I thought things were changing, but they're not

[Young at Heart]

One of the most significant things that helped me understand my wife and make her feel loved to the point that she could open up and love me, was my reading and re-reading the book by Chapman the Five Languages of Love.

One of the things that I learned was that for over 38 years my wife and I had been telling each other several times a week and almost daily how much we loved the other, but in a way that the other did not comprehend as a message of love. I would show her how much I loved her by touching her, which she interpreted as being constantly pawed. She would show me her love by acts of devotion, which I though were just a division of household chores or male/female roles.

Some of the classic examples are that for some men to feel loved, they need to have a woman who is home when they get home and who has prepared dinner for them. My surprise was that my wife, showed me her love by arranging her work schedule so she could get home before me and have a hot dinner waiting for me when I got home. I use to wonder why when I got home late she would yell and scream at me. I finally understood, that my not being home when she had worked to show me her love, felt like sexual rejection. It was a slap in the face that said I didn't value you gesture of love that she worked so hard at. It was something she had seen as a way that her parents interacted and was a part of "marriage."

The point of this is, that your post has a number of things in it which may provide you with clues to your husband's languages of love. He likes you to be home when he gets home. Even though he doesn't interact with you, his coming home may be how he says he loves you and how he expects you to tell him that you love him. It may have nothing to do with your interacting or giving each other attension. You need to figure out how your husband tells you he loves you as it is likely how he needs to be told by you that you love him, even if you have a different language of love.

I really suggest that you might want to investigate the book.

Each day I work to do several things in my wifes two primary languages of love (quality time and acts of service/devotion) to make her feel loved. She feels so loved that she is working to make me feel loved in the way that I need, which is through touch and words of affirmation.

Good luck to you.