TL;DR I’m in a relationship during one of the hardest academic years of our lives, so we kept deciding to have a mutual breakup to focus on exams, it never happened. It meant commitment was never 100%, I made the mistake of looking at another woman and it contributed to her insecurities. She never accepted my attempts at reassuring her by complimenting her appearance, even before I made that mistake. She’s tired of hearing that i love her. How do I reassure her, what do I say?
My girlfriend knows I love her, she sometimes throws out that she’s tired of hearing it when we argue. And when we do have conversations about her insecurities, I do my best to reassure her, but her response is often a sarcastic ‘okay’, or ‘thanks!’.
Our relationship situation is complicated, we’re in a final year of a stage of education so things are stressful in terms of exams. Because of that, she very early on came up with the idea that we’d mutually break up months before exams kicked in. This didn’t happen the first time because we both struggled to see each other in college daily and not be in love still – the same thing happened afterward. The only thing is, she was always the one very adamant about ending things, always looking to the next supposed ‘endpoint’.
For me, this always meant I knew she didn’t fully commit to feelings for me like I did – I loved her fully long before she did. And what this meant was, I never knew when the endpoint would actually be the end point. It meant I could never fully be committed to her because she wasn’t giving the same energy back.
On two occasions I looked at other women in our college while still in this weird timed relationship. I guess I was attracted to them physically, even though I wouldn’t want to be with them now or then, and I guess that had something to do with the fact that my actual relationship didn’t feel entirely like one.
My girlfriend knows about this, and it contributes to her insecurities. But even before, she didn’t respond well in general – this has just made it worse. I know I’m not great at compliments and expressing how I feel, but this understandably just comes across as me not being genuine to her, which is not the case at all.
It’s gotten to a point where I’m afraid to compliment her appearance because she’ll be sarcastic in response, and I can’t target other things like reassuring my love for her because she’s tired of hearing it. I know how I feel but she’s never cared or been worried about that part I guess.
So how do I get better at reassuring her about her appearance? What do I say?