Dear Berta:

The couple on the escalator: you saw them only for a moment or so. You didn’t see them before or after. Maybe there was an abusive fight before, or after. Maybe there is little love.

It is similar to see a photo of a person smiling, looking happy- some people think that happiness is always there because the person always similes… in the photo, an eternal kind of smile. In reality, that person may be crying. The smile, that happiness was there for a split second, caught by camera.

If I was in your boyfriend’s place, I would feel uncomfortable with being expected to behave in a way that doesn’t come naturally to me. Sometimes I could do it, intentionally, and that would be okay, but to be expected to do it daily, that would be very difficult. I would start resenting that expectation and my efforts to please this way.

There are different expressions of affection and love. If you stop looking where you are looking, that is, on physical expressions such as you saw on the escalator, and start looking elsewhere, or if you already did, look further elsewhere and let it in, you will see his love and maybe it will calm you.

It reads to me that you need those expressions from a man so to calm your anxiety, correct?

anita

Hi Bertha,

Here’s a little vignette, and some advice I learned for myself that I saw on YouTube. Maybe they’re helpful, maybe not.

Many years ago, I was dating someone who was not very physically affectionate. I was craving more touch, hand holding, caresses, that kind of thing (Yes, even some guys like this). Anyway, we were traveling in the car one time, and she rested her hand on my leg. I said something like “I wish we had more physical affection in our relationship.” She withdrew her hand like a mousetrap had just gone off on it.

That’s the story. Here’s what I saw on YouTube from a psychotherapist. The idea was to “catch” your partner doing a behavior that you want, and then to reward them for it, exclaim that you like it (but probably don’t go over the top or else it could backfire). With lots of time, and very gentle positive feedback, supposedly your partner will do the behavior more frequently. Maybe not in the exact way you’d like, but it might be enough. Another part of this counsel is that the worst thing one can do is to punish one’s partner when they do the behavior that you want. That is EXACTLY what I did when I’d said to this woman when she’d just been more affectionate, “I wish we had more physical affection, etc.” I should have said, “I like that” and maybe just given her a gentle hand squeeze. Simple, but reinforcing, and not threatening or demanding of her.

Just my thoughts!

• This reply was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Craig.

Dear Berta:

You are welcome.

You wrote that the man on the escalator reminded you of how your father was with you as a child. And yet, you wrote that you have “abandonment feelings associated with (your) dad”-

In your original post you wrote: “I recognize when my boyfriend shows me he loves me… but I often feel he does this from some kind of distant place”

I am thinking that the reason you feel your boyfriend loves you “from some kind of distant place” may be that mix of affection and abandonment you experienced with your father. It may be that you want more of the Affection part of the mix and less of the Abandonment part of the mix with your boyfriend. Anxiety about abandonment fuels the craving for shows of affection.

What do you think?

anita