Me and my girlfriend are long distance. We’ve been together for a year. There has rarely if ever been issues with us, well, that’s what I believed anyway. Still, we both were full of love for each other.
One thing my girlfriend struggles with is trust in general. Yesterday she accused me of lying about something that I insisted I didn’t do (genuinely very minor thing). We both agreed the situation wasn’t that deep. However, she did confess that there was one incident that I did something that deeply broke her trust. This was last September.
Basically, we met irl for the first time. I was over the moon about how it was going, and I posted pictures of us in the Long Distance subreddit. After so many years of feeling horrendous about romance I finally found somebody where it translated to reality. I was happy, I wanted to show my girl off, I wanted to validate my own years of insecurity.
However, once that high faded I realised that I’d actually betrayed her. She is a very private person. She hates anybody outside of her closest people seeing her, knowing about her etc. The fact is clocked for me that I posted her and the post got 2000 likes absolutely killed me for the remainder of the trip. I deleted it after a day, but I knew I’d screwed up. She never said anything about it, but then today said that she does use reddit and saw the posts. It gave her a panic attack, it made her feel very vulnerable and it’s been in her mind ever since it happened.
The other main issues was one to do with her new job coming up. She will have to work and study very hard, and she doesn’t know how much free time she will have when she starts. The last issue was to do with when I had a very bad period of mental health and I could not perform sexually. I will not go into more depth out of respect for her.
Ever since those incidents i knew I was wrong about them and made the effort to finally fix my mental health with medication. Months have passed and I have gladly let go of most of the anxiety that plagued my decision making and insecurities in the past.
However, my girlfriend still struggles to trust me with even minor things. I did bring up the issues I had also for which she also apologised, but ultimately this post is about me opening up about my own flaws and trying to move forward.
She told me that she needs a break from us. That she needs time to treat her trust issues and to see how her new job will be schedule wise when it starts in October. She said she needs time to heal and that when she feels ready that she wants us to start afresh so she can be fresh and revitalised instead of being insecure in our relationship.
I respected that need since I made her feel insecure with certain things. I did also mention that I would flat out not be able to do this if it involved us potentially talking to new people. She said she’s not interested in getting to know anybody, that her free time will be limited even if she did want to, and that she doesn’t want to lose me – she just needs time to refresh.
However, she also wants us to be friends. She wants us to behave how we did before we got together so the pressure is taken off. So she can just enjoy my presence without worrying and feeling untrustworthy about me romantically. She said that if we went on a non-contact break that she knows we’d drift apart.
We both ended our talk positive for our future. She mentioned me visiting her again, and we were both open, honest and vulnerable, but this is a very difficult situation for me to compute also. I shall respect her wishes, but I can’t pretend it won’t kill me not being able to be romantic with her. Maybe it won’t change much of our dynamic since we are long distance anyway. However, those little expressions of love kept me clinging on even when the distance became hard, and now that’s being removed completely, I don’t know how well I’ll cope.
Anyway, we are both hopeful this reset goes to plan, though in most cases I accept that these things often end up in full breakups. I’m not sure how to feel going forward. Right now I feel very numb albeit accepting, and I just want to let her heal, but I also don’t know how much I’ll batter my own mental health in the process.
**TL;DR: girlfriend has trust issues and struggles to trust me. She said she loves me but she needs to have a break from our romantic connection in order to heal. She still wants us to be friends and then to resume our relationship when she feels ready again**
1 comment
She wants to keep you on the hook until maybe she gets over herself.
Her trust issues are something she’s brought into the relationship and is punishing you with. Waiting almost a year to bring up your “betrayal” screams immaturity and dramatic.
If she’s not ready for a relationship after a year of being together, if she trusts you *less* after a year of being together, if she needs more space even though you’re long distance ,this thing sounds doomed.
Play friendsy if you want, but put a time frame on it.