RULE 27

Recognize the signs

How do you show your partner that you love them? Do you give them flowers or chocolates? Do you take them out for a meal or cook a special dinner for them? Do you tell them half a dozen times a day, ‘I love you’? And do they do the same for you?

If you’re feeling guilty, just hold on a minute. I might be about to let you off the hook on this one. I remember talking to a couple of friends over dinner. They were having a (mostly) friendly banter about the fact that – according to her – he hardly ever showed that he loved her. He replied, ‘That’s not fair. What about all those morning cups of coffee I make you? What about the weekend lie-ins while I mind the kids? What about the times I wash your car?’ She was firm in her response: ‘That’s not romantic. Those are just favours.’ He looked completely baffled, and asked, ‘But why do you think I do them?’

We have a very narrow idea of what constitutes a romantic gesture. Flowers, chocolates, dinner, and saying ‘I love you’. Those are the obvious ones. But in fact there is an infinite number of ways to show someone you love them. Every little thing they do that they didn’t have to, that they only did because they wanted to please you, is their way of saying ‘I love you’.

If you want to know how much your partner cares, don’t just focus on flowers and chocolates (although those are fine too, at least in my book). Think about the last time they changed the sheets when it wasn’t their turn, or fetched you an aspirin when you were feeling ill, or made a phone call for you because you hadn’t the energy. If those mundane, banal, unromantic-sounding things aren’t gestures of love, what the hell are they? What else was the point of doing them?

If you learn to recognize these signs for what they are, not only will your partner feel their love is appreciated, but you’ll feel even more secure and happy once you realize that every cup of coffee is just a secret code for ‘I love you’.

And the gestures of love aren’t always doing things for you either. Sometimes it can be giving you a bit of freedom, if that’s what you crave. So when she says, ‘You can go fishing and I’ll take the children out for the day on my own’, that’s another way of saying ‘I love you’.

You can’t expect your partner – or anyone else for that matter – to have exactly the same ways as you of showing that they love someone. It’s actually pretty easy to stop off on the way home and buy chocolates or flowers. The thought is important and generous, but it actually takes much more effort to be up first in the morning, or to wash the car, or to mow the lawn or whatever it is that they know you don’t really want to do . . . So please don’t berate your partner for not showering you with clichéd romance. Instead show you understand by giving them a lie-in for a change, or making them a coffee.