I've been dating someone for almost six months now, and it's been great-ish. She's had constant struggles with independence, trouble with a previous fellow who was particularly cruel towards her, lived under her mom's thumb, has constant self esteem issues, and tells me she's borderline borderline personality disorder. We've gotten by great for the past few months, minus my complete inability to help her with any of the above. As of late, thing's have been less so.
Few weeks back, she and an ensemble went out of state for a week. Great, says I. I very much looked forward to meeting her again (if not for the five minutes that she stayed on campus before going home, then the sunday she came back on campus. She's happy to see me-ish. Now that she's done fretting about her trip, she's new troubles to fret about, like her childhood friend that she had feelings for once before who also went on the trip who she had resurfacing feelings for in my absence, and how she couldn't have feelings for him, and how they were going to have a discussion (lasted two or so hours, I waited an hour and a half before excusing myself). They went over childhood stuff, compared frames of mind, talked about their friendship, and so forth. Evidently they had mental epiphanies during it, I'll come back to that later. Later, when every other worry-thing ought to be out of her mind (when she's worried about something, I get put on the backburner as supportive, comforting cute-thing, and she needs to be worrying about something), she tells me she doesn't feel much for me any more. No infatuation, no couple-y things, just I'm someone she's really comfortable with and who she knows she'll get support from. This was about two weeks ago. We've been doing okay-ish since, though she brings up her childhood friend all the time (we visited so he and his roommate could get to know me, also pizza), him this, him that. Maybe there's a twinge of jealousy and that one's on me. Regardless.
Fast forward to today (the week's stressor this time was an english paper that I helped her out with). We hung out for a few hours, and by the end of it, she was just feeling glum and eh, and like she needed a shower, because her hair was greasy, etc. So off she goes, glum, and her I sit, even more glum. Nothing I do or can do ever really surprises her, really turns her to joy, or incites more than mild appreciation before she goes back to worrying. Nothing I do helps her with any of her problems, or her esteem, or her mindset, or anything. I'm just another comfortable cute thing. She likens me to a baby, and she's been obsessing over babies (we're eighteen and nineteen and abstain, and it's not like that matters anyways since anything close to that together has held no interest for her for a long time now anyways) and I'm likening it back to her control issues in my head.
Did I mention the control issues? She needs to be in charge of a situation. An idea, or event, needs to be hers, or cleared by her. Wobbles in a plan? She's totally distraught. I do something hinting of reckless? She feels the need to be at me for it. Dinner is scheduled, she never dines alone, refuses to break habits or schedules, freaks out if she's not early for things (this is the one thing that's gotten better over time), and as one of the wild cards in her life, she gets frustrated at me. A lot. Say we're playing something together and I'm not doing something the right way? She suggests and pleads things at me then and then tells me she was just about tugging her hair out about it later, then calls herself a bitch for doing or feeling so, and now I have to be supportive because she's calling herself things. She tells me later that she feels sorry for taking out her frustrations and troubles on me, when I never see it happening to me, and though I tell her this, it boils down to me make her feel better about it. Any time I try to bring up a fault or something I'd like addressed, or any kind of criticism, she takes it personally and magnifies it against herself, so I can't do that lest I hurt her and then it's my duty as boyfriend to hold her and try (and fail) to improve her mood. She considers me baby-cute and tells me about that quite often, and sometimes treats me thusly. If we're around folks, she'll be all kinds of couply and touchy, but once we're alone, she's just eh, and usually goes glum because that gives her time to reflect on her problems and find something new to worry about. She wears the pants in the relationship, technically, and with all this accounted for, I'm left sometimes feeling like this accessory person in her life, something she can look back to and know will still be there if she's upset about something.
I'm a favorite rock or home or base or something. Something to be happy about having, someone to be happy about having close. I've tried to look past it these last few weeks, and it's tough. I don't recall the last time she's physically touched me of her own initiative besides the occasional hug or hand holding, or the last time she's just up and surprised me with something, a gift, an idea, something done for me, anything. She goes through each day just assuming I'm going to be there, no trouble, nothing to invest energy in, and it hurts. She tells me she's too comfortable with me, there's no butterflies any more, but then doesn't put any energy into the relationship.
So that's where I'm at now. I probably missed things. I'm not half-certain what I've typed as this is mostly a cathartic exercise. I know I'm not a very popular fellow in the boards and that when I do bring something up, it usually gets casually glossed over beneath others' trifles. I'd refrain from posting this, but judging by how this is cathartic to begin with shows that there might be a problem somewhere.
Maybe we're at different places in the relationship. Maybe this is natural and the fault is on me for not keeping up with it and I need to man up and calm down. I don't know, and that's why I haven't said much about this to her, since the fault could very well rest on my shoulders and I'd hate to say anything if it were.
I don't know where I'm at now. I don't know how I'll feel about all this tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week when I stumble into this kind of a depression again. I'm an emotional sponge like that- I'll get by for a week, two weeks, perfectly okay on the exterior, fake smile on the interior, but come a certain point, and I just lose my composition.
I'm not looking for advice. Advice coming from only my side is only going to cause strife. If you have insight, that might be more useful.
If you've read all that, thanks for your time.
Author
Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9746812 times)