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Yes, You Do Need to Teach Your Partner How to Love You
The memes are wrong. You do need to teach your partner how to love you. And they need to do the same.
I once dated a guy who took great pride in how much money he could drop on a single date. There was the night he took me out for a $250 dinner (not including the tip) and then dropped another $60 on movie tickets after — and that was after driving us an hour and a half from the town we lived in to get to the restaurant and theater. Don’t get me wrong — it was a really nice date. But I’m the kind of woman who can be happy with a picnic in the park with deli subs.
I told him multiple times that I didn’t need the extravagant dates. I wanted his time and attention. I wanted to go for walks in the park, sit on the couch and watch movies while we ate popcorn, or spend a few minutes on the phone with him before we went to sleep at night. I wanted to sleep in on lazy weekends and snuggle together before getting up and having a late breakfast.
There were a lot of other things that contributed to the demise of that relationship, but his refusal to hear me and my requests didn’t help.
But the key takeaway from that story? I told him what I needed.
