Tldr: I really love my mostly wonderful girlfriend… but I don’t like the person I am when she is around.
I want to start by admitting that as upset as I am, I know and feel that my girlfriend of \~2 years is a wonderful person. I genuinely love her and the idea of hurting her is almost (maybe is) too much to bear.
But I feel incapable of having my emotional needs met in this relationship. I try to explain what I’m feeling and what I need, but I always have to rationalize my emotions… which I’m aware sometimes aren’t entirely rational. Otherwise she can’t understand them as valid to her (something she has made clear).
I know that she is a good person, and she truly loves and cares about me… (she has proven that beyond a doubt) but I feel like I’ve reached the point of just giving up on even trying to express anything.
She moved in with me temporarily. And during that time I became addicted to p*rn (Not even for s*xual reasons usually. I think it felt like something I could be private and alone in which I couldn’t get elsewhere) and dreaded coming home (I would stay at work until 7 or 8 some nights) because I was busy at work and she would mope and get annoyed at me if I tried to work from home to alleviate my stress. I tried to explain that if I was stressed by work I couldn’t be present and that my life stress kept me distracted to the point I got behind and I couldn’t cope with work stress.
She moved back to school and within a couple of weeks I am exercising again, my apartment is clean (for the first time since she moved in), I feel capable of socializing at work, I finally feel able to interact with my family again (she would pout if I spent too long on the phone with my mom). She couldn’t believe that I was able to clean and cook for myself, but honestly not dealing with constant stress helps. I no longer feel like an addict either….
I guess the problem is that as much as the above seems like I’m trying to blame her for my own struggles I am aware that I have failed myself by struggling to express and enforce boundaries in my relationship… I am just scared that when she moves back in (she plans to in a few months) that I will backslide into depression and apathy and continue in a self destructive path that harms us both. But I also don’t want us both to lose someone we love because I was too scared to properly enforce my own needs. I’m not sure if I’m here to vent or for advice but I just feel very unsure.
1 comment
Everyone needs to decompress in their own way. Your home was a safe haven until she had to move in, once she was there it was no longer a safe place for you to decompress from the stress of job/life.
The best relationships are with people that you can decompress around or that actually help you with this.
If you want to keep the relationship you may need a larger house or a man cave so you have your own space as you need it, but at the same time she needs to learn what you need from her in order to be able to relax at home.
I imagine you will get a lot of suggestions for couple therapy and it would be a good start.
At the very least she should be able to understand that you may need an hour to yourself when you get home or that she needs to not cling to you the moment you walk in.
She could just be so excited to see you at the end of the day that she can’t help herself but if you wanted to work on it I’m sure you could, she just has to realize that her actions are making it so you don’t want to come home because you know she’s there. It may sound really harsh, but it’s the truth.