Another good book is THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGES but Gary Chapman. He says that there are five different ways people express and appreciate love:
Gifts
Acts of Service
Quality time
Words of Affirmation
Physical Touch.
It is a good book to read and gives insight on all interpersonal relationship.
If you feel loved and appreciated when you get a gift and he feels loved and appreciated when you sit by him and act interested in the hockey game, then your ring does not show him love and your absence during the hockey game does not show him love.
For years I bought my own flowers. This year DH bought me a dozen red roses for my birthday. I am 54. We got married when we were 20. We met when we were 18.
I never got a dozen red roses before.
I never got a dozen roses before.
He has phased into this over the last 36 years.
He thought flowers were a waste of money because they die. He understood buying shrubs for the yard, but not flowers for the inside of the house.
Finally I started buying my own flowers.
Recently he started picking up flowers in the grocery store when we were shopping together. Then, this past Saturday, he went out while I was still asleep, bought the groceries on the list and the roses, brought them home, made coffee and left it on our bathroom sink with the flowers--safe from sleepy arms that might have hit them if they were on the bedside table.
What a nice surprise to find when I got out of bed.
For years I have given hints about a tennis bracelet.
This year I got very specific and DH said he did not think I wanted one.
I told him I did not want one that was so expensive I would be looking over my shoulder for muggers.
I did not want to feel that children were starving in a third world country because I had an expensive bracelet.
I did not want one like the one we all gave my mother for her 80th birthday which had real diamonds that were so small they were hard to see, but they were real.
I wanted a zircon bracelet, square Princess cut stones, a bit over $100 from Penny's on this page of the catalog and I tore out the page.
That Saturday he said "Let's go."
I said "Where"
He said, "To get this bracelet." as he held the catalog page.
I said "You are supposed to get it so it is a 'surprise'"
He said, I don't want to get the wrong one and if you are there we will get the one you want.
So I went along.
After we found it, he said "Is there anything else you like here?" I said that a certain ring would have gone well with my Snow White costume that I made to wear on the Disney MAGIC Halloween 2002 Cruise. He asked the lady to get it out and told me to try it on. It fit. He bought it too. When I said that I did not want to spend $50 on a ring for a costume I probably would never wear again he said, "You never know......."
So now I wonder when we will book another Halloween Cruise and/or go to a costume party and in the meantime, I wear that ring all the time with my anniversary band that we got shortly before our 30th anniversary (that I dragged him into a store before Valentine's day, showed him what I liked and it is Princess cut zircons too.)
But right now, your DH is in his lair. Read MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS and discover that when he is mad he retreats so that he does not say something or do something he will regret later. If you go into that cave--lair--you may be attacked by the dragon. It does make sense in the book.
Check out the books and see what fits your situation.
Know that you are not alone.
Rejoice in his commitment to stay married in a culture that seems to encourage divorce.
Keep your chin up.
And SMILE BABY SMILE.
Jan