The Chief Happiness Officer has a short posting on praise, where he quotes Katrine Dahl saying that superficial praise can be pointless or even negative. They’re both talking about work related praise, but I think this applies to man-woman-relationships too. The point is that while superficial praise like “you’re so beautiful” may be nice once, it becomes hollow and empty if you’re saying it every day. Instead, say something like “I lose my breath every time you let your hair down.” Specific praise like that really makes her day, and will make her want to do more of the things you like. There’s just one vital difference between work praise and a girlfriend compliment:

* The Analysis *

Don’t analyze everything in a relationship.

Katrine recommends that a work praise should be really specific on not only what was good, but also why. This takes away the mystery and makes a colleague very sure about what he or she does good and how it benefits others. In a relationship, however, you should keep some mystery. When you compliment her on something specific and she asks why you feel that way, just smile or say something like ‘it’s a secret.’ Not explaining positive emotions builds mystery and that’s a key ingredient to keeping up attraction as the relationship matures.

Source: More about praise:

Giving specific praise is extremely difficult. Paying attention, analyzing, reflecting is necessary. We need to get engaged, to get into stuff, to care.

Unlike sending off non-commital superlatives in all directions, which is pretty easy, but not particularly useful in any other terms than making the receiver feeling momentarily good about herself (which is a very good thing, I am totally with you on that).

The point is, that in order to learn from praise, so that we can do more of what it was that we did well, we need to know specifically what it was.