fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3499 ]

[ SECRET POST #3499 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3499 ⌋

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I do this a lot already, he's got a lot of body image issues so I spend a lot of time telling him how much I find him attractive, mention it in cards etc. I wonder if there's a more fun/creative way to say it for the occasion?
Thanks for replying :D

It's not so much expressing attractiveness as being detailed about it IME. Most guys that get told they're perfectly nice looking and attractive don't get the "omg, your eyes look so good today" that a lot of women give each other. I say most because maybe your bf does and that's great if so.

Writing it out is an idea. Not only things you find attractive but things you appreciate him for or things you appreciate that he does. If they're mundane things he thinks you took for granted or never noticed, even better. Does he have any quirks you find cute? Does he do anything on a daily basis that you never mentioned you appreciated? What are your favorite personality traits of his? What have you noticed he's good at? What do you admire about him? What were your favorite memories of the past year?

Doing separate little cards in a nice jar or something and letting him open them all could be fun. Plus it's mostly free, if time-consuming.

The cards in a jar idea is really nice, I'm gonna try and work with that.

Honestly I give a lot of detailed compliments, I wish he would give them back but he never quite grasps how much I would like them haha

nayrt but... wow. The more you tell us about this guy (didn't get you a V-day present, just shrugged when you asked him about romantic stuff, doesn't compliment you) kind of makes me wonder why you're putting in so much effort when he isn't reciprocating. Please be careful, OP.

I am not making him sound good am I :/ no, he's good in his own way we're just at a bit of a tough stage, his job has overworked him this first year we've been dating (50+ hour weeks with no stable daily shift pattern) and as for the compliments thing - he does, he tells me all the time I'm beautiful and he loves me, he's just not a massive sentimental Shakespeare wordsmith about it - his "brain turns to mush" when he tries to articulate feelings. A lot of it is machismo upbringing he's still learning to shrug off, I reckon. We're having an open dialogue about it.
The Valentine's thing I am a bit bitter about though. He did feel bad about it, his job wore him down so much he just forgot. He said he knows it means a lot that this is super romantic and is researching things we can do in our weekend together :)

No, he doesn't really sound good at all. Best of luck, OP.

nayrt

Not everyone's good at giving verbal praise (and not everyone values it the same way) - he might be one of those people who prefers to show affection through doing nice things for the OP or whatever, thinking that it's a better indicator of love than "mere talk".

My husband is less verbally effusive than I am, but he's an absolute sweetie when it comes to showing rather than saying. I can live with that :-)

OP makes it clear she would appreciate detailed compliments and said her boyfriend doesn't seem to understand that. OP also said that after they'd agreed to exchange Valentine's Day presents, he forgot. A lot of people aren't good at expressing themselves verbally, but you know what? That's a learned skill. Nobody's born with it. If verbal expressions of love mean a lot to your partner and you're bad at it, that seems like a really good reason to pick up this skill.

I get that not everyone expresses affection in the same way and it's fine as long as there's reciprocation, but I'm not seeing much of that in this situation.

I'm bad at expressing emotions myself so I know that can be annoying to deal with. Half the time it doesn't occur to me to since I figure they know already and it's an established fact and I'm horrible at remembering birthdays and anniversaries or anything like that. And feelings are awkward.

Reading up above in the thread, if you're worried he hasn't gotten you a gift, you can always think of your gesture as something that was true whether or not you said it again, and this is just something you wanted to say or let him know. I find what works with me and makes it much easier to talk about feelings is if the other person says something first then asks if I feel the same or the feeling is there, whether or not I'm saying it out loud, and I can agree.

Hope it goes well.

Thanks for this advice! It's good to hear it from the other person's perspective - as someone who grew up reading loads of books and writing lots and is very articulate and verbally expressive and could write reams of love poetry about someone I'm attracted to if I wanted, I do get frustrated when my boyfriend can't manage to articulate to the same depths as me. I know he tries, and that technique of mirroring compliments might help him :)

da

The author Gary Chapman wrote a book called The Five Love Languages - and yeah, the title's absolutely cringe-making - but all the same he made some excellent points about how people have differing ways of expressing love. Learning how the other person likes to give/receive affection can help dispel a lot of the frustration most of us feel when they don't speak the same "language" we do.

Here's a nice succinct summary from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages

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