Many of us expect our partners to be mind readers. We drop subtle hints about our needs and wants and expect them to magically pick up these cues. When they do not anticipate our needs, we become resentful, and this often leads to criticism, where we focus on what they are doing wrong as opposed to what we need them to do. The Gottmans use Jake and Miriam as a case study here: Jake feels upset because his wife has been working late on her gallery show every night for months and neglecting to fulfill his need of spending evenings together—a need he hasn’t voiced out of shame, but which stems from the absence of his workaholic father in childhood.

The reason it is often so difficult for us to assertively express our needs is that we have been taught by a culture and society that values self-reliance that they are an unattractive weakness. This manifests differently for women and men. Women, who are often the prime caretakers of other people’s needs, are fed the view that neediness makes them unattractive, while men, who have been raised to be tough providers, think that requiring things from other people makes them unmasculine.