What to Do If Your Partner Doesn’t “Get” You

How to tell if it’s the end of the road or not

Jennifer Haubrich
4 min readOct 7, 2022

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Photo by Manuel Meurisse on Unsplash

When we say we want to be loved, many of us mean we want to feel understood. We long for someone in this crazy world to “get” us. Maybe, we think, there’s someone out there who understands us in a way no one else ever has.

We hope so.

And then, when we finally meet someone who makes sparks fly and our hearts melt, we think maybe they’re that person. There’s an undeniable attraction. We identify some interests and beliefs we have in common…

Things are looking good!

So, we start to think, could they be the one?

It’s easy in the beginning to only notice all the things you have in common with a love interest.

And it’s fun. I can’t tell you how many boys and men I begged to dance with me at parties over the years. When my husband danced with me without being asked the weekend we met, I was elated. And I couldn’t help but take it as a sign.

Discovering they don’t completely “get” you

It may not happen on the first date, but as you get to know one another, you’ll soon discover ways you and your new love are different. You’ll find interests, tastes, and sensibilities that don’t overlap or are even widely different.

They may even behave in ways you don’t understand.

Last weekend I went to an exhibit of shoes from designer Stuart Weitzman’s personal collection. I was interested in seeing how fashion has changed over the previous 100 years. I thought it’d be fun to imagine what life was like for the people that wore those styles.

I asked my husband if he wanted to join me, even though I knew the answer: No.

Then I went to the museum without him.

Not “getting” you isn’t a deal breaker as long as they do these two things

While we all long to be understood, these are far more important.

  1. Do they accept you?

Acceptance means they let you be you. They won’t stop you from going to that Star Trek convention —…

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Jennifer Haubrich

Relationships | Parenting | Food | Life | Mother, wife, and left-handed herbivore. INFJ. Still a Jersey girl. jehaubrich@gmail.com for content writing inquiries