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That’s something I discovered from my wife: when you are sad it’s OK to ask someone who loves you to tell you that they effectively love you.

Oh, darling please tell me that you love me

I’ve always thought that it was not working if you asked for love. Love should be given spontaneously without begging for it, right? Actually no, that’s not right. I’ve been practicing that and it’s a real pleasure.

My wife made me realize that, even if I was loving her, she didn’t know it that much. I’m not a very expansive person. Following that conversation, I started to pay attention to that. When I come home in the evening after a day at work and an hour of commuting, I do feel very happy to meet her and our kids. Very often, at the moment I cross the door, the kids “jump on me” and try to immediately catch all my attention (kids know how to ask for love). I formed the habit to give the priority to her and I do manage to tell her how I feel at that moment and that I love her.

Do ask people if they love you

You might get a negative response, but it is worth trying. Ask for a sincere compliment. Do not ask to get it immediately.

This works for an established love relationship that is a very safe place, but it also works with friends.

Asking for appreciations at work

I’d like to extend that thinking to the workplace. I would not recommend that you ask for love in your workplace (unless you know what you’re doing), but could it be possible to ask for appreciation? I believe so.

As I’ve been writing in an other post (in French), at /ut7 we exchange appreciations every week at the begining of our temperature reading meeting.

We actually do not have to ask for appreciation. We value appreciations and we reserved a time for it.

That’s not going to be natural at the beginning

Here is my theory: As a parent, I know that kids can be invasive sometimes and that for the sake of my personal integrity I have to teach them some “restraint”. This might explain why most humans learned at a very young age not to beg too much for love and attention. Therefore, asking and receiving apreciation has to be (re-)learned. That’s not going to be natural at the beginning.