Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend of a year is hardworking, attractive, family-oriented, adventurous, and kind, but I feel like our intimacy has been lacking since the beginning. He is a reserved person, and I believe his love language is spending time with your significant other, whereas mine is very much physical and verbal affection. He does little things like touch my back when he walks past me, put his arm around me out in public, hug and kiss me goodbye in the morning, but that’s about it. We have sex every couple of weeks (we spend six nights out of the week together), but we don’t really cuddle. He doesn’t really express his feelings toward me or compliment me besides “I love you.” The sad part is, when he does touch me, I now feel angry and resentful.
After six months together, he said he was sorry we hadn’t had sex in a while and that he wanted to make sure that I didn’t feel he wasn’t attracted to me. He is just always tired from going to work at 4 a.m. When I’ve talked to friends about this, they think that I need to make more moves myself, but I feel like the lack of verbal and physical intimacy has left me feeling too insecure. To be honest, I feel the most insecure about myself I’ve ever been. I don’t really like to change in front of him and constantly want to go to the gym. I don’t want to tell him he needs to be more intimate with me if he does not want to, because then how natural is that? However, I don’t think I can continue a relationship where I feel like I’m not good enough or angry at him when he has no idea. Do you think we could work this out even if we have different love languages?
—Intimacy Issues