Throwaway because my partner uses reddit and i genuinely need advice here. My partner and I have been together for just over a year, since then we’ve moved far from home together and have settled into a new house and the general routine of life but for the longest time in our relationship we have rarely if ever been able to have genuine CONSTRUCTIVE difficult conversations about issues as they come up.
The typical routine of these discussions is the question will be broached or asked and I’ll start answering in the most forthright logical way I know how and the instantaneous knee jerk reaction from her if it’s not the perfect answer is either a complete and total catatonic shutdown where all that comes out is one word answers and no back and forth or it turns into yelling and storming off with insults being hurled.
One of the most glaring of these has been the discussion of family planning, in the beginning of our relationship we talked frequently about wanting to have kids and start a family which we are both on the fence leaning yes on. But when I try to sit down and plan out the necessary steps for having kids together (owning a house, finishing schooling, getting better jobs, and travelling first) my genuine efforts to PLAN this is met with phrases like “you’re non committal, you don’t actually want kids you just said that to get with me, you’re putting up all of these barriers for us,” when in reality I am trying to PLAN for the future together.
In our relationship she has “broken up” with me several times now. I say that in quotation marks because in reality she’ll end things and I’ll ask why and it’ll be some variation of she doesn’t trust me, or I’m non committal, or I’m dropping the ball in some other way and it makes me feel so invisible when I get her to talk specifics and the real issue is she wishes I’d text her more throughout the day, or she wants to have more intimacy or she would like it more if i did X thing which I then finally get her to tell me and i then do or fix HAPPILY.
Like… I don’t understand why we can’t just have that talk first before instantly going scorched earth and walking out. It feels like I am ALWAYS having to chase her and her emotions. Other instances in which she’s broken up with me have been; not involving her in the initial stages of me planning to visit my old friends which i then did, one of my childhood best friends visiting from out of town and me allowing her to crash at my place (before we had moved in together) she voiced her uneasiness about this happening so i made other arrangements happily and without any argument, when she’s working from home I’m taking some time to myself to explore our new town after doing my chores and i didnt come home when she was finished, coming home 30 minutes late from work due to heavy traffic and her not knowing (she didn’t call or text me wondering where I was)
The same pattern emerges in all of these instances where instead of initially just TALKING with me about her feelings on things I may be doing wrong she instantly just slams the door on all discussion including our relationship counseling sessions. I don’t feel as if I can ever make a misstep or live up to her idea of perfect despite all of my efforts to plan trips for us, build our lives, have a better future, it just consistently feels like I’m not a part of this relationship, rather I’m the accessory to it. The important communication about the nitty gritty of life just doesn’t happen because the first SECOND anything comes up it’s just met with anger or catatonic shutdowns. Last weekend for example we had plans to go out of town and before we left she said she wanted to have sex, I said I had masturbated earlier in the day but i would LOVE to have sex now and literally invited her in and she flew into a rage and drove off shouting at me about me neglecting her needs when I LITERALLY SAID YES LETS HAVE SEX. She’s currently in therapy, I’m searching for a therapist personally and we’ve since quit couples counseling due to other factors. I don’t know how to communicate with her when I need to and I don’t even know how to have a conversation about how to plan our lives. I apologize if I’m ranting I’m just lost here and need guidance. Thank you in advance.
TL;DR: partner and I can’t talk maturely about our issues without the first reaction being explosive anger or shutting down. Communication has become zero.
Comments
So… what are you getting out of this relationship that keeps you here? From outside this is multiple red flags and deal breakers.
Sorry, but this isn’t it and I don’t know how else to put this apart from bluntly – she has to grow the fuck up!
She is 33 years old, cannot hold an adult conversation, flies off the handle and appears to be somewhat emotionally manipulative. She has zero emotional maturity and if she doesn’t have it by now, it’s hard to say if she ever will. You just need to decide if you can handle this for the rest of your life. If the answer is no, you know what to do.
This person is not mentally mature or healthy enough to be in a healthy relationship. For the love of all that is holy, do NOT bring innocent children into this mess.
Why did you move in after a year with these issues??
Honestly, this is red flag city and you should just walk away. Even if it improves and gets WAY better about all the low stakes stuff, do you think it’s really a good idea to undertake something as stressful and important as starting a family with her? It’s been a year. The point of dating is to vet people and see if they would be good life partners – she will not. She has less maturity than most 20-year-olds. Find somebody else and have a much happier life.
I’d expect this of a 16yo.
This person is WILDLY unsuitable for parenthood, how are you even considering it?!
If she wants to change, she’ll need a therapist to work on emotional regulation. But if she doesn’t want to change thrn you need to leave.
“is either a complete and total catatonic shutdown where all that comes out is one word answers and no back and forth or it turns into yelling and storming off with insults being hurled.”
This is a person who does not have the interpersonal skills to have a relationship. There is zero way to have a relationship with someone who isn’t capable of communication. It might not be manipulative or coercive on her end, this may really be the way her body reacts to ANY conflict, where she goes immediate into fight or flight.
But she needs serious, long term therapy to learn those skills BEFORE she can be in a relationship.
She basically stopped learning how to handle emotions and communication at three years old. This is how a three year old reacts to new information. And while we can be empathetic to that, and understanding that she may have had really bad parenting, she has had decades of adult life to realize that that isn’t how adults communicate, and figure out how to do better.
But concerning on your side is that you see this reaction and think “this is a relationship to work on, this is the person who I want to be with. This is how I want my life to be.”
It’s great that you are understanding and looking for solutions, but there are some things that can’t be fixed within the context of a relationship. And this is one of them. She does not have basic, child-level communication skills. And so no amount of communication, and being calm, or validating her, or couple’s counseling, or reading books, or advice is ever going to get you to the point where you are communicating so well, that doesn’t need to have any communication skills at all.
Both people have to have some level of skill at adult conversation. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it has to be more than what a toddler does. She doesn’t have that.
It doesn’t matter how amazing she is in other ways, or how much you love her, communication is the foundation of a relationship. She has no foundation. And building one takes a long time.
You can tell her “Your communication style isn’t conducive to a relationship, and it needs to change immediately for us to move forward.” But I doubt she is capable of turning that on and off. I think she would need years and years of really true effort and desire to change before she could do that. Because it’s probably not a logical response, it’s fight and flight kicking in, and that can take a long time to de-program.
What on earth this is exhausting to read…
If you can’t have important conversations, then what can you do?