more positivity, less complaints

February 7th to 14th is National Marriage Week. to celebrate, i will be sharing some thoughts and stories about marriage to help encourage you to strengthen your own relationships. i hope these posts will help you nurture your own relationship and rekindle the love you have for one another. you can also link up your marriage posts below to help celebrate this week.

i kind of love going through our old dating pictures. Jimmy Eat World concert April 2008

Adam is my best friend. truly he is. 

i always thought that was cheesy when people said that cause i usually think of other friends of mine first when i think of a best friend. but after being with him for over 5 years, it's the truth. he's my best friend. 

he has seen me at my highest and my lowest. 

he has seen me crazy happy and crazy crazy. 

he knows everything about me, he listens to all my silly stories and complaints, 

and he still loves me through it all. 

but sometimes when we are really close and comfortable with someone, we tend to let ourselves go. 

not in the sense of we don't shower or get dressed or wear make-up "let go" {though i do that too...} but we stop being careful about what we say, we stop being careful about what we do. 

we feel so comfortable and safe in our relationship [which is a GREAT thing to feel!] that we get almost too comfortable with the way we present ourselves.  

i am referring to our attitudes at home. 

i have talked before about our true characters and how we act in our relationships says more about us than how we act to people we meet on the street. but one key thing that i forgot to include in the list along with kindness, compassion, and charity was having a positive attitude.  

allow me to explain. 

when Adam comes home, i know that i can tell him about every part of my day.

i can share with him complaints that i wouldn't tell just anyone. 

and while i know he will listen and understand and probably even agree with me most of the time, i need to be careful that my conversations with him don't just turn into venting sessions about everything that frustrated me that day. 

i don't think i'm that negative of a person. {though i know i have room for improvement}

and especially when i talk to other people i try to be happy and positive. 

but to Adam, i just seemed like a negative and unhappy person all the time because i was choosing to only tell him the bad instead of all the good things that happened to me too. 

Adam told me one day that he thought i complained about Elijah a lot and i didn't seem happy with life. 

i was honestly pretty shocked. 

i felt for sure i was in a really good place in life and was expressing that well. 

and i definitely didn't feel like i was really that upset with Elijah as much as i guess it seemed like i was.

but to Adam, who was the one that listened to every little annoyance instead of only the silly Facebook statuses or Instagram posts, i seemed more unhappy than i really was. 

and because of my projected negativity, it was hard for Adam to know how to interact with me. 

he felt like it was his fault that i was unhappy. 

he didn't know if i was having a hard time and was then afraid to approach me with his own struggles. 

it was creating this big rift between us and i didn't even know it. 

i didn't realize that the things i was choosing to talk about were affecting our relationship. 

to me, i just thought i was opening up to Adam cause he's the one i'm closest too. 

and although that is true, i should be able to open up to him, i need to remember to not just focus on the negatives and only vent to him. 

i need to be more positive, i need to share with him the excitements and accomplishments more often. 

we should be able to talk to our spouse about anything. 

but we should remember that also includes the good and not just the bad. 

being positive goes a long way, not just with strangers or co-workers, 

but more importantly in our relationships. 

i know that when i'm more positive to those i'm closest to, 

i feel better about myself & about those around me. 

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