Hey everyone
Me and my girlfriend have been together for almost three years and it's not been easy. The first 6 months were great, but after that life got pretty shitty for the both of us. My girlfriend definitely had quite some anger issues which she had never faced. She definitely was a very dominant person. She wouldn't be physically aggressive, but was verbally very much so. I talked about this a lot with her and after some (way too long, almost a year) time, well actually when I was about to break up with her, she said that she understands me and agreed to go to therapy. this was around the 1.5 year mark.
Going to therapy was a slow process, but she started to heal. She is able to communicate her feelings calmly now, it is definitely a huge difference compared to how she used to be.
That doesn't mean that it still isn't hard sometimes. I definitely hold some scars from our past and am very sensitive if some of her dominant behaviour comes up.
Actually I almost broke up with her again a few weeks ago. We were fighting almost weekly having stupid fights again about really silly stuff. she would always defend her own viewpoint and would not try to see my point of view. She would always defend why she reacted like she did, but wouldn't show compassion or understanding to why something felt bad for me. I've tried to explain that we need to be ok with each others feelings even if we don't agree, because we cannot change how things make us feel but we can be understanding and compassionate about it towards each other. After trying to explain this for months I got tired of it and asked for a break of our relationship. She got very sad and again begged me to stay, saying she will do everything she can to make us work. She asked me to write down specifically how I want us to communicate when we have a disagreement so I did. I basically wrote these two things:
- Don't invalidate each others feelings e.g. don't say you shouldn't feel like this bc I didn't mean it like this, but see that the other person is hurt and be compassionate about it instead of defensive.
- I also wrote down that I don't want her to point fingers like "you started with feeling x so ...". I don't want us to defend our own beliefs but see each others feelings, even when you don't entirely understand them or are entirely logical to you.
Please note I wrote these things in a kind and sweet way, the two points are a short version of what I wrote down.
The reason why I haven't broken up with her yet or why I always want to keep believing in us is because we are really nice together when things do work out. I love being with her and she is very sweet and loving. I know she cares about me a lot.
Now we are in week 2 after this incident, and we haven't fought anymore since. Now the following issue came up:
I've always been a very passionate person. I care very much about music, I honestly think it is one of the most important things in my life. I produce music myself, and dream about making it my job.
My girlfriend isn't like that. She doesn't have a passion in life, which is of course totally fine to me. I understand that not everyone has this burning passion for his hobby/job or whatever and don't expect my girlfriend to have that.
The thing that bothers me is that when I talk about it, I often get the feeling that she is not really interested in what I'm saying. We've talked about this before and it's gotten better. She definitely shows more interest in my music and is more open to it.
Yesterday I was talking about how Fred Again is very inspirational to me and that I almost feel jealous of his talent and personality. I really look up to him and his career. I talk about this very passionately (only a few minutes), but I notice my girlfriend just doesn't really care about what I'm saying. She seems uninterested. I told her calmly that when she seems so uninterested when I talk about something that is very important to me, it hurts because I feel she doesn't care about something that is clearly important to me.
She said that I was right about what I felt, because she isn't interested in this Fred Again and doesn't care about him.
I told her that to me it is important that she cares about something I'm passionate about, and could at least show some interest. She responded by saying that I cannot expect us to have the same interests always, and that she does care about most of my music stuff. Just not about this topic.
I feel weird about this, because I feel like I would always be interested in something that my significant other is very passionate about or cares a lot about. Just because I care so much about this person, of course I care about what is most important to them in their lives. It is evident to me, but to her this obviously isn't.
She says that she already focusses on a lot of things, and really still has to put a lot of effort in communicating calmly and clearly. She doesn't want to live by a set of rules given by me and she doesn't want to feel like she has to think about every word she has to say to me, because she claims that she already has to think a lot already about the way that she communicates, which i do understand and see.
It has always been hard for me when she doesn't show interest when I'm very passionate about something. I guess I want to feel supported in what I'm passionate about. I would say that it even makes me doubt my relationship, especially with all the other things we've been through/going through. Am I overreacting? Or is this an expectation that is valid to have from my girlfriend? Or do I expect too much from her... Idk anymore.
TLDR; we've been through a hard and emotionally draining time due to my girlfriends mental issues. Now I don't feel like she's always interested about what I'm passionate about, and have a hard time accepting this.
It still hurts a lot to think about breaking up. I just never seem to really want to. It hurts to think about us both going our own way and meeting new people. I just wish we could work things out... It does sometimes feel like we aren't compatible but I just don't want to face it :( I just always want to believe that there's a future for us where we worked all this stuff out and that our good times will flourish and our bad times will fade and scars will heal...
Thanks for reading through all this. Any advice is welcome :)
