Feeling unloved despite a partner saying they love you

How do people figure out if his actions match his words?

The people here mostly did not figure it out by getting an answer from him; they figured it out by watching what happened when they named the gap out loud.

Several of them went to their partner directly and said some version of "the way you treat me doesn't feel like love," and the reply came back as an explanation of his own state, a list of practical things he does, or an account of why their asking is the real problem.

That reply, rather than the original behavior, is what several of them kept returning to, because it showed them that the question itself was not going to be received. One or two stopped asking altogether, deciding a confrontation would go nowhere, and found that the doubt did not go away; it just became theirs alone to carry.

None of them here reports having reached a clean verdict, so this light cannot tell you what the proof looks like when it finally arrives.

Ember’s view. The test you are running is not really whether his actions match his words, because you already know how the treatment feels. The test that actually told the people here something was what he did with the complaint itself: whether he could stay in the room with "I don't feel loved by you" or had to convert it into his anger, his labor, your lack of trust.

If you are going to say it, say the one plain sentence about how his treatment lands on you and then stop talking, and watch what he does with the next minute rather than arguing the evidence; the people here who did this got no reassurance from it, and what they got instead was clarity they then had to live with.

Why does confronting them not change anything?

When the people here brought the gap between words and treatment into the open, the conversation moved off the thing they asked about and onto something else: his anger, his list of what he does for them, their own supposed lack of trust. None of them got the question answered, and several came away being handled as the problem for having raised it.

Some stopped raising it at all, deciding in advance that the argument would go nowhere, and that silence left them holding the doubt by themselves rather than ending it. What separates the people here is not whether they confronted but what they did with the answer they got: a few started treating the deflection itself as the information, and began changing their own distance, while others kept re-explaining in the hope the right words would finally land.

Ember’s view. Confronting is a request for the other person to agree with your reading of their behaviour, and the people here were asking someone to testify against himself, which is why the reply was almost always a counter-charge or a redirection. The confrontation did work, just not the way they wanted: it told them what happens when they say the true thing out loud, and that answer was already enough to act on.

Say the thing once more, plainly, and then watch what he does in the days after instead of what he says in the hour after; the people here who did this stopped getting new hope from the conversations, which was its own kind of loss.

Do people stay quiet or keep pushing for an answer?

Both, and the people here who did each one ended up in a similar place. The ones who kept pushing named the gap out loud, asked for clarity again and again, and confronted what they had found, and what came back was an explanation, a defence, or the questioning turned around onto them as a trust problem.

The ones who stayed quiet let a discrepancy pass or decided an argument would go nowhere, kept offering warmth, and were left holding the doubt alone with a thin reply as the whole answer. Neither route got anyone here an answer about what the treatment meant; the pushing produced words about the other person's anger or trust rather than a change in how they were treated.

Ember’s view. The question of speaking up or staying silent is a question about which pain to carry, not about which one gets an answer. The people here who asked were trying to get the other person to confirm something they had already seen in how they were treated, and none of them got that confirmation; what they got back was the subject changed to their anger, their trust, their demands.

If you are still asking, consider treating the answers you have already received as the answer, and asking instead what you will do if the treatment stays exactly as it is.