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Sometimes I tell my husband I’m proud of him. I do it when he’s accomplished something really cool, like finishing grad school or laying down hardwood floor in our house. Other times I tell him when I feel that warm ache in my chest when looking at him. He’s a great person, the best in my opinion, and I am so proud of him.
It feels a little strange to say sometimes, because it’s not the sort of thing we’re used to saying to our spouses. We expect to hear it from our parents, or tell it to our kids: I think we more commonly associate telling someone we’re proud of them when there’s a sort of disparity in the relationship.
Why should that be? Why can’t we be proud of someone who is our equal, and more so, why can’t we tell them that? While children might need more encouragement from their parents, that doesn’t mean that adults don’t need to hear it from others as well. I tell my husband I’m proud of him because I am, and I think he should know it.
What’s even more important than letting my husband know I’m proud of him is being someone he can be proud of. Sometimes I do feel that twinge when the aforementioned words pass my lips: “what am I doing,” I wonder, “to make him proud of me?”
An element of this plays into my own insecurities, ones that I’ve mostly managed to shake since first coming down here. I felt useless at first; I cooked and cleaned, but that was stereotypical stuff, without the invaluable work of taking care of children. There is honor in that, but I wanted more from myself. Now that I am doing more both in my own career and in the community, I’ve felt better. Sometimes, though, I still feel guilty that Jon does so many more projects around the house than I do. He enjoys them, and I help him when he asks.
Thus my thoughts are not really related to self-esteem issues, but to caring for my spouse. Being someone my husband can be proud of its part of the give-take nature of relationships. I don’t want to just be taking from him, I want to give back.
Our spouses see the worst of us. That’s good and healthy. One of the huge parts of being married is to have a partner who sees us through the worst, through those bad times that are harder and for which we need more support than the good.
But we don’t want to only be giving our spouses our weaknesses; we also want to give them our strengths. That doesn’t just relate to how we interact with them, in being someone who makes them feel loved, romanced, and supported. It also relates to who we are as people. We should be good, strong people that our spouses can be proud of, as we are proud of them.
I don’t mean that we have to go out and accomplish great things, or even small things, like the examples I gave about my husband. We should just be good people, resisting that temptation to only show our weak sides. We vowed to give our best along with our worst, and so we need to remember to do both.
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*(The above image by photostock is from freedigitalphotos.net).