I’ve spent most of today writing a post for Monday –

101 Phrases to Encourage Your Spouse.

It was interesting – and insightful and it stretched my brain.

What this list will show –

Encouragement is positive.

Encouragement can’t be about you – it’s about the other person.  This eliminated lots of phrases. I wrote about the difference between encouragement and nagging  here.

Encouragement can’t be introduced by a modifier like “If…” .  That would be be a challenge – and conditional. After this many years (since fall 2007) of researching and reading about encouragement, I feel strongly that effective encouragement, like love, is given without any conditions.

Caveats –

The list coming on Monday needs to be used with the right tone of voice – I wrote about phrasing and tone here.  And the encouragement phrases need to be given at the appropriate time – timing is everything! Does your spouse expect to hear good things when you talk to him or her? (here’s some thoughts on that from 2009)

Can you think of reasons phrases of encouragement might not work?

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these 101 phrases…

(and there’ll also be something special to add to the post)