(23M) my (22F) gf catastrophises things how can I respond appropriately?

Hi everyone,

I don’t want to sound like some kind of ignorant twerp who complains about his girlfriend ‘throwing things out of proportion’ and being daft because I really do listen and try and understand but recently I’ve found myself feeling this way and I guess an unbiased opinion would be nice.

We’ve been together for the best part of 7 years. I say best part because she has broken up with me two times in the past expressing that I didn’t care enough. I can’t say I didn’t feel unseen, upon reflecting I did a lot more for her in all kinds of ways than she did for me. I was really upset both times and on one occasion she went off with another guy a couple of weeks after which was tough for me to come to terms with. Both of these breaks lasted about 6 months.

Accusing me of not caring seems to be a recurring thing in our relationship and I’m left feeling frustrated when she does this. It often feels like these accusations come at unsuspecting moments too. For example after a week of seeing each other everyday and going on dates and enjoying each others company, she told me off for being 10 minutes late to chill the night at her place a few days after. This led to literally bordering breaking up with me and the whole night and next day is ruined until she kind of gets over it. I apologise and try and make sense of things and explain myself but naturally I’m told I’m making excuses. After so many occurrences I’m wondering whether there’s something innately wrong with me.

The most recent event has really tipped me over. My friends often tell me I’m an understanding person but I’m starting to feel like I’m crazy for feeling ‘hard done by’ in these situations. We had been on holiday for a long weekend, it was a place I have been going to since I was a baby with my family and I was excited to show her. To me, it felt like she had been happy and loved it and I loved seeing her this way and felt we’d had a good laugh and it had been nice. This changed when I dropped her home and she wasn’t very talkative on message the next day which normally means somethings up. I asked her and after a little ordeal she told me that I had apparently shut her off in one conversation on the second day when she was telling me about one of her holidays abroad she said I’d said ‘yes I know … went there too’ I genuinely had no idea this had been an issue and I always love listening to her talk about stuff she’s done and enjoyed. I still find this confusing. I apologised and said I hadn’t realised but then she went on to say she ‘felt like a little kid’ the whole time and I hadn’t spoken to her enough?? I had spoken to her as much as I would anyone else and ever have to her before and again this feels like something unusual to accuse me of? She told me I hadn’t spoken much in the car on the way home. This again felt unfair because she was asleep a lot of the way and I was listening to music and an audiobook. The drive was about 5 hours and this also made me feel like she doesn’t appreciate that I had driven us. Not that I would expect her to be all ‘oh thank you so much for driving’ but it’s more that she’s kind of speaking down on it.

Anyway I’m feeling a bit frustrated with it all. We’ve kind of left it with me saying I was being myself and if that’s a problem for her I really don’t know what to do. I asked her to come over and talk face to face instead of on message and she said no, I also tried calling her. If anyone has any advice it would appreciated, thanks.

TLDR

Feels like girlfriend picks up on seemingly out of the blue things and blows them up into what ends up feeling like meaningless back and forths about whether I care about her. Not sure what to do.