Being Your Partner’s Publicist

Let someone else praise you, not your own mouth—a stranger, not your own lips.

Proverbs 27:2

English author Samuel Butler once said, tongue in cheek: “The advantage of doing one’s praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.” I know what he means.

Maybe it’s because I had two older brothers to compete against, but I grew up with a compulsion to blurt out my own self-praise: “Did I tell you about my promotion?”; “Did you know I met with the governor?” Leslie, on the other hand, is quite the opposite, rarely bringing extra attention to herself.

As you might imagine, our polar differences in this area have caused some inner reflection and a bit of soul searching. And after more than twenty-five years of marriage, each of us is beginning to find a better balance. I have a ways to go, but I’m not as self-promoting as I used to be. And inch by inch, Leslie is getting a little more comfortable discussing her accomplishments when appropriate. But above all, we are learning to practice the proverbial secret of affirmation: Let someone else praise you and not your own mouth. This truth may not have been written with couples in mind, but the wise husband and wife will quickly see its applicability to marriage.

In social situations it’s often easy to distinguish loving couples from warring ones. Most everyone has been at a party where one half of a couple has taken a public jab at the other. Perhaps it was along the lines of “I keep wishing that John would get out of his recliner, turn off the television, and help me out in the garden like he keeps saying he will!” It’s a bad idea to use the cover of an audience to say something you wouldn’t say in private. Couples who can’t contain their criticisms in public are in serious trouble.

Loving couples, on the other hand, enjoy boosting each other in front of others and casting each other in the best light—much as they did in their courting days, when they wanted their friends and family to like their new love. They say things like “Sarah just got a promotion, but she won’t tell you that” or “Rick may not mention it, but he secured a huge grant for his company this week.” Loving couples praise one another in private and public. They tell each other’s stories; they cover for each other and work as a team.

When you have an opportunity to praise yourself, take a rain check. Remember Proverbs 27:2. But when an opportunity arises to tactfully compliment your spouse, don’t let the opportunity slip by.

If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.

—Isaac Newton

From the book