We've been together for almost 2 years and we have lived together for most of that time. Things moved really fast at the start. Despite being 30, it's my first relationship and I had no idea what's normal, expected, etc.
She has a lot of mental health trouble. She has PTSD from people in her life dying (said by her psychologist, not self diagnosed). She also has abandonment issues from when she was a kid and treated very badly by her parents. this leads to a lot of insecurity and jealousy.
Now, I am not a perfect person or bf by any means. In particular there are two main things that hurt my gf that I did. I watched porn and after a few months that we had a terrible discussion about it I caved in and watched it again. I don't think there's anything wrong with porn and the first time I could say we didn't have a discussion about it and didn't know, but the second time I knew it was not ok for her and still couldn't stop myself and it makes me very ashamed. I also confessed to her that I sometimes have thoughts about other women when thinking of sex. I confessed all these things to her myself, she didn't discover me. And I made sure to try and explain that they were only fantasies and I NEVER intended and never intend to have sex with another woman or anything of the sort.
So while you keep my failings in mind, I want to point out that many of the things below started before any of that even happened, so it's not just a kneejerk reaction to what I did.
She wants to spend every second together (even being in the same room but doing different things is not good enough for her, we have to be constantly interacting or doing something together at all times), doesn't want me to see people alone both because she doesn't want to spend time apart but also because she has to "control that I'm being proper" and I risk interacting with other girls without her being able to check on me. She doesn't want me to have female friends and interactions. She reads all messages from my phone. If she can't be there (mostly just when I am at work) and I am seeing someone, she wants real time accounts of exactly who I am talking with and what we are saying. When outside, she will randomly accusing me of looking at women all the time, most of the time I don't even know which woman she is referring to. It makes me feel very suffocated. Sometimes I PHYSICALLY feel like I'm drowning and I can't breathe.
So while I am not without fault, I feel like her requests and behaviour are over the line and my actions only gave justification to things she wanted or needed to have either way. And as I stated, they started before any of that even happened. I struggle with setting boundaries and she is very hard to set boundaries with. I have no idea how to approach a conversation about the subject. Every time I try she brings up the episodes above and she automatically wins.
tl;dr
gf doesn't trust me partly because of things I did, but partly because of her mental health issues and makes unreasonable requests that I have been accepting because I feel guilty and I have no idea how to change it or if it's even possible
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* This article was originally published here
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