Jeannie, one thing women don't understand is, us men GRUNT are clueless most of the time. Unless you tell us, and lead us by the hand, you will keep getting the same results.
Assume he knows nothing, women assume we get it and don't care. We truly don't get it. And it takes a while of holding our hands till we do. Unless you tell him your love languages, he will not know.

Poe, you hit the nail right on the head here. It is almost as if we women need to think of men as being Rainmen (idiot savants) in the area of emotional insight and expression. If we realize that it is our job to take men by the hand and guide them through in this area, it help US not to have unrealistic expectations and then feel dissapointed when men behave cluelessly.

This is an area I have been thinking about a lot lately. My H actually has a great deal of emotional insight into himself (even more so now that he's in therapy). He's even making a great deal of progress into communicating with me about how he ticks (before he just wouldn't talk about what was going on inside).

My frustration is that he seems to know a lot about himself, but is clueless about others. If I don't explicitly explain my thoughts, emotions & needs, he will guess wrong about 75% of the time.

I have to change my perspective to lessen my frustration level. Instead of thinking that a man with so much insight into his own emotional world should be much more in tune with mine and be dissapointed when he behaves "clueless"....

I need to be more grateful that he's far ahead of many men in the area of emotional insight, is working hard on improving communication and expression of his own emotional world.

I need to remember, when I am feeling dissapointed that he isn't meeting my emotional needs or picking up on my clues, that he's not intentionally trying to hurt me, he's just CLUELESS.

I need to remember that if I leave blanks, he will fill them in wrong. I need to work on communicating my thoughts, emotions and needs in a clear and direct way.

Thanks Poe, for helping me consolidate my thoughts on something I've been stewing about.

Sorry to hijack, Jennine!