My partner shows me respect, adoration, and affection.

Affection is easier to spot than respect, which tends to show up in dull places — whether your work gets treated as work, whether you are defended in a room where your name came up and you were not there.

Most people have never said out loud which of these they need most. They wait to be intuited, and then read the failure as a verdict on the whole thing.

It can simply be asked for, in one specific instance rather than in general. Not a plea for respect in the abstract, but something exact: that the next time a relative is dismissive about your job over dinner, your partner is the one who answers first.