We all want to take care of our loved ones, but sometimes the resistance to our preparation can cause some tension. Here's what to do if your spouse doesn't quite see the point in your efforts:

Be cautious when you feel strongly about a topic. The book Crucial Conversations has valuable tips for avoiding the typical pitfalls of emotionally-charged discussions. Like many self-help books it ignores the right and wrong of issues in favor of peaceful compromise, but at least it teaches you to recognize generalizations and name-calling and to stick with the facts. Think about how you want the conversation to be resolved and work toward a reasonable outcome.

Consider other avenues: Most likely you will find there is a limit to how far you can bring a resistant spouse to your point of view. Don’t keep pushing or it will seem like nagging. Instead, work on a different side of preparedness. Look for areas where you can work within common ground—gardening, natural healing, raising animals, growing fruit trees, landscaping with berry bushes, etc.

Show them the benefits of the things you purchase. Don’t just acquire things that gather dust. Bake from scratch with your wheat grinder, make tasty canned foods and preserves, dehydrate things they like too, save money by buying food in bulk, put tools to use by fixing cars and things around the house, use your weapons to hunt and process the meat into usable cuts, make nice homemade soap, use the wood burning fireplace, improve your camping gear, etc. This will force you to be practical about what you buy and get you using it—which are the best ways to prepare and check your equipment. It will also help build their trust and justify future expenditures. Few spouses object to a hobby as long as it is productive and not untidy or offensive.

Alleviate sore points. Some aspects of preparedness are unavoidably negative and might grate on your spouse. The ham radio antennas and solar panels that are unsightly on the roof, the generator that takes up part of the patio or garage, the animals digging up the flowerbeds or constantly escaping, the dirty wood and ashes around the fireplace, the spare fuel smells, etc.

Joel Skousen adds: “Despite all the good advice, you may still fail to bring the spouse around if they have innate resistance to facing negative realities. The secret to dealing with innate resistance is 1) recognize where your spouse’s innate set points are, 2) accept that you aren’t going to be able to change innateness very much, 3) try and move them away from their comfort level in small increments, and 4) if they aren’t going to come your way, or they reach their limit of change, accept that and stop pushing. You may just have to reach an agreement where you can proceed on your own.”

Sometimes we can come off a little strong telling our partner that prepping is in their best interests. Our methods matter when it comes to convincing others of our views, especially in such an important aspect as this! For more advice on how you can prepare with a non-prepper partner, visit The Survivalist Blog!

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