I realize that I've shared a couple of "gift giving" stories which has given the impression that I am perhaps trying to buy my wife or meet her EN's improperly. If you read back through there are many stories of other things totally unrelated to gifts of any kind that were meant to show that I'm making an effort. A while back when we were just learning this stuff, my wife told me her #1 EN was romance. My exercise in giving thoughtful gifts was showing "effort". My wife is concerned that I just don't care about anything and has mentioned that the key element to much of her EN's, whether it be affection, DS, etc is "effort." On my end I felt that my efforts were either never received well or never led to my own EN's being met so I kind of "gave up." To answer your question my wife wants "affection", "conversation", and most of all "honesty". She interprets much of my affection for her as being thoughtful. Conversation isn't her talking and me pretending to listen, it is me looking her in the eyes and taking a genuine interest in what is meaningful to her. Honesty(this is the biggy) is me not clamming up or making faces when something is bothering me, it is telling her immediately how I'm feeling, or asking her if something is wrong rather than coming to my own conclusions. I realized that despite being an honest person, I was not being honest by withholding my feelings and keeping it bottled up inside. Keep in mind this discovery occurred yesterday about noon so the implementation of this honesty is still new. I have yet since that time yesterday withheld anything from my wife and will continue to do so.