Verified by 
Key points
- If you want an easy way to boost your relationship, saying “thank you” more often is a good place to start.
- Even when gratitude is a reflex with strangers, we sometimes stop doing it with the people closest to us.
- Gratitude is a relationship boosting strategy that we can do by ourselves—without needing participation from anyone else.
- When we build the habit of expressing gratitude for our partners, it can help our other relationships.
If you read up on cultivating happiness, practicing mindfulness, or just generally building a satisfying life, gratitude comes up again and again. Acknowledging the positive things in our lives has benefits we can feel and that scientists can measure.
Gratitude is also a good way to take care of our relationships. In their review of more than 1,000 research articles, Dr. Brian Ogolsky and his colleagues identified gratitude as one of the 19 key strategies people use to preserve their romantic relationships. When we express our appreciation, it improves the “give and take” in the relationship (reciprocity) and increases our sensitivity about what our partners need. It’s also just nice to feel appreciated for what we contribute to our relationships.
Considering there are 19 relationship maintenance strategies, why focus on this one? I have three reasons why gratitude is worth trying—and, spoiler alert, it’s because it’s easy.
Saying “thank you” is familiar to us.
From a very young age, many people are taught to say “thank you” when they receive a gift or a kind gesture. However, even when gratitude is a reflex with strangers, we sometimes stop doing it with the people closest to us. We offer our gratitude to the person who holds the door at the grocery store, but we save our breath at home.
It may feel unnecessary—or downright ridiculous—to thank our partners every time they make dinner or take out the trash, but consider flipping the script for a moment. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone say a quick “thank you” as they sit down to the meal you made after a long day of work? It feels good to be acknowledged for the small things we do. Appreciation goes a long way to helping us feel happy to contribute to the household instead of resentful about it.
In longer relationships, it is easy to assume our partners just know we’re grateful without us having to say or do anything. This is a commonly held misconception. We do have to say things out loud, and “thank you” or “I appreciate you” are especially helpful in strengthening our romantic bonds.
We can practice gratitude on our own.
Some strategies for strengthening or maintaining our relationships require buy-in from our partners. However, others are all about how we think about the relationship. We have control over how we react to our partners and what we focus on in our day-to-day interactions with them. Gratitude is one of the individual strategies that we can try by ourselves without needing participation from anyone else.
We generally think of gratitude as a reaction when someone does something nice for us, “Hey, thanks for doing the dishes.” But it doesn’t have to be a response to a specific event. We also can feel and express a general tone of gratitude toward our partners. We can look for the parts of the relationship that are working and cultivate a sense of gratitude for those. Is your partner great at making you feel supported? Do they bring you coffee? Do they make you laugh? Do they deal with all the bugs you hate?
Even if we don’t explain or express this specifically to our partners, our gratitude and appreciation may shift how we interact in a positive direction.
Gratitude is contagious… in a good way.
When we build the habit of expressing gratitude for our partners, it can help our other relationships. For example, one of the most effective techniques parents use to instill gratitude in their children is modeling—showing them how to do it through their own actions. As we express gratitude out loud, within our families and in other places, others pick up on it and do the same.
Getting in the habit of saying “thank you” more often may mean acknowledging our partners or children for doing things we expect them to do—and that’s OK. We don’t need to reserve our gratitude for grand gestures. Many small expressions of gratitude build up and spread out to make everyone feel a little more appreciated for what we do.
Key takeaway
Gratitude is a simple and straightforward habit to cultivate. Most of us have it already—we just need to activate it around our partners. If you want an easy thing to boost your relationship, saying “thank you” more often is a good place to start.
References
Ogolsky, B. G., Monk, J. K., Rice, T. M., Theisen, J., & Maniotes, C. R. (2017). Relationship maintenance: A review of research on romantic relationships. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 9(3), 275-306.
