I am in a very difficult position right now and I’m not sure how to proceed. This will be kind of long.
My girlfriend and I have been together for a little over a year now, and we just moved in together about 4 months ago. Living with her, I have realized that we might be too incompatible to be with each other, and this has been a sad conclusion to come to. I don’t think we fit together as well as we initially thought.
We have completely opposite styles of communication. I try to relay as much to her as possible, so that she can just stay informed on where I am and what I’m doing, whereas she struggles to communicate anything at all. This is right down to just even being able to speak to me on a basic level and formulate a sentence. She struggles to find the words for just about anything, and I’m not sure where this stems from. It’s not an issue of intelligence. She just does not convey things to me.
This extends to plans. She just impulsively decides that we’re going to do something or go somewhere, and I can’t do that, or else I get distressed. I’m on the spectrum, so I HAVE to have some sort of a plan, or else it throws everything out of whack. Now, this element is not her fault, so I don’t blame her for it, but the issue is that she knows this, and still does it. She is aware of what it does to me mentally to not be prepared for a scenario. I have to legitimately physically and mentally prepare to venture into the outside world for something as simple as going to the store. Couple this with the fact that I have PTSD, and some simple things like this are real challenges for me. She is aware of this, and still decides to do things on the fly. When I get frustrated because I am becoming anxious and overstimulated due to the sudden change in plans, she begins to blame me for it and asks me not to become frustrated, which angers me. It’s not like I choose to be frustrated. I honestly have no control over it. I just try to not show it and I try to just go with the flow, but it is a legitimate difficulty for me when things like this happen. When I go out in public, I feel like I always need to be on guard and there is a sense of needing to protect myself. I’ve addressed this in therapy, and I’ve made progress, but something like this doesn’t just go away, and it may never fully disappear from my life. I’ve just had to learn how to manage it better. She knows these things, yet is still inconsiderate of them and then blames me when I have an emotional reaction.
Another issue is that she lacks genuine affection. I’m not sure she actually knows what love is or how to really love. Whenever I try to show her affection, she seems like she’s irritated. I try to hug her, hold her, or kiss her, and she seems like she goes along to get it over with, but then she almost physically retreats. It’s as if she’s trying to get away from me because she just wants to get it over with. I’ve expressed to her that this comes off as hurtful to me, but she doesn’t even seem like she cares. She seems to only come up and show me some type of affection if she thinks I’m in a bad mood, almost like she’s trying to make up for something because she thinks she made me upset. If she thinks I’m in a bad mood, she comes up and hugs me then tells me that she loves me followed by a kiss. It seems manipulative because when she sense everything is fine, she doesn’t do that at all.
Her issues with communication have shown me that she is very immature. She seems to have this inability to have an adult conversation. I try to bring up genuine concerns I have about the relationship to her, and always responds with a rash reaction and takes it as a personal attack, and it just devolves into a nasty argument. It makes it impossible to talk about anything with her. She avoids anything that might be an issue, any type of mistake she might be making, or any type of flaw she could have, and just sweeps it under the rug and hopes it will go away. This makes it seem not only pointless to even engage in any type of genuine discussion with her about anything, but it makes me feel alone in the relationship. It makes me unable to talk to my partner and confide in her. It’s depressing. The worst part is that I’ve told her these things and asked her if she can work on them, but nothing has changed. She refuses to address any of the problems I’ve brought up. She says therapy helps, but all she does is just dump what’s been going on in her life and makes no progress. She just believes that medication will solve her issues and nothing else needs to be done. The problems will just magically go away from that.
I’ve wrestled with this feeling for a while, and after we just got in a big fight a couple of days ago, I tried to talk with her to hash things out and come to an understanding, and all she did was immediately just try to prove herself right and tell me all the ways I was wrong. I finally told her I was done with this, and I was feeling like I wanted to end things between us. She then texts me later and says she thinks I’m being delusional, which felt manipulative. Now we haven’t been really talking since then. It was then that I started thinking again that I don’t know if I love her anymore, and that feeling hasn’t changed in the last couple of days.
This puts me in a tough position, because we live together now, and whatever the outcome is will have a huge effect on my living situation. I just don’t know if I can keep doing this though. I feel like this relationship is making me miserable and it’s just weighing on me so heavy. I genuinely don’t know if I can do this anymore.
TL;DR – My girlfriend is constantly arguing and starting fights with me. It feels like she is inconsiderate of my needs for the relationship, and she lacks any sort of communication or affection. This has made me uncomfortable in my own home. I’m feeling like I don’t love her anymore, but I am unsure if that is actually the case, and I am also unsure how to proceed in this situation.