Part of being in a relationship with someone is learning to see them through your 90% lens.  It can be challenging when you each have different ways of expressing your affection. I've discovered a book that can help reframe the challenge — "The Noticer" by Andy Andrews. He takes a bit of a different spin on relationships and talks about people having four different ways that we use to convey and feel loved. Then he attaches an animal to each of them.

His four are:

Spoken words of approval -  is like a puppy as they love to hear they are doing a great job.

Favours and Deeds -  is like a goldfish as they just want you to feed them and clean their bowl.

Physical Touch - is a like a cat who loves to be held and given physical attention.

Quality time - is like a canary as they just want you to be with them.

In our marriage, I am a goldfish and Darren is a cat. The way I feel the most love is if you clean something or do something to make my life easier and our home a bit nicer. Darren wants me to sit on the couch and watch a movie beside him. 

I had to learn early in our marriage that if I cleaned the house and washed the car, Darren would hardly notice and truly didn’t care if the house was clean.  He would rather have a dirty house and go for a walk hand-in-hand. 

Darren had to learn that in order for me to feel relaxed enough to watch that movie or go for that walk, I needed to have the house clean first.