My Boyfriend Doesn’t Do Anything Special For Me

Do you feel like your boyfriend doesn’t do anything special for you? Like you’re bending over backwards for him but he’s still not returning your level of investment?

If you do, you’re not alone. Lots of girls feel emotionally unfulfilled by their boyfriends from time to time and struggle to communicate their wants and needs to them.

Most guys just don’t understand why we girls desire more attention and time to bond because let’s face it, most guys don’t know how it feels to be unfulfilled and insecure in a relationship.

They don’t know because we don’t give them a reason to feel that way. We make them feel loved.

We could say that guys lack the experience to understand that when a woman asks for more alone time or more thoughtful actions that she wants to get closer to her boyfriend—and not necessarily because she’s complaining and ungrateful.

Sure, it may seem that way because we sometimes react strongly, but they forget that we’re different from them biologically. We’re emotional beings who tend to show pain in an emotional manner.

And we have a good reason for behaving that way. That reason is that we want our boyfriend to show us he cares about us in the love language that we prefer. We want him to understand us emotionally and use his brains to surprise us at times.

That would fill up our love tanks very quickly and allow us to grow strong together.

But instead of receiving a romantic gesture that lowers relationship stress, we oftentimes receive very little of what we want, get our expectations crushed, express ourselves because we’re not happy, and appear needy, clingy, or controlling as a result.

There are many reasons why guys misunderstand us so often, but the biggest reason is gender differences, followed by different needs and expectations, different love languages, and different attachment styles.

These are the things that affect guys’ capacity to receive love and conversely, their capacity to give it. There’s also self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and maturity that play a big role in a relationship—as these things are the prerequisite for a successful relationship.

But we girls, don’t care too much about our partner’s reasons for taking us for granted. We just want things to change as quickly as possible, so we think to ourselves, “My boyfriend doesn’t do anything special for me. He’s being inconsiderate of me and the effort I put into the relationship.”

When we girls feel neglected, we feel that we need to express our discontent in order to process it. But it just so happens that we often get very emotional and as guys like put it, complain or nag.

Because we approach this concern head-on, we tend to trigger our boyfriend’s need to defend himself in the process and receive replies like, “But I do so much for you. Just yesterday, I…”

Guys do this because they perceive love gestures differently from us. They tend to count the time they spend with us as quality time and think of romantic gestures as something unnecessary that belongs in movies and love ballads.

With that said, here are some examples of how your boyfriend can take you for granted:

• Your boyfriend doesn’t make you a priority (hangs out with other people instead of you)
• Your boyfriend never takes you out and never spoils you
• He doesn’t do anything special for you (ignores anniversaries, forgets your birthday)
• Your boyfriend stopped making an effort (makes you do all the work in the relationship)
• Your boyfriend never surprises you with gifts, flowers, and romantic gestures
• He never plans anything and has no idea what he wants with you
• He doesn’t help you financially, physically, or emotionally
• And doesn’t tell you important things and talk about the future

So if you’re a girl and you think your boyfriend takes you for granted and doesn’t do anything for you, this is the article for you.

My boyfriend doesn’t do anything special for me

Relationships normally start really fast. In the beginning, both parties pour everything they have into the relationship and enjoy each other’s company. They enjoy the mystery, the mutual attraction, the thrill, and feel like they’re on cloud nine.

Everything seems like out of the fairy tale—and they love every bit of it.

It’s only months later that new couples get accustomed to each other and stop feeling excited about each other. They still feel in love, of course, but they no longer feel the emotional drive that originally compelled them to be the best versions of themselves.

Months later, they’re most guided by the rational drive which consists of willpower, commitment, behavioral patterns, beliefs, upbringing, perceptions, and relationship knowledge.

These things determine how a person expresses love and affection under normal, non-infatuated circumstances.

So if you think that your boyfriend doesn’t make you feel special anymore, the first thing you need to understand is that your relationship has gotten through the infatuation phase.

You’ve both gotten used to each other and now need to make the effort to communicate your wants and needs in each other’s love languages in order to get the most out of each other.

I’ll talk about how you can do that soon, but first, let’s talk about something just as important.

Your understanding of your partner’s fundamental differences in perceiving, thinking, and behaving.

My boyfriend doesn’t make me a priority

I’ve learned that there are always two sides to each story. One side is made up of your unfulfilled needs and expectations—and the other, of your boyfriend’s life (the things he enjoys) and his understanding of the relationship.

To make it simple, you and your boyfriend both have certain things you like outside of the relationship and certain things you require from the relationship. While your boyfriend enjoys spending time outside of the relationship, you seem to prefer to spend time with him alone.

Maybe you’re an introvert or maybe you have hundreds of friends you hang out with on a regular basis, but bonding with your boyfriend and doing things together is what makes you happy and respected as an equal partner.

It’s what you signed up for when you agreed to be in a relationship because you saw that your partner had the same relationship desires, needs, and goals.

Maybe they weren’t exactly the same, but back then, they were quite similar as you were in the honeymoon stage and were excited at the prospect of being in an intimate relationship together.

Now that you’ve met your boyfriend’s good and bad traits, however, you’ve learned that things aren’t the way you’d imagined. Sometimes your boyfriend takes you for granted and invests time and effort in other things or people instead.

Because of this, you feel that your boyfriend never makes you feel special. He just does what makes him happy and ignores your needs and wants.

If this is how you feel, know that it’s normal for couples to have different interests as well as different interest levels in each other. As I mentioned earlier, people perceive and give love differently because of the way they grew up and/or the habits and traits they’ve acquired.

Most people don’t even know that they’ve picked up some bad traits along the way and that they need to change their views on life in order to suit their partner.

The reason why guys are hesitant about changing their views is that their views feel normal to them. They’ve been a part of their lives for years, so they don’t want them to go anywhere.

And because they’ve accepted them and gotten used to them, they tend to defend them until the end of time.

I’m a woman and I’ve been taken for granted before, so I know how it feels when your boyfriend stops making an effort and makes you feel like you’re his roommate.

But before I tell you my story, I’d first like you to understand that your boyfriend acts the way he does because he:

• goes with his gut feelings
• doesn’t know how you feel
• lacks knowledge of the opposite gender
• feels smothered because of his beliefs and thinks that he needs more time to himself

If you directly tell your boyfriend that he hasn’t been paying attention to you, you’ll probably have a hard time convincing your boyfriend to listen to you and dedicate more time and attention to you.

He’ll probably get upset with you because he’ll see that you’re upset and start telling you everything he does for you on a daily basis.

So before you tell your boyfriend that he never takes you out and never treats you like a princess, consider for a moment that your boyfriend’s wants aren’t the same as yours.

They’re different because:

• outside of the relationship matters excite him more than the relationship
• your reaction brings a bad reaction out of him

So if your boyfriend doesn’t do anything special for you, don’t get too offended. Your boyfriend is probably just:

• busy focusing on his own goals or hobbies
• unaware of your feelings
• and needs you to help him change his behavior without blaming him and triggering his self-defense mechanism

It won’t be easy to change him, but if your boyfriend is the right person for you and is receptive to you, you won’t have to change him at all. Your boyfriend will listen to your suggestions and compromise for the sake of the relationship.

He’ll do it because he cares about the relationship

Here are 6 reasons why your boyfriend doesn’t make you a priority.

Some other reasons why your boyfriend never does anything romantic for you is that:

• he’s busy with things that require his full attention
• he’s anxious, hurt, or depressed
• he has commitment issues or fears of showing his soft, romantic side
• you overinvested in him (smothered him), so he doesn’t feel the need to invest back
• you became dependent on him and he doesn’t like it
• or maybe he’s the type of guy who likes to receive relationship benefits and doesn’t give back much

The biggest mistake girls make is that they don’t express themselves and set some boundaries early on when their relationship is still fresh. They don’t communicate their needs to their partner when he’s much more open to adjusting to them, so they delay it and keep hoping that things would change on their own.

Unfortunately, most of the time, things don’t change because as far as I know, most guys and women rarely ask themselves, “What can I do to make my partner feel happier, secure, and respected?”

They tend to think they’re right and that their boyfriend or girlfriend is too demanding.

My boyfriend doesn’t make me feel special or do anything for me

Based on my own experience, most guys have goals and ambitions outside of the relationship and aren’t 100% focused on the relationship. They are committed to it, but as far as their focus goes, it’s usually all over the place.

Of course, there are men out there who are very aware of their partner’s likes and needs, but such guys are usually emotionally intelligent, empathetic, or anxious. I say anxious because some guys are insecure and overinvest in their girlfriend only to receive recognition from her.

Such guys are emotionally reliant on their girlfriend and need their girlfriend way more than she needs them.

Anyway, most men are not very eager to do romantic things for their girlfriends. They don’t like going above and beyond because they themselves don’t expect that kind of effort from their girlfriends.

They normally want a low-effort relationship.

As I mentioned earlier, everything comes down to guys’ wants and needs. Some are very expressive and others less. And those guys who don’t feel a need to receive love usually aren’t very keen on giving it either.

Most of the time they’re perfectly fine with minimum effort.

I experienced the exact same thing with my boyfriend. He’s a guy, so he doesn’t send me as many gifts and letters as I send him. He probably would if he felt like me, but because his needs and romantic expectations differ from mine, it often seems as if he doesn’t care about me at all.

Of course, that’s just my interpretation because I’m certain he loves me. But even though I know this, it sometimes feels that he could try a bit harder to match my expectations and reciprocate my feelings.

As a woman, I want to feel excited, young, and in love—and I feel that he could give me these things even though it may not be his preferred way of expressing himself. I believe we all need to make sacrifices in relationships.

Some time ago, I told my boyfriend that I want him to be more romantic with me by sending me more letters.

At first, he said that a simple letter doesn’t prove his love for me and that his actions, commitment, and attitude do.

But after discussing it with me, he said he had no idea I felt unloved in some ways, so he promised to write me more letters and give me more gifts (my secondary love language is receiving gifts, according to Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages.

That day, we talked a lot and managed to find a solution that worked for both of us. I said I would lower my expectations of him and be okay with whatever he gives me and he promised to show me love the way I like to receive it.

How to tell your boyfriend you don’t feel like a priority?

Before you tell your boyfriend how you feel, make sure you understand that your approach (tone, words, and attitude) will most likely determine the success of your objective.

As long as your boyfriend is open-minded and you don’t accuse your boyfriend of neglect, you’ll be able to get your point across and convince your boyfriend to give you what you crave.

My suggestion is to talk to your boyfriend when the two of you are happy together and have nothing on your mind. That’s when you should tell him that you’ve been meaning to talk to him for a long time but that you were worried he wouldn’t listen to you.

A great way to approach this sensitive topic is to say, “I know you’ve been busy recently, but if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot.

Recently, the relationship feels a bit one-sided, so I wish we could talk about it and hopefully work on finding a solution that works for both of us.

Please keep in mind that I’m not trying to criticize you. I’d just like to know how you prefer to receive love and express love and gratitude. If you help me understand you better, I think we could speak to each other in ways that suit our personalities.”

If you show your boyfriend you’re not picking a fight with him, your boyfriend should become receptive to you and feel inspired to be more romantic with you.

Just make sure you continuously compliment his improvements because changing the way he expresses love could take a long time. A very long time in fact because personal habits take time and dedication to alter.

But that’s okay. If you support your boyfriend and tell him that you both have a different primary love language, he may set his ego aside and understand why adjusting to you is important for the relationship.

And if he doesn’t want to understand because he considers your unhappiness a complaint, you may want to think about whether you’re willing to stay partially unfulfilled in the relationship.

You may want something better.

So if you want your boyfriend to make you a priority, don’t force him to give you what you want. Encourage him instead and make sure he keeps improving.

You can do that by frequently:

• complimenting him on his progress
• thanking him for being open-minded
• and reminding him why it’s important to love each other in each other’s love language

If at any point in time, he reverts to his natural self, don’t give up on him. Simply tell him how much you love him and value him and remind him that some of your needs still aren’t being met.

Say that you’d like a little more romance from him because you want to feel special like you did when you first started dating.

In return, ask if there’s anything he’d like you to work on and listen intently. If he says he’d like more time with his friends, for example, simply tell him you’ll get busier with friends and hobbies and that you’ll happily let him enjoy his free time.

Compromise is key in every relationship.

It’s unfortunate that many couples disagree with me and make the mistake of thinking that their partner doesn’t love them when in reality, their partner just doesn’t speak the same love language as them or has deep-rooted reasons for withdrawing affection.

Because people are very different in the way they want to be loved, couples oftentimes misunderstand each other and fail to communicate efficiently.

Make sure you understand your boyfriend’s needs and that he understands yours. You probably only have one shot at the relationship, so make it count.

What to do when your boyfriend doesn’t do anything special for you despite your efforts?

If your boyfriend doesn’t do nice things for you and you’ve already tried adjusting as much as you can, there probably isn’t much more you can do to reason with him.

The problem isn’t with you or your excessive thirst for recognition. It’s with your boyfriend and his ability to see that you’re struggling and wanting to do something about it.

Your boyfriend doesn’t understand why it’s important to keep the romance alive because in his eyes, he’s already with you—so he thinks that he needn’t try to impress you anymore.

A guy like this will probably take a long time to realize what he’s doing (or not doing). Actually, he might realize his mistakes only if he gets dumped and experiences gut-wrenching pain.

This is because pain could force him to stop taking you for granted and start putting his best foot forward.

I’m not saying you should break up with him to make him work on his shortcomings. That would be manipulative. All I’m saying is that it might be the only way he can start appreciating you and investing in you.

Are you thinking that your boyfriend doesn’t do anything special for you? Comment below if you feel unappreciated.

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Angelie

I’m Angelie, a writer and a designer at Magnet of Success. Whether I’m writing compelling content or designing engaging pictures, I create content that resonates with our visitors and aids them on their self-improvement journey. I enjoy writing about relationship dynamics and the difficulties couples may face.