Background: My girlfriend has huge trust issues with me. I’ve never cheated or been unfaithful, and lately we had a fight that seems too big to recover from. According to her, the reasons she doubts me started with a situation from months ago; she found a hair clip from someone I used to date, someone from before I was ever with her. I understood her because who wouldn’t think I was cheating after finding a hair clip that doesn’t belong to you. I simply did not know it was there and didn’t take the precautions to rid my apartment of anything from the past. She forgave me and gave me the benefit of the doubt.
There were other instances where she doubted me, like how she noticed I kept taking my phone with me everywhere I went, which I stopped because I have nothing to hide. We talked about it and I simply don’t take my phone with me anymore anymore, and neither does she. Then there’s the time she dug in my trash can and thought the old used condoms in there were from someone else I had sex with, when they were really just ours from two days ago. We both have required a lot of reassurance in the relationship bc we both are deeply insecure.
The fight we had recently was completely my fault. I had confused a date I had in the past, a sushi date, and for some reason I thought it was with her. Well it was not. It was with someone I dated months before I ever was with my girlfriend. She was mad at me, and I felt absolutely terrible.
Now this is where we have a huge fight, and she tells me that I When there’s an issue i caused, I tend to make it about myself, and disregard her feelings. She says I break down and it causes her to comfort me and thus putting her feelings aside.
She told me that I say I take ownership but never 100% do. That I think very egocentric.
She is tired of keeping this relationship together. Of doing all the work when we face tough situations, and according to her, she did it because she loves me. Because she wanted me to feel loved.
I messed up during the fight and yelled at her and called her f**cking crazy. And she once again said how I always get upset when she gets upset about something I have done wrong. I was angry, because to this day I had so much confidence that I was a good boyfriend that prioritized his girlfriends feelings, I seriously thought we were okay. I was upset because she kept saying how I “never” listen to her, and I “always” make it about me, when I was often checking in with her to see if it could work on something to better serve her. It still doesn’t justify me yelling at her, so i apologized. I wouldn’t ever want my future kids to tolerate getting yelled at like that by their partner. I felt terrible for escalating the situation.
My confusion is, she admitted to self sabotaging, how she never said anything to me when we had arguments. She would make me believe we had resolved the problem, but it turns out she was simply doing all the work to keep us together because she loved me?? I repeatedly have asked her, “is there something I could improve on as your partner?” And she would say nothing. She would say I’m doing a good job
So I looked inward, and yes, I do have a tendency to be self absorbed. And I see that because my mother is that way with me, and I know she has played a massive influence in the way I self express. My girlfriend said she wants me to simply not belittle her feelings during an argument, and make it about myself. She hates that she had to tell me this in order for me to figure it out and do it, Because according to her, she can’t tell me how to properly love me because I should already know. It wouldn’t be unconditional love.
I just want to be better because I genuinely love this woman. I want to be able to meet her emotional needs and it’s just been so hard to organize my thoughts through all of this.
TL;DR!
My girlfriend wants me to stop being self centered and account for her feelings when we argue. I thought I was doing that till recently because she did not communicate this when I asked on how I can improve in the past.
Questions;
Is she not communicating enough with me?
Am I supposed to know or expect her to tell me when I make mistakes?
Am I not holding myself accountable?
6 comments
>When there’s an issue i caused, I tend to make it about myself, and disregard her feelings
Is she referring to the issues you mentioned in your post previous to this bit? Because you didn’t cause any of those. Her own insecurity and paranoia did that.
Her coming across a hair clip is not an issue, your taking your phone everywhere is not an issue (what else are phones for?!), her deciding that used condoms she found by digging through the trash were used by yourself on someone else is not an issue. But she has created these issues out of nothing.
She dug through the used condoms in the trash to accuse you of cheating??
This is totally bonkers and not at all acceptable behaviour despite how insecure she may or may not be. She is actively looking for reasons to not trust you. That is not a foundation for a healthy relationship.
Any one who digs through the trash to find something to pick a fight about is not the person holding the relationship together. Your girlfriend is delusional. She needs to be single and sort her shit out.
I’ve seen similar situations between my friends in the past, I think if you both care for each other and actively work on communication this can definitely be fixed but it’ll require work on both your parts. I’d suggest a conversation where you both agree to work on this (couples’ counseling is probably a good place to start if you have time/money but the couple I’m thinking of worked through this without it if you don’t)—in particular, she needs to start communicating more when she thinks that your getting upset about her being upset is preventing her from voicing her needs, but you also need to recognize that this can be a real issue for her/in relationships generally. Accepting the post at face value, I’d say that the main difficulty seems to be a potential lack of interest in doing the necessary work on her part to improve your communication since obviously communication is a two-way street and not magically fixed by “unconditional love”.
A few of the instances you mentioned are absolute red flags. Being insecure is one thing and searching through your trash to see if you slept with someone else is something completely different. Sit back and think if this is something you guys can get over. A relationship without an ounce of trust isn’t gonna go well.
From what you’ve mentioned, I think there’s a huge lack of communication on both ends. She holds back and doesn’t get across how she feels in order to not hurt you. But on doing so, she ends up bottling up everything which might explode on a completely unrelated subject. Sit her down and reassure her that if she brings up something that you did that hurt her, you’re not going to invalidate her. She needs to call you out the moment she gets hurt and not months later.
Secondly, on your end, it’s understandable why you’d feel hurt when words like “never” and “always” are used. But like you said, you do have a tendency to get more upset than she does during fights which leads to her ending up consoling you even if you’re the one at fault. Work on it.
A few things you can do is say, “I’m getting really overwhelmed/the argument is getting really heated rn, can we take a few minutes and think this through and get back to discussing this then? ” Or “I know I’ve hurt you, give me a few minutes to process this and we’ll get back to discussing how I don’t repeat this behavior. ”
But she does need therapy for her trust issues. It’s not normal at all. You can be with her while she’s getting better but there’s only so much you can do.
I’ve been in a similar situation where I thought that I didn’t have to defend myself because I was telling the truth.
As a result I didn’t really sympathize with my girlfriend who was having all these thoughts in her head, because I thought the matter was over when I said the truth, and she seemed to accept that
Of course the reality is she still thinking all these things , and thinking that I keep making excuses etc.
Eventually, after a long time of being in a relationship that I thought we were both doing well and getting along, it came out that she never fully trusted me and thought I lied a lot on the relationship.
When I learned that, I had a sudden distaste for the relationship because I didn’t want to be in one where the other person thinks I’m telling lies all the time even though I’m still just telling the truth about things.
So in one of our big fights where she accused me of lying again, I just let the relationship die, without trying to expand on the truth that I was telling her.
I realized this was just a thing for her that she was just naturally a mistrustful person. It honestly sounds like your girlfriend is the same way, given how she even wants to look into the trash to find evidence of you doing something wrong.
I’ll cut to the chase: she’s got issues and you aren’t going to be able to ever reassure her enough. Don’t take on that burden. When you break it off, be super super kind to her.