That is familiar, that belief or concern haunted me for a long time. That I can't express my feelings right or that they don't matter to others. It felt horrible, to have that belief and not being able to escape it. A lot of my concern eventually got answered by things like MsLady above explained. Also, by other things, just overall a lot of studying my own feelings, other people's and so on. Just it comes together more over time. You have to see the entire relationship context with the other person, not just the one single situation or two or three single/specific situations. Then you are able to see better how the other person relates to you on the whole. It is possible they truly don't care or that you feel closer to them than they do to you, but it's also possible that they do care after all. Their actual intent and atittude and overall character also matters a lot. It is hard to explain better than this though.