It sounds like you’re holding to him to a standard of specific actions that he doesn’t know are important to you. You need to talk to him about what you want, you can’t expect him to just know that a goodnight text every night is important to you. It sounds like he absolutely does show you his love, just in his way, because there hasn’t been clear communication about how you want to be shown love.

Unless this is actually self sabotage, this is 100% fixable by a simple kind and respectful conversation about getting on the same page of how both of you want to receive love. But please know that the situation isn’t him not giving the same love you are. It’s the two of you giving in different ways.

So…what has he said when you’ve discussed this?

You sound a lot like my partner and I’m more like your boyfriend. And we are mid 40’s. Like…he left last night to go to our cabin and called this morning just to say good morning and I love you. That’s how he is. It wouldn’t even occur to me if he hadn’t told me years ago that he wants us to do good morning/Goodnight when we aren’t together. So he communicated that to me and before we lived together, I literally set an alarm on my phone so I’d remember to do that.

Same with the texts. I only check texts a couple times a day. I have notifications turned off because I find it really distracting when I’m trying to work. In this case, my partner has adapted to me and knows that if it’s emergent/urgent, he should call. Else I’ll reply to texts when I’m taking a break.

I think you just need to communicate what you want/need.

You need to communicate these thoughts to him and meet half-way more in your love languages (for example he hugs & kisses you more whilst you put some effort into gift giving Etc). And make time for each other! Go on some dates.

Re: depression. You should really go get that diagnosed, especially if you suspect that this has been going on since childhood. You could have clinical depression and if so, this can be easily cured/countered with medication. Don't put up with health issues any longer than you have to, this depression is also likely negatively exacerbating issues in your self esteem and relationship.

My husband and I actually went through a couples training on this topic once as part of an “Adventure Challenge.”

The challenge asked us to both complete the Love Language survey to know for sure what our own love languages were.

After we completed the quiz, we shared the results with each other.

From there, we had to work together to come up with 3 ways that we could show our partner love through their love language instead of our own - 3 ways that we could agree would be nice to do.

For example, I’m all about words of affirmation, but my husband has a hard time with this. We learned that he is actually pretty good at using post-it notes to share that he loves me. So he will randomly sneak a post-it note with a cute message in my pocket when he’s ironing my work clothes or put a post-it on the bathroom mirror before bed so that I see it in the morning.

He’s all about quality time spent together, so I’ve agreed to prioritize happy hours at work where I’m allowed to invite him - he gets to spend time with my coworkers and me in a social setting which makes him happy. Note that I used to just ignore the happy hours and work through 6pm. So now, taking a break at 4:30pm to enjoy a couple social hours with my husband and friends is a big change for me, but one I gladly make because it aligns to his love language.

Maybe try that challenge with your boyfriend so that he also feels like you are also improving your love language for him, too? Less one-sided that way and you both get something out of it in the end!

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