How Demanding or Neglectful Are You of Your Partner?
Think about how you treat the person you live with. Is it the same way you treat everyone else, or does your partner get a shorter fuse and a longer list of expectations? Maybe you hold them to a standard you would never apply to a coworker or an acquaintance. Maybe your tone with them runs sarcastic, or you catch yourself picking at what they do. If you stepped outside yourself for a minute and became your own partner, would you actually enjoy spending your days around you?
Try hearing it from the other side. Imagine your partner saying: why not treat me the way you treat your friends and the rest of your family? You are warm and polite with the stranger at the door or the neighbor you pass on the street. You get on the phone and talk for an hour, and I never learn what any of those conversations were about. I end up feeling cut out, the last one to hear about things, when I hear about them at all, and sometimes the thing being discussed involves me.
What that partner wants is small. A cup of coffee with someone who asks how the day went. A person to hand the little worries to, the ones too minor to seem worth saying out loud. No one is hunting for someone to blame. The request is for a bit of compassion, nothing more. Spend enough days without that, one after another, and the house gets very quiet.