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So I've been with my girlfriend for 2 years now and I'd like some advice.
First some context.
When we first got together, we both had the classic puppy dog infatuation phase with each other. Absolutely head over heels with one another and I never wanted to stop being around her. But as time went on I discovered some pretty major red flags about her, for example she had (emphasis on the past tense here) a VERY extreme response to stress and had full meltdowns in ways that were incredibly hard for me to emotionally handle. And this led me to what I've been defining as the paradox of relationship advice, stemming from the tension of two common pieces of relationship advice:
But ultimately tl;dr. What do people think here about the paradox that I've laid out.
Bonus context: To her credit, she made real results here. She did some serious self-reflection, and we did couples counseling together and really made an improvement.
My issue now is that I'm noticing more and more deal-breaking issues that I feel like really need to be addressed, and she does keep trying to make improvements, and really does improve. But I feel stuck feeling like things still feel wrong, and I can't tell if this is due to:
I think those are good things to think about, but it’s genuinely hard to give advice when all we know is generalities.
I don’t know what you mean by “meltdowns”, but sometimes people do have an extreme reaction to stress. How much of a dealbreaker that is depends on how serious the stress was — if your young child is brutally murdered and you writhe in fits of anguish, I don’t know that many people are going to say that’s unexpected. It depends on what the stress was, what the meltdown was, and exactly how that interfaces with your own emotional resilience. That was probably the topic of the couples’ counseling.
It’s highly common for men dating women to struggle with her emotional reactions to stress, because the way women deal with and externalize stress is just different from the way men tend to (but not always). Keeping up with the basics like engaging in active listening, supportive communication, and distinguishing venting from solutions-focused conversation is good. But you have to couple that with a sense of internal stability: often what women want from their man in an emotional crisis is a feeling of protection, reassurance, stability, and steadfastness. And knowing how to respectfully listen while guiding her away from the feeling of stress and towards that feeling of protection and reassurance is a very helpful relationship skill. You have to lead and stabilize without being domineering.
What does stand out to me in your description is that you live separately, and in fact an hour away — LDRs are always, always hard. It’s especially hard when you’re dealing with emotional struggles, because one of the selling points of a relationship is that they’re a person who provides physical affection when you’re struggling.
We talk about women getting physical affection from their girlfriends, but it is extremely common, almost ubiquitous, for women to find being held and embraced by their man extremely calming and protective in a special way, for reasons we could write evopsych stories about until the cows come home. What I’ve found in relationships is that talking helps, but only to a point, and often finding a way to laugh, a distraction, a comforting presence, is more helpful to a partner in distress. So the struggle with your LDR may be that the most helpful element of a relationship is denied you most of the time, and that degrades things over time. Relationships are fundamentally about physical touch.
Do you video chat frequently? Sometimes just seeing your beau’s face, their smile, their eyes, can help you feel more connected. If you’re both part of the blue bubble master race, you can use SharePlay to do things like watch YouTube or short videos together, which might give you an opportunity to laugh together. That’s powerful.
But the most important thing you can do is work to make this LDR into a short-distance relationship. Getting yourselves closer together in whatever way you can is extremely important. A relationship where you can just be together, casually, without counting the minutes, is a massive quality of life increase.
Another thing that I see is that you talked only in generalities about your connection, your intimacy — what brought you two together? What drew you to her? What kinds of things do you do, when you’re in that fun and playful mood? When you’re together, what makes you inseparable? Being able to understand what you like about the relationship, and what’s unique about your bond compared to other bonds you’ve had, is absolutely essential to answering the question about whether you want to move forward with the relationship or not.
I hope this helps.
First, thank you for the thoughtful response, I really appreciate it :)
First, on the topic of meltdowns. At the beginning they were primarily about her visa status, she is in the US from Canada on a work visa, and when I met her she had a few months to get a job or she would be overstaying her visa. And given we met each other and fell for each other pretty instantly, that meant the penalty for both of us if that happened would be losing this great relationship we just started. So at the start I gave her a lot of slack at the start. But she eventually did find a job (As expected, she is basically a genius and had a killer resume), but where it started getting taxing was she continued to be terrified of then losing her job. and it felt like every week I had to calm her down about her getting deported, and this kind of reaction was eventually the meltdowns that had us want to go to couples counseling, and she did get a lot better coping mechanisms and ways of thinking about it.
On LDR. This has been something I've been feeling more and more, both for the calming element you are bringing up to being playful. I feel like our playful and fun sides are way more apparent to each other when we are together in person, and I'd say the last mew months has been sorely lacking in the fun department as we've been dealing with some other emotional / connection issues recently that I do think would be much better if we lived together. But one of the big problems for me here is that I don't want to leave the city (SF). I really love the car-free lifestyle and its really hard to give that up. And she works out in the burbs and that is what keeps her in that area. I WFH so practically if either of us was to move it would be me, but there is a part of me that doesn't want to give up the lifestyle I want when we have these other issues we are dealing with and I'm unsure about us. Although I often wonder if this is a big chicken and egg problem to some degree, "I don't want to move in because we have relationship problems, but we have relationship problems because we haven't moved in".
On our connection.
And we still do those things, but our relationship simply feels a lot less secure and we both know it. So those moments don't feel as joyful as they once did. She knows I've been having a lot of second thoughts and I am increasingly worried that this isn't working out. But I then second guess my own judgement, is this still a chicken and egg problem? Are we not working because we haven't moved in and made that commitment? Or are we not moving in and making a commitment because we aren't working out?
And there is one part of me that thinks breaking up is the right move. That I'm not happy, and I no longer feel like my needs are being met and I feel myself disconnecting**. But the other part of me remembers how happy we were in the beginning, and how right everything felt and I wonder if maybe the problem is me not being willing to commit?
**I've definitely been starting to feel neglected in some regards. The main one is her overall lack of social graces. She is someone who grew up in a family where people never really asked each other questions, and then in college she studied pure math with the autistic geniusestm who simply info dumped and never asked questions. And its becoming more and more clear that her ability to have a smooth conversation is just lacking, and I feel like I've been having to teach her how to have conversations which has been making me feel more like her parent than her partner. And this extends to meeting my friends, where it feels like she is awkward and it seems like she doesn't want to be there. Which really hurts me because I don't get to see my friends often and I get worried both that she and my friends are uncomfortable when I want to have a lovely time with them both.
And I have talked about this with her in all of this. And she always agrees to work on it and to try to get better, which is encouraging! I would break up with her if she wasn't willing to work on it, because basic communication is important. But this is where it goes back to my original query, should I really be with someone I'm trying to change? As it does make me feel more like a parent, and it also makes her feel less secure, like my love is conditional. And I know that must hurt like hell for her. But she is committed to making it work, and I see her putting in so much effort. But the work is genuinely draining and the wear on me has really started to show in the last couple of months.
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