TL;DR: I feel like my boyfriend doesn’t treat me as well as he should/doesn’t actively try to make me feel special and I’m wondering what I should do/say
My boyfriend and I have been together for 5 years. I love him a lot and want to marry him one day, but sometimes I feel like he just doesn’t know how to treat me properly.
He is supportive, caring and treats me well. However he does things, and doesn’t do things, that I feel like are a result of me being his first girlfriend.
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He never compliments me ever. The only time he’s told me I “look beautiful” is when we first started dating.
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When I try to get emotional with him he kind of ignores/dances around the subject. Recently we took the 5-Love-Languages quiz and learned what we respond to. I told him how I’ve been actively doing actions that match his top two and he ignored that message.
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He does immature things sometimes like blows my spot up in public saying things like “she does this” or “She never does that” around mutual friends. Most recent immature thing is we were at a bar and I bent over to grab something and he pushed my head towards his penis as if asking for head. But we were at a bar...
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He has made inappropriate comments to my friends telling one “You could eat my hotdog” and “Is that what you guys wear to the gym” referencing girls being essentially naked on a tv screen.
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Seems reluctant to trying/doing intimate things like watching porn together and just talking to each other. Grated we’ve been together a long time so sometimes it’s hard to have a conversation because we know everything about each other already.
Now collectively this probably sounds so shitty and you want to say “break up with him” but I’m genuinely curious if anyone has ever been in a similar circumstance and found a remedy to the situation or have any ideas for me to bring these feelings up in the nicest way possible. Should I look into couples therapy? Does he just have intimacy issues? It’s hard for him to be vulnerable. I almost want to tell him “I need more emotionally from you or else.” I just genuinely feel like he doesn’t actively try to make me feel special but I actively try to learn new things/keep the relationship spicy. Another thought I have often is “If he did this to any other girl they would leave him” or like I find myself thinking I wish he would treat me like I’m a new girl he would like to impress. All advice welcome.
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