4 Top Reasons Your Partner Fails to See Your Efforts — And How to Fix Them

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Overcome Disconnection When Your Efforts Go Unnoticed

You do a lot for your partner but get very little credit for your efforts, which can feel rejecting. (Or your partner complains that you don’t recognize what they do.) It’s a common dynamic that can act as a wedge in any relationship. The first step toward removing the wedge is understanding the problem. With this awareness, you can make some changes that heal your relationship.

While doing couples therapy, I’ve found that there are five main dynamics that often lead to a partner feeling their efforts are not recognized. Each one creates a different obstacle to closeness and requires a different solution.

Misaligned expectations:

When you and your partner have different expectations for your roles in taking care of the house, each other, or other family members (e.g. children, parents), one person’s earnest efforts can fall quite short of what the other thinks is a reasonable minimum.

For example, I’ve treated many culturally traditional couples in which the husband worked to provide financial security for the family, and the wife maintained the house and cared for the children. One common issue in these couples is that the husband complains that even though he has tried to help out at home after returning from long, hard days at work, his wife still says that it is not enough. The wife, on the other hand, notes that she has also worked long, hard days. While she acknowledges that he helps out, it is only after she nags him. And she does not appreciate being made to feel like a maid and nanny.

Solution: If you think this dynamic might apply to your relationship, it is important to talk about what you each expects from yourselves and each other. Work together to clarify differences and to bridge them. (To learn more about how you develop expectations for yourself and others, check out my Psychology Today blog article, 2 Simple Steps to Relationship Success.)

Not telling your partner about your efforts:

Many of us have been taught that we should do the right thing for its own sake, not for some compensation… including praise. Yet, while you might be more than willing to stretch that extra bit to take care of things for your partner or your family, it does take effort. And you would like to feel appreciated. Still, it may feel wrong to point out what you’ve done. Besides, your partner should notice it on their own and show some gratitude. When they don’t, you feel unappreciated and become silently frustrated or maybe even feel alone, and the problem grows.

Solution: There is nothing wrong with wanting to be recognized, but you are setting yourself up for disappointment by not saying anything about your efforts when it is important for you to have them recognized. So much of what keeps relationships healthy and strong is attending to what each other is feeling and what they want or need. Without that, each partner feels alone – the very antithesis of feeling connected.

That said, check in with yourself about whether your actions are driven by being competitive. You’ll know this is the case if they are accompanied by an internal accounting of how much each of you has done. This is problematic because it is based on thinking about the two of you as opponents rather than as a team. If you recognize this type of thinking, you might want to talk with your partner about it and what might be driving it, hopefully bringing you back to feeling like a team.

Mindreading what your partner wants:

If you wait for your partner to recognize what you have done for them, you might also find that you try to do things for your partner without discussing it with them first. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but you do risk guessing wrong.

For example, you might feel good about bringing your partner’s car in for a needed oil change, not to mention that it felt good to get out of the house for a bit. Then, when you are met with a begrudging “thanks”, you might feel frustrated. After all, you did them a favor! But if you were to learn that your partner was overwhelmed with cleaning the house and preparing for dinner guests that evening, you might understand how they would have much preferred your help with those tasks.

Spontaneously completing errands or helping your partner can be wonderful ways of showing you care. But each time you do it, you take a risk of misreading what’s needed.

Solution: The simple solution for this problem is to ask your partner what kind of help they would like. But if you tense up at the thought of this, then you might need to address a deeper issue. To learn more about what might be going on, check out this brief video, When Helping Your Partner Isn’t Helping: Why Intentions Aren’t Enough.

Sharing positives is not a regular part of your relationship:

Sometimes couples feel that it is unnecessary to clearly communicate their love or appreciation of each other. Too often this leads to only sharing complaints, which can result in increasingly negative interactions. The good stuff gets overlooked and attempts to address difficulties can just feel like harping on yet another thing.

Solution: To turn the negativity around, it is essential to initiate positive interactions.  Agree that you will both pay attention to when the other one does something to nurture you or your relationship. And agree to share those observations. According to researcher John Gottman, healthy relationships generally have the magic relationship ratio of five positive interactions for every negative one.

Whatever the obstacles are that prevent your partner from seeing or acknowledging your efforts to help them, the fact that you are not feeling recognized for your efforts means that there is something not quite right in your relationship. The disconnection, even if it is not big, is causing a strain in your relationship. But just by taking the time to address this issue together, you will discover that not only are your efforts recognized, but you also feel seen, cared about, and loved.