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I’m lucky to have married one of the truly best men I’ve met. But he’s from a beyond down to earth stock of people, small town midwesterners who live in the same town their great grandparents landed in.

One trait that appears ingrained in him (and his loved ones) is an excessive distaste for flattery, which even tends to include compliments. They don’t expect to receive them, and are extremely picky about when they give them.

Now in theory that’s all well and good I suppose, the pursuit of more honesty and all of that – but in reality for those of us NOT raised in such an environment (uh mine was more pure hedonistic West Coast) – this can come off as just plain rude.

We run into this a lot with cooking. It’s not that my meals are great; but occasionally they are quite good, and deserving of some praise as much for the effort as the result. And for my husband anything more than a “tastes ok to me” is rare!

But having been around his family, I’ve seen that they are similarly hesitant to really compliment someone, God forbid that they go overboard and say something excessive or give the person more praise than they are due. It’s as if praise needs to be used as sparingly as hot chili pepper!

To make matters worse, my own father is from TEXAS. Texas has almost a state charm in their culture – and they believe in downright FLATTERY, heaps of it.

Sometimes I think the cultural differences within our country can almost be as great as ones you find when you go abroad – because at least when abroad you expect these gaps to be there, and try to learn about the other culture.

In this writer’s humble opinion, compliments are like the cartilage between 2 bones – they serve a vital purpose, and help smooth relationships between people.