Hello guys, me(27M) and my girlfriend (28F) of almost 2 years recently decided to move in together (this was around 7 months ago), so we got together in my apartment, which is in another city where she lived with her parents.
I’ve lived alone since I was 17, but for her, this was the first time she left home.
Our relationship before we moved was limited to spending weekends together, as I lived in another city, we could only meet on weekends.
Although in theory, living together was a dream, the reality turned out to be a little different. I am feeling drained and lacking the personal freedom that I had and enjoyed so much. I found out that my girlfriend is a little difficult person to deal with on a daily basis, gets easily stressed by any decision I make that is different from what she wants, likes to sulk if things don’t go her way, It’s very noisy and some other things.
It’s affected our intimacy, and it’s hurting our relationship in a snowball effect. I feel guilty about having taken her away from her parents’ house to not work out as we imagined.
This is a girl that I love very much, but I’m feeling in my skin, that love alone is not enough.
I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if this exhaustion of mine is something that will pass, or if I really made a wrong decision as we gathered in the apartment.
I’ve already accepted that, if necessary, for us both to be well and happy, our relationship ends, but I would like to know if anyone has gone through this, how was it?
We talked a few days ago about it and I was honest, I said that I’m in doubt if this current situation is what I want for my future, but I don’t know what decision to make, I just wanted to get it out of myself.
This obviously left her very upset and doubtful about our relationship. However, I’m so tired that I don’t have the strength to try to reverse the situation.
tl;dr: I moved in with my girlfriend, but I’m realizing that love alone isn’t enough. I feel like my relationship is ending.
5 comments
Moving in is an important trial before continuing a long term relationship so it’s a good thing that you found these things out before you spent more years together. She’s 28 but still sound incredibly immature to be honest.
>I feel guilty about having taken her away from her parents’ house to not work out as we imagined.
The first thing you can do is reframe your thoughts around this, because (unless you’re missing out a lot of context) you didn’t take her away from anyone. She decided to leave of her own volition in order to live with her partner. You’re not an evil great uncle kidnapping a beloved child or anything are you?!
Now, onto your problems. The first question is: have you had a proper conversation about these issues yet? Or is it more like you’re trying to avoid her and she you, so as to reduce the bad confrontations?
If you haven’t, you need to do that. Not when she’s wound up about something, but when she’s in a good mood. If that’s even possible.
I’m not condoning any of her behaviour of course, but the truth is that after almost thirty years in her parental home, to leave that and go into a whole other alien environment is going to be a challenge. Maybe she’s just homesick and finding the adjustment very hard and taking it out on you. But if you’ve not had a conversation yet where you both Talk About Your Feelings… You’re never going to know how the other feels right now.
Do you think that your being accustomed to living alone and making decisions independently of anyone else may be contributing to this issue? By definition you’re going to have less personal freedom when you go from living alone to living with a significant other. And if you’re unilaterally making decisions without weighing in on her input, depending on what that is there could be a good reason she’s getting upset.
For example, if you just decide out of the blue that you’re going to stop at the pub with some friends on the way home instead of eating dinner at home with her, you can imagine she might be disappointed that you broke the implicit plans of seeing her at the end of the day. Once you live together, nearly every decision that you make has some amount of impact on the other person and vice versa so the effective management of expectations and communication can mean the difference between her hurt feelings and your feeling suffocated.
> for her, this was the first time she left home.
Often best to live on one’s own for a while first imo (e.g. 6-12 months), before living with a new person.
> I feel guilty about having taken her away from her parents’ house to not work out as we imagined.
Away from her parents, she may be seeing this as being free to ‘control’/manipulate you as her new room mate imo.
So, return her (postage prepaid) and urge her to find somewhere to live on her own for awhile, should she wish to repeat the experiment with you or someone else at a later date. Should this result in a breakup, so be it.
i assume you had to hit on her, ask her out