Resources

Worth your time on this question

Everything worth your time on the question: How does the person closest to me experience me?

Five things on this subject: one TAIU exercise, three things to read and one free service or course. Practical support sits first, before anything written to be interesting. If the same conversation keeps failing, a third person in the room changes it.

This page is for going further on your own. If you would rather work the question out with somebody asking, that is the conversation.

What kind of partner am I: talk it through

LEARN · SERVICE

Relationship support

Relate

If the same conversation keeps failing, a third person in the room changes it.

Counselling for couples, families and individuals, in person and online.

Find out more ↗

Was this useful?

TRY · 12 MIN

Partner Mirror

TAIU

What you believe you bring and what your partner would probably say.

Try it →

Was this useful?

READ · BOOK

The All-or-Nothing Marriage

Eli Finkel

Finkel shows how much modern couples ask of one partner, and why relationships can feel like failures when they are simply carrying more than any single relationship once had to.

Perceived Partner Responsiveness

Harry Reis

Reis argues that closeness rests on whether somebody feels understood, valued and cared for by the way you respond to them. It gives you a behavioural test for a quality usually described in feelings.

Self-Expansion in Close Relationships

Arthur Aron

Aron's work explains why relationships often flatten when the two people stop growing rather than when they stop caring. A useful alternative reading when things feel dull rather than wrong.

Recommended by the TAIU community

What helped you?

If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.

We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.