As the title says, my girlfriend of about a year (24f) has been telling me (28m) over the past week or so, that I am not respecting her boundaries. And I guess I want some advice.
So like I said, this started about a week ago, we had an argument over a pretty mild misunderstanding on the phone. She was getting pretty upset during the conversation, and stated “I need some space. Can we talk about this later?”. I replied “Can I just at least explain myself first? You’re getting upset and I haven’t been able to speak.”, and this is when I believe it started. We had a short back and forth, and I relented on the “talking later” idea.
We get off the phone, and she texts me about 15 minutes later, letting me know that she’s taking a nap and I say okay, and I tell her that I really wish she wouldn’t distance herself from the conversation before I can explain myself. I texted her a couple of hours later, letting her know of some plan changes with a friend I was supposed to see the next day.
I get a response a few hours after that, “I’m up”. So I called, expecting her to be ready to continue the conversation. Instead, she explained that I’m not “respecting her boundaries” by not giving her space, and by “blowing up her phone”, and that she thought we’d talk the next day. I tried to explain that I only texted her twice, one of which was a reply to what she said, and the other was just letting her know of some plan changes with a buddy. And that I thought “later” meant later that day, not tomorrow. And that she could’ve said tomorrow if she meant the next day and I would’ve respected that. I was also confused why she’d just send me “I’m up.” if she wasn’t expecting to speak. She never texts me that, I took it as her being ready to speak?
Fast forward to yesterday, the second instance I wanna discuss. We are having yet another disagreement, this time via text message. The topic isn’t necessarily important. She ends up texting me:
-“We’ve been going back and forth for a while now and I feel like it’s not getting anywhere. I don’t want to keep going in circles and end up more frustrated. Can we agree to disagree for now and leave it at that?”
I respond with:
-“I don’t necessarily feel like we are going in circles. and I’m not personally frustrated. If you are then we can take a break. I would still be willing to talk though.”
And she replies:
-“I’m not frustrated. I’ve made my boundaries clear. Please respect that.”
And then I’m just confused. She doesn’t want to “end up more frustrated”, but she’s not frustrated to begin with? All I meant was that if one of us being frustrated was stopping her from having the conversation, that I wasn’t frustrated. That’s how her text read to me. I tried explaining that, and the more I tried defending myself, the more I was “pushing her to talk about it”, and crossing her boundaries. She is really upset now.
Are my communication skills that terrible? What am I saying wrong? She has mentioned this topic of “space” and “boundaries” several times in the last week or so outside of disagreements, and I’m not sure what I’ve done to give her a hang-up about it all.
TLDR; Girlfriend keeps saying I am not respecting her boundaries, not sure what I’m doing wrong. Advice welcome.
Comments
it sounds like her boundaries are stonewalling you. its good to have boundaries but hers seem a little ridiculous. you cant have a healthy adult relationship if one person gets to talk and then they storm off and cut off communication.
Stop calling and messaging her bossman. Let her call whenever she’s in the right frame of mind. Just drop a text once a day for morning / night
Boundaries should be clearly established with no room for ambiguity. It sounds like she hasn’t made her boundaries clear to you. When the time is right (as in, not when you two are still arguing), it might not be a bad idea to suggest talking to her about boundaries and expectations so that there’s no room for confusion in the future – I definitely wouldn’t tell her that you’re suggesting this because of anything she’s done wrong, though. And no, your communication skills seem perfectly fine – it sounds like she should probably work on communicating more effectively, just based on what you’ve said in this post.
Some people need space to process things, especially when they’re getting upset. Pushing the issue isn’t helpful. I understand you need to speak too, but speaking to her when she’s overwhelmed is about as useful as speaking to the refrigerator.
‘”We’ve been going back and forth for a while now and I feel like it’s not getting anywhere. I don’t want to keep going in circles and end up more frustrated. Can we agree to disagree for now and leave it at that?”‘
I don’t think this is unreasonable. Some times agreeing to leave it is the best thing to do; not all arguments can be resolved and end in an agreement. She says ‘for now’ which isn’t closing the door on discussion.
‘”I don’t necessarily feel like we are going in circles. and I’m not personally frustrated. If you are then we can take a break. I would still be willing to talk though.”‘
Can you see that you’re continuing to argue here? The kind of reply needed was simply ‘no problem let me know when you do want to talk’ or ‘I agree, we aren’t going to agree on this one so let’s leave it and focus on moving forwards’.
She isn’t articulating herself clearly and I think she’s confusing boundaries with what she needs in a relationship in terms of space. You seem to struggle to let things go – there’s a focus in this post on defending yourself, making sure your point is heard – to her that’s pushing communication on a topic she wants space from.
I think what I hope for in a partner is someone who, in the things that matters, is longing to understand my point of view, and whose point of view I also long to understand. But I also realise that because humans are messy and communication is imperfect, we won’t always be able to understand each other. So, again in the things that matter, I hope that our mutual longing to understand each other is enough to guide us to that mutual understanding; and in the things that don’t, I hope we can both find moments of grace in which we can say, “Well, that’s baffling to me, but I’m sure you’ve got your reasons, you loveable weirdo.” And, as they say… the wisdom to know the difference!
Why did she text ‘I’m up’ if not to signify ‘I’m up from my nap and ready to talk’?