins a relationship …

The following sounds like standard fare in couples counseling:

“Find what your spouse is doing right and focus on that.”

“Focus on commenting to your spouse on what they’re doing right rather than always complaining about what they’re doing wrong.”

There’s a reason why such recommendations are made in counseling, and why it’s important to understand that such counsel isn’t just “positive thinking fluff.” That’s because it’s all too easy — and all too common — to focus so much on what your spouse does wrong (or at least what they do that you don’t like) that you poison your own attitude to the degree it harms the relationship.

It kind of works like this:

You rarely or only occasionally compliment your spouse but you’re quick and persistent about criticizing them …

Criticism doesn’t usually motivate change, it certainly doesn’t with your spouse, who continues to do what you don’t like …

So you make a focus of what they do wrong, and tell them often what you don’t like …

After a while, all you see is what they do wrong because that’s where your focus is …

If that’s all you see, you’ll begin to believe doing the wrong thing is all your spouse is capable of. And if you keep doing that long enough, the only expectations you’ll have of your spouse is that they only do what you don’t like.

This becomes even more significant when we add in this reality about human behavior: It is our thoughts that create our emotions, and it’s the combination of our thoughts and emotions that create our behavior. Our thoughts only create emotions that correspond with the thoughts. So, if you teach yourself to think your spouse isn’t capable of doing right and always does this thing you don’t like, imagine what the corresponding emotions are to such thinking.

When you continue to craft your thoughts and emotions around the idea your spouse isn’t capable of doing either what is right or what you want, you’ve developed an attitude.

When you develop an attitude about your spouse of only thinking the worst of them, you’ve poisoned your mind against them. Now, even if they did something right, you likely won’t see it because you see them as always doing wrong. The negative is all you expect from your spouse, and you no longer have any room to think they do anything positive or good.

There is a time and place in most any relationship for constructive criticism, but your spouse needs to consistently hear from you what you think they’re doing right and what you appreciate about them to motivate them to be willing to hear and change what they’re doing wrong. And you need to focus your thoughts on what they do right so you’ll generate corresponding emotions, and do this consistently so that you develop an overall positive attitude toward your spouse, knowing they are imperfect.

Most spouses consistently get more things right than they consistently get things wrong, but if all they hear about is what they mess up on, they become discouraged and it can eventually poison the relationship.

What does YOUR spouse hear from YOU the most: compliments and recognition of what they’re doing right, or criticism and complaints about what they do wrong? What do you think the impact of that is on your marriage? What changes do you need to make?

By the way, we can poison our own attitudes about anyone, not just our spouses. Others — children, family, friends, co-workers, even our boss — need to hear positive things from us more consistently than they receive criticism from us. That is NOT to say that real issues shouldn’t be addressed, but make sure you’re not being hyper-focused on they few things they mess up on when they’re more consistently getting things right.

Scotty