bf issues

[lycheefan]

hi!! just looking for a little advice :c
i dont really know how to put it but i feel like my boyfriend doesnt tell me he loves me enough.. as in he doesn't say it for days and i always say it first. i've tried talking to him about it and he'll say that hes gonna do better but nothing ever changes. should i expect him to stay like this? i honestly wish i could get over it but it means a lot to me and it feels like he doesn't care. any advice on how i should bring it up to him? or should i just try to get over it asap. thank you

[Heather]

Hey there, lycheefan.

Can I ask if your boyfriend is someone who generally expresses their care in a verbal way? Like, do they say I love you a lot to family and friends? Or are they someone who tends to express love or care in other ways, like by sharing their time, by doing things for people, giving gifts, through physical affection…?

[lycheefan]

the only thing i can think of is physical affection, but we only see each other once a week or every two weeks. if this is in reference to the 5 love languages, we both took the test and got words of affirmation. we don't call too frequently, and gift giving isn't really his thing. t_t

[lycheefan]

also adding because i forgot, he doesn't really say i love you to his parents or anyone else that i'm aware of

[Carly]

Hey lycheefan -- so what's interesting about love languages is that how one prefers to receive love may not be they way they most give it most often. I, for example, took the test and got "acts of service" - which is totally true - but I tend to express my love in words of affirmation or gifts, not by doing things for people. I'm wondering if this is also the case for your boyfriend. Perhaps he expresses love for you with physical affection but likes to hear words of affirmation from you? Does that feel true?

[Heather]

I wasn’t asking specifically about that framework, to be clear (IMO, it’s got a bunch of flaws, even though some of it is useful to folks). Mostly I was trying to get a sense of just if verbal expressions of care were generally his jam or not, because if not, it would make sense he’d not be doing that regularly or finding it easy to do as often as you want.

[lycheefan]

Hey lycheefan -- so what's interesting about love languages is that how one prefers to receive love may not be they way they most give it most often. I, for example, took the test and got "acts of service" - which is totally true - but I tend to express my love in words of affirmation or gifts, not by doing things for people. I'm wondering if this is also the case for your boyfriend. Perhaps he expresses love for you with physical affection but likes to hear words of affirmation from you? Does that feel true?

that sounds about right!

I wasn’t asking specifically about that framework, to be clear (IMO, it’s got a bunch of flaws, even though some of it is useful to folks). Mostly I was trying to get a sense of just if verbal expressions of care were generally his jam or not, because if not, it would make sense he’d not be doing that regularly or finding it easy to do as often as you want.

this makes sense, too. is there any chance he could get better at verbally expressing it? or is it something i'll probably have to get used to?

[Heather]

You know, I can't honestly say. But what I'd suggest is that what you might think and talk about is less about asking for this specific way for him to express his love for you and more about ways to meet more in the middle with this, where you can get some of what you need to feel more loved and more affirmed in that love -- which is, what I assume, what this is really all about -- and he can find some ways to do that that feel like authentic expressions for him, and thus, aren't going to feel forced or like a drag or fake. Know what I mean?

I mean, you want real expressions anyway, so if you wind up with him saying it to you more *because* you ask, it might wind up often feeling that the kind of apology we get from someone who someone else told to say "Im sorry." Not great.

So, maybe you can first have a think yourself, by yourself, and then initiate a talk with him where you talk about how you feel like you need to know he loves you in some concrete ways more than you often feel like you do. You can talk about how, for you, that can be saying "I love you," and maybe that's one way he can do it, but then you can talk about, hopefully together, some other ways, and perhaps come up with some things you both feel good about as expressions of that love. Like I said, I don't know what that would be, it might be spending time with you, or planning special dates, giving gifts, making something for you (dinner, writing a song, painting a room for you), physical affection, doing things you like to do...there's a world of ways we can express love for one another and there's no one right one, even if there might be a couple we're used to, or feel like are somehow better than others.

And that's really my last piece of advice: it might help to see if you can't let go of some of your attachment to this one way of expressing that a little. I get it, I get it's important to you. (Me too.) But I also know that I've been with people who could say it easy and actually didn't even love me that much, or weren't all that good at loving me, whereas some other folks who just weren't big with it have been really great at loving me and just showed me in other ways. And of course, there have been folks who didn't love me well and didn't say it. Point is, I think what's most important is how well someone actually loves us, and if THAT is the problem...well, that's a whole other conversation, and saying "I love you" won't fix that. But if someone does actually love you and treats you with love and just has other ways of expressing it than the given way you're used to or want? They're probably worth learning to flex a little. <3