Every marriage is unique, because it is a meld between two weird people. Every heterosexual couple's dynamic is so unique that comparing them makes as much sense as comparing the pracital nuts and bolts of the sex lives of gay men and lesbian women. Men do not arrive fully formed individuals to fully formed individual women and start a relationship as a overt cooperation-formal-contract. Your boyfriend didnt show up to the relationship fully formed and not asking you if you want a glass of water, and you didn't show up to the relationship fully formed wanting a glass of water (or well I just wanted him to ask to show he cares). YOU grew INTO that dynamic together. That was not something that was "already there", which then "happened to you", it was a dynamic that you let come into being. It is not a reflection of some universal truth about Men and Relationships and Women as these large metaphysical categories. It is your relationship, and half of it or more, is you. Not even a reflection. What people arrive to the relationship as is half-people, cripples, half-finished, poorly put together, scrambling to make it work. What you CAN do together is to become whole, to grow into something better together. But if you expect people to arrive "finished", as "good people", then you will do the opposite, and deteriorate together, and develop a dynamic that cycles you through anxiety and frustration and pettiness