My (30F) girlfriend (31F) and I have been together for 5 years. She’s Mexican American and I’m white. We both grew up in middle/high middle income households. Her family dealt with poverty one generation back though.
We keep having this problem where we’re fighting about my health. Usually, that I’m not eating enough or I’m working out too much. She’s worried that I’m wearing myself out and I’m going to get sick. I’m confused because I think I’m quite healthy, I’ve already gained weight during our relationship, and I don’t try to work out when I’m not feeling up to it. I’m also confused because my girlfriend is extremely physically active herself. Sometimes, she’ll drag me on these intense, long hikes that actually are too hard for me, and I’m confused why that’s OK but me working out is not. I don’t understand why these things make her so angry because it’s not about her and doesn’t affect her.
I’m also struggling with how intense she gets during these arguments. Raised voice, calling me names, sometimes throwing things. I’ve tried different things to calm her down and nothing really works. She won’t listen if I try to tell my side of the story. This goes on for hours until I just end up apologizing and promising to do better.
I’m bringing up the cultural aspect because she has. Other friends have also brought up that too. She says she grew up with it being more accepted to openly talk about your problems with someone else and address things directly. Including when that means having conflict. I do really like that I always know where we stand, I never have to guess.
But I think I would feel more positive about it if it led to some kind of resolution. Instead, we’re just having the same exact fight over and over. I really don’t agree with or understand what she says but I have to say that I agree to get her to stop. We have had other fights where there was a lot of conflict but it helped us understand each other and find a solution, but for some reason with these topics, it’s not like that.
At this point, I don’t know what to do. I’m tired of losing so much time to this.
TLDR: Girlfriend keeps picking fights with me about food and exercise, says it’s cultural differences because she’s Latina and I’m white.
Comments
There’s a difference between being passionate and loud which I think is the stereotype and calling you names and throwing things.
A lot of people would call the latter abusive without a second thought and it’d bother me that someone would defend that as being a cultural difference that presumably you just need to accept – I wonder if that behaviour would fly if you were the one doing it.
> I’m also struggling with how intense she gets during these arguments. Raised voice, calling me names, sometimes throwing things. I’ve tried different things to calm her down and nothing really works. She won’t listen if I try to tell my side of the story. This goes on for hours until I just end up apologizing and promising to do better.
That’s not a cultural difference that’s just abuse