Signs your partner doesn't actually love you

Stop telling women to empathize with abusive men. Start telling them that a whole lot of men hate their partners.

“Men just show love differently.”

“Men just grieve differently.”

“Have you learned about his love language?”

This is the kind of bullshit women are met with when they seek help for bad or abusive treatment by their male partners.

You’ve just had a miscarriage and your partner screams at you to quit whining, or demands that you make him food, or continues to be the lazy and worthless piece of shit he was before you lost your baby? Maybe he’s just expressing his emotions differently!

You’ve just had a baby and he won’t get up with the baby, and you haven’t slept in days, and he keeps insulting your body? Maybe it’s male postpartum depression!

Excuse me while I go have a rage aneurysm.

Part of living in a sexist society means that women are indoctrinated to constantly empathize with their oppressors, and to see overtly hostile behavior as a sign of unmet emotional needs.

And men are indoctrinated to take as much as they can from women.

It is not helpful to tell women to sympathize with the people who are abusing them. Men are not incompetent fools. They know what they are doing.

What women need to hear, loud and clear, is that a wide range of behaviors men exhibit are signs not of emotional dysfunction, and certainly not of love, but of aggression and entitlement.

This is not an exhaustive list, but here are some common and widely accepted behaviors that actually mean your partner does not love you:

1. They are never willing to sacrifice for your well-being. Or when they do make sacrifices, they demand much bigger sacrifices from you in return.

2. They mock or insult your body. This includes deriding basic bodily functions such as giving birth or having a period as gross.

3. They use you for free labor, and do not give a similar amount of labor in return. If your partner plays video games while you clean or tend to the children, and does not give you the same amount of personal time, then you’re a servant, not a beloved partner.

4. They never take care of you. Love requires nurturing. If he doesn’t tend to you when you’re sick, hold you when you’re sad, show up in surprising ways, do small favors, or find some way to make you feel cared for, he doesn’t love you.

5. They never step in to offer extra support when you are suffering. When you’re sick, you still do it all. When you give birth, you still make dinner. When you suffer a tragedy, you still have to tend to your partner’s needs.

6. They are uninterested in learning about your unique wants and needs. For example, if gifts are important to you, he demeans your interest in gifts. If you want to date or be romanced, he specifically avoids doing these things.

7. They demand levels of support and care from you that he never offers in return.

8. They call you names, or weaponize sexism, racism, ableism, or other forms of oppression against you.

9. They consistently try to convince you you are crazy, or dismisses your reasonable concerns as being “hysterical.”

10. They don’t take care of you after you give birth to their child.

11. He violates the rules you agree to in your relationship—whether it’s by lying, spending time with an ex, flirting with someone else, or something else. Too often, women are taught that their boundaries are unreasonable. Someone who knows a boundary is important to you and violates it anyway does not love you (no matter how ok someone else might be with the same behavior).

12. He doesn’t care about what you want sexually. And if he has not learned basic anatomy by now, it’s an especially bad sign. The existence of the clitoris is widespread knowledge. If he’s never bothered to learn about it, it means not only that he gives zero shits about you, but also that he has never cared to give any female partner pleasure*.

*Yes, not all women have clitorises. Yes, not all women need clitoral stimulation. This is why it’s so important for men to learn abut individual needs.

Readers, what would you add to the list?