Me male 27 and my partner female 35 who have been together for 2 years have had a terrible couple of months.
I walked out one evening a couple of months ago leaving her and my son after weeks of arguing ( she had been constantly being nasty about my family particularly my mother, no previous relationship has ever had an issue with any of them) granted I previously have called out her family to her on racist things that they’ve said which I think is what triggered it.
I only intended on staying at my mum’s that one night to get away from the atgument but since she has never let me stay there again even though I’ve said im sorry and tried to be the bigger person.
We’d being on an improving trajectory the last few weeks even though she has only been allowing me to see my son twice a week. Things were improving between until a couple of days ago when I was at the flat and I asked where a couple of books my mum had bought my son were, turns out she’d hidden them under his cot and she went crazy at me for asking the question. Is it really unreasonable to ask why she’s hidden a present his grandma got him?
After this I suggested we go to therapy together (I offered to pay for it all) however she just says she doesn’t want to do it and won’t give me a reason why. I think coiples therapy is probably the only thing that will save our relationship, how do I get her to engage?
I love her and my son deeply.
TL;DR; : struggling to fix relationship with my girlfriend and need some advice
Comments
Couples therapy will do no good, none at all, unless all of the following are true:
You both see that there is a problem,
You both see that problem as important enough to fix,
You both believe that therapy is a viable approach to figure out what the problem is and to find strategies to address it, and
You both are willing to do the work necessary to address the problem, including being willing to make changes to yourselves (respectively).
If any one of those statements is false for either of you, then couples therapy will be nothing but a waste of your money and three people’s time.
And (oh, look):
> she just says she doesn’t want to do it and won’t give me a reason why
…there’s your answer.
> how do I get her to engage?
You cannot get her to do anything that she doesn’t want to do. So if she doesn’t want to engage, that’s that.
You cannot have more of a relationship with her than she is willing to have with you.
At this point, your primary goal should no longer be “trying to figure out how to rekindle my relationship with her”, and should instead be focusing on “given that it’s entirely possible and even likely that I will not be able to rekindle my relationship with her, how can I facilitate having a co-parenting situation that is as beneficial as possible for my son, so that the consequences of the two of us being unable to reconcile don’t damage him more than we can possibly prevent?”