Worrying about which partner likes the other more

[Jacob]

So I've come across this quite a few times, and I was wondering how common it is, and if other users here have experienced it and how they deal with it.

It has even happened to me that a partner tells me they feel insecure about a relationship and that they feel like me more than I like them, and it seems a really difficult thing to reply to... How can you measure and compare affection in the first place? And yet it is an anxiety that people who care about each other can have, and want to get through.

So how do you deal with it?

Or is that not a relationship that looks healthy?

[Mo]

I think worries about an imbalance of affection might be a sign of an issue in a relationship but could also be a sign that there's a problem with communication styles that can be smoothed over with some honest discussion.

When I've had a feeling like this in a relationship, my response has been to start a conversation with a partner to check in and make sure we were both still committed to the relationship, and to talk about changing our communication styles/patterns so we could both feel like we were on the same page with things.

I think my time of feeling like the "more affectionate" person was more related to both of us settling into communication patterns in a long-distance relationship; having some more frequent little check-ins, in between longer letters and conversations, helped clear that up. And when I felt like the "less affectionate" one, at one time it was a sign that I was becoming less invested in the relationship, and at others it's been a sign that I needed to make sure I was setting boundaries around my own private time and personal space because I needed a lot of time to myself right then.

[Jacob]

Mo that is so spot on. Communicating just fixes stuff. It can also take a while to learn how other people show affection, for some it could be physical whereas for others it is more to do with telling someone you appreciate them, talking about it can just make that so much clearer.