Throwaway acc because I'm nervous. So I (19NB) have been together with my boyfriend (18M) for almost 3 years. His love language is more leaned towards quality time, while mine is leaned towards physical touch and words of affirmation. When we're together in person, it's usually okay, but we live separately from each other as we both still live with our parents, and he tends to communicate a lot less effectively over text.
For a little context, I am a very anxious person. I overthink a lot. That's my own problem, I know, I'm trying to work on it, but because of this overthinking, there can be times where I will feel like I need to be loved in my own languages, such as unprompted physical affection, or in the case of text, hear words of affirmation. I usually have to very directly ask for this. There are a few times when I've asked if I could have them more out of nowhere, just things like asking how I am (because a lot of the time when I ask him how he is over text he doesn't quite ask it back) or letting me know he's thinking of me, or jus random 'I love you' texts. I told him he can just do it every few days if he wants to, and when I asked, he said it wasn't a big ask and that he was sorry for not doing it anyway. But nothing has really changed, and I've brought it up two more times since then, as well as some other issues. I never want to put pressure on him to respond to my messages right away, so I tell him he can respond when he's in the right headspace, but it usually results in nothing. I even sent a message the other day in regards to another issue saying I felt like I was struggling to communicate, and I said I wanted an answer at some point, but it didn't really result in anything.
Anyways, I really love him, but I just feel like I need more love in my preferred love languages, and because I'm not getting it, it's making me feel a whole lot of things. I feel like I'm being incredibly silly, because I know he loves me, I just don't know what to do. I've been trying to ignore it becuase I don't want to ask him to change too much for me but I'm really struggling. Any advice on how to deal with this?
TL;DR: My BF and I have very different love languages and I am struggling because of it, unsure of what to do.
Edit: Forgot to mention he's a trans man, idk if that's relevant but there u go