My boyfriend and I spent the day out on the lake yesterday, two of my brothers were with us along with one of my cousins and my boyfriend's old roommate. Recently I have been working on being more openly supportive and cheerleader-ish towards my boyfriend. Growing up with brothers, it has always been normal and natural to tease and poke fun. It's never personal and it's always a good natured joke, but I realized that maybe there should be a difference between the way I interact with my brothers and the way I interact with my boyfriend. There were multiple times when I was able to "defend" him (not that he was really under attack), and take his side and he really seemed to enjoy that. I walked up and sat next to him at the table where we were eating lunch at one point and just sort of gave him a look, he said "what?" and I said "nothing, you're just so cool and handsome," and then I have him a quick kiss on the cheek. His buddy across from us then went on and on about how sweet I was and how his girlfriend would tell him that he sucked and he wished he had a girl as sweet as me. I could practically FEEL my boyfriends pride swelling. Later on that night he told me how much he loves me (not that he hasn't said this before, we have been together a while, he's just usually really reserved with emotional mushy stuff) and we had some amazing sex.