I’ve been with my girlfriend for just over two years. In that time we’ve spent so much time together, gotten through lockdowns, moved in together, and gone on multiple trips away and done lots of fun stuff together. We both agree we want to live an exciting life before marriage and children might be on the cards, but every few months she has a panic where she thinks she is being suppressed, that I’m holding her back, that I don’t make any effort and that she does, and that our life is boring.
Today she said I don’t ‘challenge’ her enough, to get out of her comfort zone and try new things, that she wants to have the best life possible with someone on the same page, that she doesn’t want to be in a relationship ‘for the sake of it’, she says that due to her personality she needs to be kept entertained, that she’s a ‘whirlwind’ and I’m a ‘Labrador’. She is also dead set on moving abroad somewhere like Spain or Portugal (we live in UK), and I’m not sure I can see myself doing this for a number of reasons. She is simply annoyed at me that she’s stuck here and that I’m keeping her here, when she could be living abroad. I don’t think this is fair as we met here and are both from here and have lived here pretty much all our lives. I have never held her back from anything and never would do.
I don’t know what to say or do anymore as every 1-2 months we have this conversation. The first time I put it upon myself to start making more of an effort and make sure we are doing exciting things and keeping things ‘spicy’. But it just seems to go unnoticed. However I feel like a lot of the time she just expects things of me and doesn’t bear any responsibility herself to lead a fun life. She and I have both planned trips before, we regularly have date nights in and out, we do fun stuff. But it seems like no matter how much we do it won’t be enough. My girlfriend thinks she is the one making all the effort in our relationship and in my eyes this is simply not true at all. I feel like I can’t win sometimes, I make suggestions on things for us to do and try and be spontaneous, but when the moment comes she either doesn’t want to do them or says she’s too busy or wants to leave after 30 minutes. On one hand she says she hates the house and city we live in and doesn’t want to be here, but when she’s away (she travels sometimes for work) she says that she can’t wait to come home and that ‘I’m her home’, or simply didn’t want to go in the first place. On an evening she says can we find a good new crime drama to watch and get cosy, but when we do that for a day all of a sudden we have a boring life because she doesn’t want to just sit in and watch TV in the evenings. She also stares at her phone for most of it anyway.
When we sit down and have a conversation about this all and I try and remind her of fun things that we do do, or how busy we’ve been recently with work and family and friends and how we sometimes can’t help it, that it’s normal to be more comfortable with each other after two years and not every day is going to be an fun exciting adventure, and she also needs to make effort to do things if she wants to, she accuses me of being defensive and flipping the issue back to her. Our personalities are different: I’m very content and laid back with having a quiet evening or cracking on with my hobbies. She on the other hand always needs to be doing something, but also doesn’t really have any hobbies. She says her work is her hobby (and napping on me)
Location-wise, she’s making out like she’ll never be happy with me here and that she wants to move somewhere sunny, hot, with different culture and people (I totally get that someone would want to do this – the UK is up shit street at the moment with cost of living crisis etc). However not once in all the talking about moving away has she tried to sell it to me, knowing that I’d find it difficult. She loves the heat and sun, she can speak the languages, and her job means she can work from anywhere in the world all the time. I don’t have any of these. It seems to be all about what she wants with no regard for how it might be for me, but that doesn’t seem to matter for her because she’s so set on it. She says she’ll compromise, that we live abroad for half the year and here for the other half. When it’s obviously not that easy – we definitely can’t afford to have a property in two countries and it’s unlikely I’ll ever find a job in my field that will allow me to work from anywhere I want all the time. She owns her own business which is why she can.
She tells me yesterday that she had her ‘head turned’ by some random guy on her flight home who was telling her he was trying to get his wife to move abroad as well. That wasn’t very nice to hear when I’m at home looking after her dogs for the weekend as well as my lonely and constantly in physical pain mother.
We both have friends and family here and I have also moved around so much in my life that I’d be scared to make that jump, and be afraid to come back if it didn’t work out. She also has two little dogs, that I do so much for and have done so much for, when they aren’t my responsibility. My love language is acts of service and where I don’t expect things back and enjoy doing anything and everything I can to show I love her and ease her burden of responsibility, I don’t really get much gratitude which is difficult. Her love language is words of affirmation, she tells me she loves me a lot.
I guess I was just looking for advice on how to proceed and what to say to her and what others things of the above. This relationship is very much a rollercoaster and is up one day and down the next. The other night I went to get her from the airport after two days and we were both buzzing to see each other and cuddled all evening, after texting all weekend and saying how happy we were. The next day was the complete opposite.
I am very happy with her because most of the time things are great, we get on so well and have lots of fun together, and have a fantastic sex life and feel very close to each other. But then situations like these come and she becomes so nonchalant to our love, and insists that maybe love isn’t enough and that I don’t make any effort.
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TL;DR Girlfriend thinks I don’t make any effort when I think I do, and also wants to move abroad and believes I’m holding her back because I’m unsure.
29 comments
Why put up with it and Let her go.. Your dead weight to her so f*ck fixing that.
I don’t think there’s anything you can do if she’s decided that she wants to breakup with you. Might be time for both of you to move on.
Grant her her wish and leave her. Save yourself.
I doubt someone who doesn’t make an effort will go to Reddit and write a lengthy post about his situation where his girlfriend accuses him of things just to get an easy way out so she can move abroad.
My instinct calls bullshit.
My instinct says she’s projecting her guilt onto you.
I was in the exact same situation it’s crazy. What I realized is that no matter what I did for the relationship, it would never be enough and she would always find the next thing to complain about while intermittently telling me I was the love of her life. I’d cut your losses but I know it’s not always that easy. Best wishes.
Honestly, she sounds like a pain in the butt and likely not worth the stress and effort. I mean, is it really worth it? Sounds as if two people thinking that they want to build a long-term relationship on a terrible foundation.
It sounds like she’s come to believe that you two simply aren’t compatible, which might explain why she’s making no real effort to fix anything. It’s not to say that she doesn’t like you, but she believes that this relationship is a dead end. She’s giving you tasks so she can feel like she’s “working on things” or making an effort, but when you do them, you get no reaction, because she knows this doesn’t actually fix anything. If I had to guess, she ended the counseling because she doesn’t want to be honest about how she really feels because she’s not ready to move on just yet. Right now, she’s “stuck” in the sense that she’s not willing to make an honest effort to fix what she has, nor willing to make an honest effort to move on to something else.
I don’t have a lot of hope for this situation, but I guess I’d start be talking about what she’d like her life to be like a year from now if she could do whatever she wanted without regard to money or anything else. See how compatible your goals are and go from there. Ask her what she feels she’s doing to make the relationship work, and what she feels you’re not doing. Ask for specific examples. Let her say everything she wants to say without interrupting or challenging her on anything, even if you know it’s bullshit. How much she’s rewriting reality will tell you how far apart you really are, and if you challenge her while she’s talking, she’s not going to be even close to honest. If you get a lot of wishy washy “I don’t knows”, then either she has no idea what she wants and needs to figure it out (maybe IC for her alone), or she knows, and just doesn’t want to tell you because she’s not ready to be alone.
Stop chasing her. She clearly doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you. You deserve to be with someone that actually wants to be with you.
Honestly, it will probably surprise you how much you’ll feel better when she’s out of your life.
Guarantee when you two break up she’ll still be bored sometimes. She just won’t have you to blame for it.
Don’t take her back if she comes crawling back.
Grass is greener syndrome, shes spouting buzz words and shit that just makes me ask “What does that even mean?”
Shes probably seeing 30 approaching fast and feels like her life is meaningless and that she hasn’t done anything. Like everyone is meant to jetset around the world and see everything.
In the end she’s probably just going to hurt you. Find someone to expend your love and energy on that actually finds you interesting and worthy.
Frankly, she sounds exhausting. She sounds restless and is constantly fantasizing about changing her life. Even if she moved, eventually she would find that place “boring” too and need to move on again. This pattern, this type of personality, isn’t typically soothed by a change for long. This is not someone who is ever going to settle with you somewhere.
I think you need to consider whether it’s healthy for you to be a relationship with someone who constantly acts as though you are not enough for them. You may love her, but this isn’t someone who you can build something with and it would be better for you both to end it.
If she wants to break up, there is nothing you can do.
It does not seem like you did anything wrong!
“Today she said I don’t ‘challenge’ her enough”
I shudder at the thought of having a partner who would challenge me! I’m challenged at work, with the kids, doing exercise, travelling…
A partner provides a secure spot!
Encourage her to move to Spain for a school year. It’s incredibly easy to be an auxiliar through the Spanish government in a school here in Spain. If your relationship survives, great. Either way, she’ll have an adventure.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
She’s already made the decision to go a certain way and she’s looking for the right time to leave you. She’s told you the truth that she doesn’t see you in her future (regardless of the reasoning). She feels being with you would be settling hence her comment – she doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you just for the sake of it.
Right now you’re Sisyphus pushing that boulder uphill. She is waiting for you to drop it again so she feels justified in leaving.
When you’ve had enough of feeling like nothing you do is ever good enough, end it. You don’t have to wait for her to do that.
There doesn’t need to be something explicitly wrong with a relationship to end it. She’s your typical case of ‘it’s not bad enough to leave but it’s not good enough to stay’.
She fundamentally isn’t happy with you despite all you do and it’s not your fault. You’re not her person and she isn’t yours.
She’s holding herself back. She doesn’t have the wherewithal to plan and do all these fun things she wants to do. But it’s easier to blame* you than to acknowledge that. There are people who manage to work and travel and do exciting things, but it takes more time and energy than watching an adventure on TikTok. I think you should say to her “Look, we both know you want to do more with your life. There’s nothing holding you back now. Go on, have a blast, I wish you well.” I guarantee in a year she’ll still be in the UK, still unhappy, scrolling through her phone wishing she did more.
Looked is stopped reading because it’s not your job to entertain her. The end. It’s not your job to challenge her and force her to try new things. You’re not holding her back. She’s using you as an excuse for not having done these things.
Nothing you can do at that point but move on. Find someone else who appreciates who you are and sees a long term future with you.
I find that the travel industry likes to advertise with this “You are unhappy now, and you won’t be happy until you travel.” It’s a common strategy I notice when I come across the usual travel ad. Social media plays into this. All in all, she wants to talk to guys in Spain and Portugal, and she’s been thoroughly brainwashed to believe that her life is miserable. That’s how many relationships dissolve nowadays; social media convinces people that their lives are not fulfilling, and sadly, women are more prone to being influenced by social media. It seems that your gf is fully immersed in the social media sphere, so this comes as no surprise. Best of luck to you buddy.
Hate to say it, but this is 100% my previous 4 year relationship. It ended a year overdue. It’s clear you love her but stuff is not gonna improve. Frustrations will only grow and rejection will make you feel worse and worse.
> she says that due to her personality she needs to be kept entertained, that she’s a ‘whirlwind’ and I’m a ‘Labrador’.
She called you a dog! I would not get past that, it’s so condescending and arrogant of her. She sounds to me like she thinks she’s really exciting, but she actually just has manic episodes that she thinks are cute.
I’m sure she has some explanation about labradors being loyal or dependable or whatever, for why that wasn’t a total insult. But it was. She’s calling you dumb. This woman doesn’t respect you or treat you well, and I think you shouldn’t put up with it. And she’ll probably be unhappy and complaining wherever she moves to, bc the problem is her.
One of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that love is not enough period. Love is necessary, but not sufficient. Compatibility, life goals, sexuality, logistics and just general circumstances are just as if not more important to a satisfying, healthy relationship as love is.
I was in a very similar position in my marriage. I was fighting hard to hold it together and finally she just asked for a divorce because we just wanted different things. She even said I’d done everything she’d asked me to, but that wasn’t the real problem after all – we just wanted different things. After the divorce, I realized how unhappy I had been and it ended up being literally the best thing that I ever did.
I’m not saying my situation is your situation, but I am saying life will go on and you will find love again. You deserve to be with someone who wants to be with you and it can be so much better.
I think you deserve much better, for what it’s worth! She’s supposedly bored all the time but doesn’t have hobbies? You’re in a serious relationship but she doesn’t actually consider how a huge move would affect you? I don’t know, it sounds like she’s making her inner turmoil *your* problem and it’s fine that she’s young and stuck between the fantasy of an exciting life versus a comfortable one- I’ve been spending most of my 20s bouncing between those two goals, brainstorming how to combine security and excitement, I get it. But it really isn’t fair of her to put this blame on you. You can’t control her moods or her receptiveness to your plans and gifts and acts of service. You can’t give her what she wants because she doesn’t *know* what she wants and there isn’t anything you can do to fix that. The goal posts will keep on moving for you as long as she’s unhappy with where she is (sounds like she has a bit of Grass is Greener syndrome going on). If it’s worth it for you to wait it out I won’t tell you to leave but I do think it’s worth considering what you get out of this relationship and if it’s worth being made to feel like a burden for just being able to be happy where you are- something she clearly hasn’t mastered yet.
Honestly, i didn’t read really anything beyond
>every few months she has a panic where she thinks she is being suppressed, that I’m holding her back, that I don’t make any effort and that she does, and that our life is boring.
This is immature, annoying, and shows enough weird resentment that I’d have trouble planning a whole future around this person.
It’s pretty common for me to feel bored in my life and like I need to do more. There’s a million ways I’ve dealt with this, but I haven’t once decided it was my partners fault. If I truly thought that enough to voice it to them, it would probably be during a breakup conversation. I wouldn’t just whine at them and make them feel bad over feelings I had, that they really haven’t done anything to cause other than existing in my unfulfilling life.
The weird blame shifting of making you the responsible party for the fact that she’s apparently wasting her life is gross, and I honestly wouldn’t put up with that.
If she loves you but she needs to move abroad and knows you can’t or won’t, it’s fine for her to end things. But with the history you described, I’d feel like I dodged a bullet and wouldn’t leave the door open for her to ever walk back in my life.
It’s okay brother, they end this way sometimes. Let it end gracefully and with kindness and love. This has obviously been an important relationship for you, take the next period of time to explore yourself, your interests, and your capacities to be a good man. Build your self up for a bit. When the time is right your next partner will emerge.
It’s time to accept that this relationship is going different directions. With her literally moving abroad to pursue a different life path.
Be grateful for the joyful times shared and growth you’ve both experienced together.
Some relationships aren’t meant to last a lifetime and it doesn’t take away any of the value or meaningfulness of a 2 year beautiful connection.
There’s nothing you can do at this point other then offer her support and express desire to continue remaining friends if that is in both of your shared interest to maintain connection in that way.
After the natural grieving process around separating. You will definitely find a new relationship and can look for one more compatible for a lifetime bond if that is what you are seeking. Plenty of amazing women exist who are ready to settle down for life, your current gf obviously isn’t one of those women. Blessings to both of your next life chapters.
She sounds like someone who can never be happy with what they have.
That was me in my early 20s (male). It takes a heartbreak and a few long term relationships to understand the difference between incredible romantic honeymoon love (like in the movies) and deep, serious commitment and trust kind of love. she needs to learn the adage ‘you don’t know what you have until it’s gone’… sorry you were the trainer boyfriend.
my 2¢
She is not the person for you. Whether she wants to break up with you or not, if you stay together you will not make each other happy.
This if your first relationship. Let me tell you that holding on to something that isn’t working isn’t going to end up with happily ever after.
Let her go. It doesn’t matter if she is right or wrong, whether she can make herself happy or not. She’s not happy. And she blames it on you. Find someone who wants what you have to give.
Jesus, I stopped reading after the 2nd paragraph, your gf sounds like such a headache.
> every few months she has a panic where she thinks she is being suppressed, that I’m holding her back, that I don’t make any effort and that she does, and that our life is boring
You should want better for *yourself* than this.
Why are you continuing to stay in a relationship with someone who thinks you are holding her back?
Cut your losses, focus on yourself for a while then go find someone who can **appreciate** everything you bring to the table and doesn’t have these type of *doubts* about you.