We’re in an 8 month relationship. She is my first girlfriend.
She has this thing where she takes hours, and I mean hours to wake up every time. So every time I wake her up, I need to come back every 20 minutes, and try to wake her up again, or otherwise she’ll sleep until 3-4 PM. She’s very grumpy whenever I try to wake her up and as soon as she wakes up, she’s all over her phone.She has a daily screen time of 12 + hours on average.I told her both of those things bother me, and she said:”Just because you don’t spend time on your phone doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to”, which I totally agree with, but, like, when I leave the room to grab a drink, literally for a minute, she’s already all over her phone. I just feel like it’s unhealthy.And about the sleep thing, she said I don’t let her rest (she sleeps for 12+ hours every day), and I stopped even bothering to wake her up.
Today she refused to eat the food I made for her because it’s too oily, and I understand, she’s trying to keep her diet clean, and got angry and said I’m going home. (My plate was less oily than hers, but she wouldn’t even eat my plate).
On occasions I feel like walking on eggshells when talking with her. She can get angry out of the blue and that can last from minutes to hours, depending what the reason is. A few days ago she got mad because I didn’t tell her it’s raining, although I was bed-ridden and sleeping because I had a fever. She got really angry and I spent the whole evening trying to cheer her up.
Sometimes, she’ll just leave/ignore me when things don’t go her way. Whenever I don’t want to do what she wants to do (e.g walk, since I had epididymitis) she gets upset and says “fine” , “I’ll just walk myself”, “You never want to do the things I want to do”, although ever since the relationship started I’ve been trying to please her.
Recently, I feel like we’ve been growing apart. She’s on her weight-loss journey and I’m in my first internship program and we both just focus on ourselves, seeing each other less and less.
Today, after the food argument, we talked about this. I told her about the things that have been bothering me and I told her I’m not really enjoying the relationship all that much. She said, maybe you should find someone that was raised by parents like yours (my parents are very toxic and I’ve been verbally abused throughout my life, and I still live with them since I can’t afford to live by myself) and that really hurt. She said she can’t change, and that she thinks I’m looking for someone like myself, and that there are other parents like mine, that can raise the kind-of children like I am. I don’t know whether that was an insult pointed towards me, or my parents, but it wasn’t a nice thing to say.
I’m unsure whether I’d want to be with a lazy person, and I’m unsure whether she’s lazy – that’s a subjective thing. But to me, spending most of your time on your phone and sleeping 12+ hours a day is laziness. She is VERY supportive of me, she encourages me and she helps out when needed. She’s in general a sweet soul but I’m not sure we’re meant for each other as we have different values and views. Should I try to make it work since I love her, and sincerely enjoy most of the moments we spend, or should I call it quits and just work on myself?
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TL;DR :
My girlfriend always wants things to go her way, and in case they don’t, she’ll make sure to let me know how unpleased she is. This happens almost every time she makes a compromise. She spends most of her time on her phone, and sleeps for 12+ Hours. I Talked to her about these things but she doesn’t seem to want to change. Am I overreacting?
29 comments
My man, you’re probably not going to love hearing this.
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Your girlfriend sucks. Sorry to be so blunt, but she sounds borderline abusive in her treatment of you. You want to spend the rest of your life tethered to an angry, bitter, social media junkie? Because that isn’t a happy life.
You deserve happiness. You deserve to feel appreciated for all that you do. There are women out there who are nothing like this. Find one of them. Let this one sort out her issues herself.
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Best of luck to you
She sounds toxic and abusive. You mentioned that you were raised by toxic and abusive parents, so this situation might be “comfortable” for you — meaning, it’s what you’re used to and familiar with. But it’s not good for you.
i don’t get why you feel responsible for waking her up or how much she uses her phone. But, she sounds like an asshole.
You should break up. You two are SO young, have been together only 8 months, and have totally different ways you want to live your lives. It’s clearly not a great match, you can have awesome times and very strong feelings for people who are not good matches!! This is good practice for the future when you will sadly have to end relationships with other people who are also not good matches in some ways but who are much much nicer to be around.
So the whole point of dating is that you’re supposed to try out people. They shouldn’t be this much grief this early in a relationship. This should be the honeymoon phase. Break up date around. Find someone new.
If you want permission to break up, you have it. But if she sleeps 12+ hours a day she needs to see a doctor and get evaluated for things like hypothyroidism. That’s not normal.
Don’t base the relationship on who you want her to be, but as she is right now.
If you have to post on Reddit about your early twenties relationship, probably best to take break from each other.
She sounds so awful.
Besides all the other red flags, I’m just gonna talk about the sleep.
I dated a heavy sleeper and it became my responsibility to wake him up for work or family stuff, and god forbid emergencies.
I had to slowly wake him up for hours, he was so mean the whole time he was waking up. He was often late getting to anything, and would get mad at me for not waking him up sooner.
I had no idea how to wake him up and trying to wake him everyday would be the biggest anger of my day, and I began to resent him so much.
I’m in a better relationship, he sets alarms, wakes up, and is super sweet even when he’s in that tired-grumpy- early morning state. I think of my ex sleeping for hours while I was both angry and scared just dealing with waking them up. I’m so grateful now.
How does she support herself if she sleeps 12 hours a day then is on her phone another 12 hours?
It just sounds like you two are incompatible. You’re supposed to enjoy being around your partner.
Yes, you should break up. However she wants to live is how she wants to live, you sound like you’re trying to be her new father. Stop it. Be selfish and take care of yourself. This behavior would also be a huge turnoff for me, if my partner wasn’t interested in living life and just wanted to sleep and be on her phone. it’s a nah for me
OP it sounds like your girlfriend could be depressed. Perhaps that’s why she lays in bed all the time and on her phone, nevertheless she should not be treating you with such disrespect and nastiness.
It also sounds like you guys are incompatible. If you aren’t enjoying the relationship “all that much” and she has said herself she can’t change, what makes you think you should stay?
Sounds like you don’t like her very much. Which, based on your description here, sounds reasonable — y’all sound like very different people and she doesn’t sound great from this post. Y’all should break up. Simple
She’s not entirely wrong. You do want her to be someone she just isn’t. She has her own interests and daily habits that she doesn’t want to change. It seems like you would do better with someone whose hobbies and interests align with yours.
“She’s in general a sweet soul…”
Nope, nope, nope. You haven’t described anything sweet, kind, or supportive about her. She sounds mean spirited and cruel. Please protect yourself—dump her.
Sleeps for 12+ hours everyday and uses phone for 12+ hours each day? When does she have time to focus on work? Your relationship? Exercise? Sounds like she needs to focus on exercising to help with the sleepiness and other stuff.
Even without the other stuff, she doesn’t sound nice. Honestly, early on in the relationship, people are at their nicest. Do you really want to live like this forever?
She’s been diagnosed with anxiety and is using her phone to cope with anxious feelings rather than dealing with them in a healthy manner
Genuinely sounds like she’s either got another underlying medical issue or her anxiety is a lot worse than either of you are aware
If these are the issues, I’d recommend bringing all this up to her and tell her she either get help and find better coping mechanisms for her anxiety OR acknowledge that she doesn’t care to change anything but her accepting her current lifestyle and behavior doesn’t align with your values
1. You’re 20 and she’s you’re first gf. If you’re not overjoyed with the feelings of first love, she’s probably not right for you.
2. She shows no inclination to change and make things better.
3. She needs to see a doctor and a therapist. Sleeping til 3pm and spending 12h/day on her phone sounds like depression or illness.
4. You should never call your partner “lazy”. It’s disrespectful. You can ask her to change; you can ask her to get help to change; or you can leave. You can’t stay and insult her.
Honestly, OP, it sounds like you’ve done what lots of people do when they’ve been raised by toxic parents. Namely, repeat the toxic pattern by partnering up with people who are just like those toxic parents who taught you everything you know about relationships.
Your gf sounds toxic af, and you should absolutely go from considering ending it to actually ending it. That’s a good self-preservation instinct you have there, and even though you may not historically have listened to it, you’re able and allowed to do so now.
This relationship isn’t working out for you. Time to call it.
This, my friend, is borderline abusive. I would be getting out of dodge.
She’s a nightmare dude, leave her.
There’s no way you wrote all that out and still think there’s a chance this is savable. Just end the relationship and dont let yourself pile up all these negative feelings, it’s unhealthy.
>she takes hours, and I mean hours to wake up every time. So every time I wake her up, I need to come back every 20 minutes, and try to wake her up again, or otherwise she’ll sleep until 3-4 PM. She’s very grumpy whenever I try to wake her up
Waking her up isn’t your job. After you’ve tried to wake her up twice, leave her alone to wake up whenever she musters enough motivation.
>she’s all over her phone.She has a daily screen time of 12 + hours on average.I told her both of those things bother me, and she said:”Just because you don’t spend time on your phone doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to”, which I totally agree with, but, like, when I leave the room to grab a drink, literally for a minute, she’s already all over her phone.
This isn’t something you should try to control. If she wants to be on her phone for 16 hours a day then let her. You can encourage her to do other things but don’t keep nagging her about it. Whether you yourself are alright having a partner that is on their phone all day is up to you.
>Today she refused to eat the food I made for her because it’s too oily,
This is totally normal.
>Sometimes, she’ll just leave/ignore me when things don’t go her way.
This is also totally normal. Healthy couples will often compromise or make exceptions if doing an activity they don’t like still means spending time with their partner… but it really depends on the couple. Many couples have wildly different interests and activities with very little overlap and can make things work.
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Two things jump out at me:
1 – I think you should consider the possibility that you might be more codependent than is healthy
2 – The level of interaction (or lack thereof) and disagreement could be a symptom of just having moved in together… but is a bad sign for a relationship that is only 8 months old.
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You guys might be growing apart. Moving in at 8 months at 21 years of age is moving pretty dang fast. Too fast for a first relationship in my opinion. How much longer left on your lease?
Oh, dude, no. If you want to break up, do that. I would.
But if you do stay, why are you taking responsibility for when she gets out of bed and what she eats and how much she uses her phone? Do not take that on. Go do what you want to do during the day, and if she’s not up in time then do it without her. And go to bed when you want to, and if she complains that you didn’t spend any time together, you say “well this is when I need to go to sleep so if you’re going to sleep until 3pm then we’ll have this much of a window to hang out.”
And feeding her? If she’s on a weight loss journey and shoots down what you make her, then just make your own food? Or, offer her food and if she says no thanks, then just say “ok” and eat it yourself?? Like you don’t have to justify your food or make her eat. Just… eat it yourself and let her figure it out.
She has a bunch of negative traits so if it were me I’d be out of there. But you also seem to have a lot of boundary issues that you should work on so your next situation an be better.
We only have your side of the story here, so it’d be unfair to judge her without knowing more in depth details about why she does what she does. You should break up. Neither of you get enjoyment out of the relationship. It’s just a convenience thing at this point, since you’ve said yourself that neither of you truly have time to focus on a relationship right now.
I think it’s arduous & unnecessary to try to change people. Either accept your partner’s sleep schedule & associated habits, or break up.
It is also worth noting that she may be depressed. Sleeping more than 9 hours a day is unhealthy. But again you shouldn’t try to change or medicalize your partner without their input.
Everybody has flaws. A part of navigating relationships is learning what flaws you can & cannot handle in your life.
As this is your first relationship, you may have a lot of things to unpack about yourself & your preferences.
It’s ok to end a relationship because you don’t think she’s a good match for you…in fact, that’s the best reason.
There are plenty of really lovely, kind people out there who also wouldn’t be a good match for you. Just because you break up with someone, doesn’t mean you think they are a horrible person with no redeeming qualities. Just kindly tell her…..
>She’s in general a sweet soul but I’m not sure we’re meant for each other
Tell her you both have tried to make it work but your just not each others forever person. You can love someone and have a lot of affection for them and still not be suitable for a long term relationship.
Dude. Your girlfriend is an ASSHOLE. I’m exhausted just reading about you dealing with her. Telling you to find someone who was “raised by parents like yours” is a big ol’ red flag – she’s using very personal info that you shared about your life against you just to be mean. The good news is that you’re learning an important lesson in what NOT to put up with from a partner. I vote for “call it quits and work on yourself”.