Been dating her for 9 months. She is quite nice to me, but a few situations have made me doubt how truly selfless or kind she is and I’m not sure if I’m overreacting.
For instance, she has told me that she doesn’t make much of an “effort” to pay bus fares. The readers in my city are a bit wonky sometimes, and if they don’t read her card immediately she just gets in anyway and doesn’t care about it. When she told me that it actually sounded like a brag, which bothered me a lot.
Another one was last week: we ordered uber eats and the delivery person clearly had some trouble to read/understand instructions (maybe a recent immigrant with little English skills), and was also deaf (told us by text). He couldn’t figure out how to buzz up to my apartment so I decided to just go downstairs to pick it up. He was asking for other people’s help when I arrived, so I felt bad because I could tell he was really trying hard. My GF on the other hand was a bit upset that he was trying to do a job he wasn’t able to which could be disruptive. To be fair, she is in healthcare and her job involves finding out which activities/jobs are feasible for her patients, so she said she meant it in that sense. I still had a bad gut feeling that she just wasn’t being compassionate/kind enough to the guy.
There were other small situations like this too, and I feel like they make my feelings for her weaker somehow. I was raised by a narcissist mother and that made me into a people pleaser, so I think this might be clouding my judgement. Am I overreacting?
Tl;dr – GF is not as kind as I would like her to be in some situations and that affects how I feel about her. Not sure if I’m overreacting, though
5 comments
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want a partner who is kind or basically honest.
I think that’s minimum criteria for a decent human being.
The bus thing is whatever. But not to have even a shred of compassion for a person who can’t hear and is trying to earn a living in a new country is…yikes.
It’s hard to tell from the examples you gave, but it sounds like your gf isn’t really being rude or hurtful to others? We can’t all be perfect all the time, we’re badly wired monkeys who aren’t behaving ideally in all circumstances. The important part is wether she makes an effort to be compassionate and kind and how she deals with being criticized constructively. Like, if you pointed out that everybody else is paying for her bus rides, so that behavior is impacting you and others, would she flip her shit or take it with dignity and consideration?
I don’t want to read too much into that comment of yours, because every story is different. But is it possible, that because of your upbringing, you’re building resentment when your gf acts in ways you dislike, because you feel like you can’t talk to her in a critical way when she does something that bothers you – since you learned that the narcissist mother couldn’t be criticized?
Be that as it may, obviously you shouldn’t stay with someone whom you don’t truly love. But I wonder if maybe with more communication, this can be salvaged or if she’s truly a bit of an asshole.
I think a bigger issue is that you have only been together for 9 months and this has clearly been bothering you a lot for a long time. I don’t remember how long ago I saw a post about the exact same issue with the exact same bus example, and you seem to have made it from a different account, but you clearly haven’t been able to move past it in all that time. You had this problem, you got a bunch of feedback, you gave it time, and now you still have the same problem. If you’re not moving past it and you still aren’t comfortable with her, I don’t think you are going to become comfortable with her.
Maybe it’s clouding your judgement..
Or maybe you’re recognizing familiar behaviors and it’s giving you pause (which is very reasonable).
I think only time will help you discern which it really is. If she has some narcissistic tendencies, they will just continue to pop up, it’s inevitable.