I often like to have conversations with my girlfriend about many things I find important. I also ask her to give me eye-contact during those moments, which I think is basic respect. She says she is able to listen to me intently even without eye-contact, and doesn’t understand that I feel it is a matter of respect to be fully engaged during conversations I feel are important, or at least first assess whether a topic could be considered “important” from both sides.
My girlfriend, however, says that she likes to “keep things simple” sometimes, and that my thoughts/deep conversations can come across as tiring to her.
Yesterday, we were talking about things over food, and I started the topic of what exactly makes people comfortable, and where those feelings come from, being a psychology nerd. This caused my girlfriend to react in an almost scared way, as she shut-down the conversation and said she didn’t want to talk about this topic because she was “worried it will end up in a disagreement again”.
Today, she told me that she actually feels tired oftentimes because my deep conversations overload her mentally. I understand that she is currently doing her masters degree and applying for PhD programmes, so perhaps that is a factor why she sometimes needs intellectual downtime!
She said that the crux of why she finds this difficult to handle is because usually, it is when I reiterate things I talked about before, that even after she would say “I agree” or “I disagree”, I still go on about this topic. Of course, me loving her, I want to know her perspective, rather than just a blanket “agree” or “disagree”.
I told her today to let me know when she isn’t feeling up for a deep conversation, and to also point out when I ruminate as I have ADHD. Perhaps, and ADHD brain can be very taxing on a partner, so maybe that’s an issue?
How do I help my girlfriend be less scared of talking about deeper topics without adding too much pressure? I proposed that she tell me when it’s a bad time, and that we rather talk about it later when she’s more up for it. Her response was that it’s not an optimal solution, as we would still need to talk about whatever topic is on my mind. I see it as her disregarding the thoughts I find important. She does agree though that “sometimes, deep conversations are important”.
I see two ways forward here: Either, we work on this and find a balanced middle, or I tell her that my intellectual needs aren’t being met and move on to someone else. It’s only been two months, so that’s also an option in my book.
What are your thoughts?
TL;DR: Girlfriend feels tired of too many deep conversations. Looking for a way forward to compromise. Considering breaking up gracefully if it is too serious of an issue to handle.
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* This article was originally published here
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