What women want...what men want...

"So, what's up? You've seemed distant these past few days."
"What? I'm not feeling distant!"
"Well, you've just seemed, I don't know...not attuned."
"I didn't mean to be distant!"

So where do you go from here, when you express a concern, and the other person - namely, my lovely and wonderful husband (and I mean that, it's not sarcasm!), just says, "I didn't mean to!"
It reminds me a lot of when I was a kid, and that was the excuse I'd come up with when I was being scolded for something. "I didn't mean to eat all the cookies!"

I'm not a mom. I'm a wife. I don't want, need, desire, or yearn for another kid. I want a partner. So don't say, "I didn't mean to!" It just lands like a rock.

What do you want the response to be, you ask? How about, "What do you need?" That's always a better response than, "I didn't mean to."

You're not in trouble, darlin'. Far from it. I just have felt a little bit of a gap between us.

I love you.