As promised, I will start to write about some of the points "How to be an Adult" brings up that interested me. Here's the first one I want to write about:

Relationships between adults work best when each partner knows his or her specific ways of feeling loved and tells the other about it.

This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time. I believe that different people have different ways of feeling loved. Some people like jewelry or flowers, others want hugs, and others just want to be listened to. I don't think there's a right way to love someone. Similarly, there are no wrong ways to feel loved (we're ignoring extreme cases of abuse etc here). For a multitude of reasons, we all develop our own definitions of love and our own ways of looking at a relationship and feeling loved.

I think our first instinct is to love someone the way we like to be loved. If we like attention, then we give the other person attention. If we like flowers, then we buy presents, etc. I don't think there's any harm in this, initially when we don't know someone very well, it's the best option we have. But once we've gotten to know our partner somewhat. loving them the way they like to be loved gives us two major advantages. One, it shows the other person that we're paying attention to their wants and needs. Two, it makes it easier since it focuses our efforts to please that person and makes them more effective each time.

Of course, I think there's value in recognizing when your partner is trying to show you how much they love you, in their own way as well. If your partner is the kind of person who never buys flowers and he comes home with flowers one day, this shows a significant effort and should, of course, make you happy (unless the flowers are due to some guilt.) But knowing the ways the other person feels loved saves so much time and effort in a relationship. It may be hard in the beginning to make enough attention to find the ways, but you can also ask. I think, in an honest relationship, there's no reason to play guessing games. If I care about you, and about making our relationship last, I have no trouble telling you what actions or things make me feel loved. This way you're not wasting your time trying things that work on you, on me. I am happy and loved and so are you. Why would people prefer to play guessing games instead?

There's no award for getting there on your own. The award is for knowing and for doing the actions that make the other person feel loved. Sure it's nice to know that you paid attention but it's much nicer to know that you're going out of your way and your personal understanding of how to show love, just for me. Just to make sure I am feeling loved by you. That's all that matters. Imagine how much smoother a relationship would be if both parties were honest about what would make them feel loved and if both partners actually did these? There would be no need for guessing, assuming and worrying.

I think part of being an adult is knowing yourself and not being afraid to share that with the people you love. Knowing what you need and asking for it. Knowing that those who really care for you will do their best to show it, in a way you understand.