How Do I Tell Him To Tell Me?

Hi there,

I was surfing the net and came upon a website in which you answered some interesting questions. My boyfriend and I have been together for a year and a half and things are good between us. I know for sure that he is in the stage of life where he wants to settle down when he finds the right one. He made that clear to me very early in the relationship that he is marriage minded. I really love this guy and like I said we do have a good relationship. However, he never tells me how he feels about me.

He treats me well but he never says the sweet things that I need to hear. He buys me things, makes time for me and does put me first though. Only once he told me that he missed me after he went away on a weekend business trip. I am a vocal person and I say how I feel about him all the time, and I get no response in return!

When I ask him how he feels about me he says "I'm not good at saying things, but I know I will when I get married to the woman for me. The one gift I will give my wife is “I love you. I have never said that to anyone before and I want my wife to be the first one."

Here is my issue: its not that I want him to tell me he loves me; I know he definitely has feelings for me (although I do love him but I've never told him) I want to know how he feels about me. How can I make him be more vocal? We discuss marriage on a generic level. I know for sure I want to marry him but when I ask him if he sees me in his future he says he doesn't know as yet. How do get him to marry me? Should I just be more patient? By him not telling me how he feels...and him knowing that I'm so into him makes me feel as though I don't know where I stand. I want to be a wife and mother and I want that with him. What should I do because I don't want to hang on to a man's coat tails?

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Hello!

Different people use different communication "systems" in order to express themselves. There are three basic systems: "visual" ("show me"), "auditory" ("tell me") and "kinesthetic" ("make me feel it") types of people. It's obvious what's going on here: you are an "auditory" and he is a "visual".

When we first get together with someone new, we use every communication system we have (all of us have all three, a primary, secondary and tertiary choice), but after a while, we tend to revert to the system that is most familiar to us. This is what's happening with your relationship. In effect, your boyfriend is telling you that he's going to start using all those other systems once he's married, but in fact, that's not likely! People generally prefer to use their primary system when they feel love as it's the most easily understood and therefore easily used.

You have a few choices here:

1) You can learn these important rules of communication systems and learn to understand that when he "shows you" he loves you, it's the same as when he says it - or even tells you how he feels.

2) You can help him to better understand that you need to hear him express his feelings in order to feel loved yourself.

3) You can do both!

Obviously, I recommend that #3 is your best choice! However, any of them require that you get educated about how communication systems work. I suggest you get him a copy of "Being a Man in a Woman's World" as it goes into all of this in great depth. Further, I also suggest that you check my website for details on how to get your man to be more vocal about his place in your relationship. You can go here and find an article about how to "Get A Man to Answer Relationship Questions": http://beingaman.com/articles.asp.

Once you understand these issues, you'll be in a much better place to deal with them.

Best regards...

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