Motivating your spouse isn’t always easy. It’s hard to know how to help them find a better job or career, start exercising, lose weight, be more positive, get out and live more, or create a budget and do financial planning.

Stay Focused on What You Can Change

You can get so focused on changing your spouse that you lose sight of the whole relationship.

Although you can motivate and inspire your spouse to make changes, the final decision is theirs.

Remind yourself that you can’t control them, nor should you try; they have freedom of choice just like you.

One of the best ways to motivate your spouse is to make changes in your own life. Your example will inspire them.

GIVE

Every married couple wants a healthy and happy marriage and a loving home environment.

One way to try and make that possible is to stay focused on giving to your spouse instead of taking.

Yes, you have needs, but helping to meet your spouse’s needs frees them up to meet your needs.

A good starting place to meet your spouse’s needs is by learning their love language.

Is their love language quality time, touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, or gifts? Find out. And then interact with them in their love language. Feeling loved and cared for by you goes a long way towards motivating your spouse.

Persevere

This process may be difficult at first because you’re doing more of the work initially of striving to meet their needs; there’ll be more focus on them than you. It might feel a little unfair. So, remember why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Persevere and be consistent; expect positive results.

Be Kinder and More Loving

Be kind, caring, loving, reliable, and encouraging. Be forgiving, gracious, and warm, too.

Research has shown that it takes 5-9 positive comments to overcome one negative statement.

Show your appreciation; be generous with positive comments throughout the day. Give compliments. Affirm what you can when you can.

Be a good listener. Listen to understand where they’re coming from. Watch their body language and listen to their tone of voice to interpret what they mean because words alone aren’t enough.

Be considerate of their needs and feelings.

Expectations

If you do have expectations of your spouse, be realistic. Invite them to share any expectations they may have of you; discuss each other’s expectations.

If your expectations are too high, you’ll be disappointed no matter what they do; your spouse will sense it and be crushed and maybe give up altogether.

Mistakes to Avoid

Some common mistakes you should avoid when trying to motivate your spouse include inflexibility, perfectionism, nagging (which only makes your spouse resentful and defensive), and lack of affirmation and appreciation.

In Summary

As a side note, according to research, men respond best to respect and their partner expressing confidence in their abilities, while women respond to love.

When a husband doesn’t show his wife love, she loses respect, triggering a downward cycle. To end that cycle, one will have to change their behavior by either showing love or respect to their spouse.

Sharing and enjoying mutual love and respect inspires change. The important thing is that someone has to get the ball rolling, which is you because you’re the one reading this right now.