TL;DR: My gf and I have been together for a year and it is becoming extremely difficult handling her avoidant attachment style and journey of self healing and growth. Communication is not easy, and the smallest situations can scale to explosive very quickly and it’s just triggering and exhausting.
My gf and I have been together for about a year now and she is an avoidant and I am an anxious attachment style.
As our relationship goes on, I am starting to find it is becoming very difficult, almost burdensome, to be supportive.
At first it was an understanding between the two of us that our attachment styles required a compromise, if you will, so we worked on making that happen. However, its kind of just been the same and its always me being ready to talk, and trying to give her time, but that time goes from 30 mins, to hours, to days, and the start of it could be something like I didn’t show her enough love so she now feels unloved because I wasnt talking enough when I get home from work (despite conversations and communication to preemptively help avoid this stuff, like maybe I have a project at work and we talk about it the week prior so we both understand.)
She’s been in therapy the last 6 months or so, going regularly every week, and thats great. Im sure most people would love to see something like that, and I did too, but now Im just exhausted. She spends a lot of time in therapy talking about her family, childhood traumas causing this, and I really do understand it, and Im trying my best to be patient.
Some days things are fine, no issues arise, and small situations get squashed easily. The next day, its a full scale emotional breakdown and Im up until 2am trying to put out fires, being 90% of the communication, guiding the conversation, helping her sort her emotions, trying to get her out of a self-loathing state where every response is just “idk.” At the end of it all, Im sure it isnt easy for her, and I really am proud of her, but it just gets so overbearing and it makes me feel like Im not doing good enough.
I really need help. What do I do? Im not aiming to breakup with her, I would like to be there for her and support her but I would love some guidance on how we can navigate this better.