So you think there isn’t enough visible love in your relationship. You see couples so openly affectionate with each other—so clearly gaga about one another—and your relationship suddenly looks cold and almost platonic. It’s possible, in spite of yourself, that you made it that way. Here are behaviors that could be scaring your guy away from being affectionate.
YOU RECOIL FROM PDA
For fear of being the annoying couple “all over each other” in public, any time your guy tries to put his arms around you at a bar, you slip out. When he goes in for a kiss at the grocery store check out line, you give him the cheek. Stop worrying about what everyone else is thinking! You just rejected your guy for the approval of people you’ll never see again.
YOU DEFLECT COMPLIMENTS
You’re so terrified of seeming cocky or vain that you dodge every compliment like it’s a dagger. When your guy pays you one, you pay him back with ten reasons why it’s not true, or a list of things that are wrong with you. He won’t think, “How conceited” if you simply say, “Thank you.”
YOU DON’T TELL HIM ABOUT STRESS
He finds out from your mom, your friend, your co-worker or anyone but you that something pretty monumental and difficult happened to you. You don’t tell him these things because you don’t want to burden him or be a girlfriend who complains too much. But he just reads your secrecy as you not wanting him butting his nose into your business. When deep down, you want him to care SO much.
YOU DON’T TELL HIM WHEN YOU’RE HURT
If he says something that hurts you, and you know it’s not intentional, you lecture yourself in your own head, “He didn’t mean it that way. You’re just being a baby. Don’t burden him with your ‘feelings’ about this.” But he knows when you’re silently sulking, and when you keep quiet, or turn over in bed, or go for a walk when you’re obviously hurting, he reads this as you just being a very private person and/or don’t believe he has the tools to help you feel better.
IT’S NEVER A GOOD TIME
Guess what: affection isn’t meant to be scheduled! So what if you were in the middle of a spreadsheet when he came up behind you to hug you? You can close the laptop for five minutes to engage in some sweetness. If you always brush him off and make him feel like a nuisance for giving you affection, he’ll stop.
YOU NEVER INITIATE AFFECTION
You want to reach out and touch him, but you’re frozen by the terror of being too clingy, too needy, too touchy etc. You hate the thought that maybe he didn’t 110% want affection in that moment. And God forbid that be the case. You’d rather play it safe and keep your hands to yourself and let him initiate affection. But he reads your failure to initiate as you just not liking affection: plain and simple.
YOU DON’T CUDDLE AFTER SEX
You’ve heard the horror stories from your male friends of them being trapped in post-sex cuddling they so don’t want to be in—they tell you of times they wanted to crawl out of their skin as a woman played with their chest hair and nuzzled their neck and for some reason, even though you’re in a committed relationship, you wonder if your guy feels that way. And at the off chance he ever might, you always hop out of bed immediately after sex.
YOU DON’T FLIRT WITH HIM
You’re insecure about your flirting tactics: maybe he doesn’t like the word “baby” or “honey,” maybe now isn’t a good time to tell him all the things you want to do in bed to him later. You don’t want to embarrass him, yourself, or inconvenience him, so you keep conversations utilitarian. But this is not a utilitarian relationship—in fact, it might be the only relationship in your life that’s supposed to be completely the opposite.
YOU TEXT LIKE A GUY
No emoticons, no “xoxo,” no “ttyl” or cute pictures. You try to keep your texts succinct, to the point and—again—utilitarian. You’re nervous because you’ve heard too many men tease the way women over-text about every minutiae of their day. But here’s a secret: men secretly love it when the woman they care about adds the “xoxo,” or tells them an inconsequential story.
YOU NEVER LET HIM HELP YOU
Again out of a fear of being too needy, clingy or girly, you never let him help you. If you even find him secretly trying to do something/fix something for you, you stop him. You stomp your foot and get upset about it. The last thing you want is for him to later resent having spent time doing that, when he could have been doing something else. But here’s a really important thing for you to know: men’s happiness in their relationships is directly proportionate to how needed they feel. If they feel unnecessary, then what are they doing there?
YOU MAKE FUN OF HIM FOR BEING NEEDY
If he says he needs a hug, or needs comfort, or lays his head on your lap like a puppy, you say, “Somebody’s being needy.” That’s a surefire way to get him to never turn to you in times of, well, need.
YOU TEASE HIM FOR BEING ROMANTIC
Because you feel so awkward around straight-up romance, you can’t walk into a room filled with candles and jazz without bursting out into laughter. And if he gets you a card that is anything other than a gag card on Valentines Day, he’s really going to get teased.
YOU POINT OUT “CHEESY MOMENTS”
Anytime it feels like you’re in the midst of a moment—a real, bonding, chemistry-exploding, intimate moment—you have to pause and say something like, “Well aren’t we just a scene from an Indie movie.”
YOU SCOFF AT ROMANTIC COUPLES
If you see other couples being romantic, you say things like, “Get a room” or you roll your eyes. Not the most encouraging example for your man.
Source: Madame Noire
