Dear LinLin:

His behavior reads very loving. Why didn’t he say he loves you?

– Maybe he has a bad feeling about the word because he was told that he was loved (maybe by a parent) but felt it was a lie, so he has a bad feeling about the sentence I-love-you. And he believes that to be honest is to behave in loving ways, not to say it.

– Maybe he is afraid that if he says it to you, it means that he has to do something else, after he tells you, like get engaged and he is afraid of taking the next step.

– Maybe when he said it before to a woman, in a previous relationship, it didn’t go well after that, maybe she pressured him to get engaged or married (the above),  maybe she pressured him otherwise.

— which brings me to the following: June last year you shared about a relationship you had with another man: “Him looking sad= I assume he was mad at me so I immediately got irritated and asked him what was wrong.. When he tries to teach me something, instead of taking help from him, I assume he is thinking I am stupid and ‘teaching me’ to be ‘better than me'”.

You shared there that you grew up in “a highly negative environment” where you were “always blamed for things and had both .. parents mad at (you)”, giving you “angry glares and passive aggressiveness… Even now, my Mom still looks at me constantly with an angry glare/ tone of voice or passive aggressive language”-

The reason I bring this up is that this man you are seeing now for over six months reads like a good, loving man and I want this relationship to work well for you. It is very important that the man you end up with is not angry, or passive aggressive. If this man is not these things and he behaves lovingly toward you, that is a winning combination.

Pay attention to your understandable tendency, born in childhood, to assume a man is angry at you, an assumption that was true in the context of living with your mother/ parents, but not in the context of the relationship with the man June 2018.

When you find yourself making such an assumption- pause, notice that you are already distressed/ angry. Don’t react by asking your boyfriends questions, interrogating him. Instead take a time out, go  for a walk, listen to music or just wait until the distress is not there anymore. Then, when calm enough, think: was my assumption correct, is there any evidence to support it?

One more thing:  June last year you shared: “I am guilty of being a super fast paced person in my daily life. I move fast, work  fast, talk fast, eat fast.. My life just feels like it’s  on speed”- that kind of speed will get your life and your relationship nowhere, and fast!

So practice Mindfulness, being present in and attentive to the here-and-now. That will slow you down.

anita

I agree with what Mark and Anita said, but I also want to add my experience because it might help you feel better. I had a similar connection with my most recent ex that you seem to have with yours. We dated officially for probably 6-7 months before he said he loved me, and that’s not counting the few months before we became official that we had hung out a lot, and I practically had to drag it out of him. haha. I stubbornly wanted him to say it first because it had been my first real relationship in a decade and I’m sort of an old-fashioned girl, and I think he just was scared to say it/wasn’t sure how I felt/didn’t want to rush things/maybe was hoping I’d say it first… so we had a conversation about it. Once he finally said it that first time though, the flood gates open and we said it to each other often, many times a day, for the rest of the time that we dated. Words of Affirmation is probably my most favorite love language, so I was having similar feelings to what you are now before it was said (especially at the 6-month mark for me, too!), but my ex was doing a lot of the things yours is doing, SHOWING he loves you through actions rather than words. So, to me, it sounds like he has those feelings for you and maybe you two should just have a conversation that encourages each one of you to open up in that way.