“I wish they would message me without me always having to start the conversation.”
Different people can want very different amounts of contact in a relationship. Maybe you like hearing from your partner during the day, whilst they can go for hours without messaging and genuinely don’t think anything is wrong. Neither of you necessarily cares more than the other, but the difference can still be difficult.
If you’re normally the one starting conversations, you might begin to wonder what would happen if you stopped. Would they notice? Would they contact you? Maybe a message feels important because it lets you know that somebody has thought about you when you aren’t together.
From the other side, being asked to message more often might start to feel like pressure, particularly if you already feel secure in the relationship and don’t naturally use your phone in the same way.
The difficult bit is that you can both understand the other person’s position and still not feel completely comfortable with it.
It can be useful to talk about what the contact actually means rather than only arguing about how many messages are reasonable. Maybe you’re looking for reassurance or a sense of closeness, whilst your partner needs more space and doesn’t experience that space as distance.
Sometimes couples find a compromise and sometimes the difference remains frustrating. Either way, you don’t have to decide that one person is needy and the other is uncaring before you can talk about what each of you needs.
Different needs can be real even when nobody is doing anything deliberately wrong.