Me and my girlfriend have been together for a year now. We have gotten along well but we have had moments when we fought a lot.
She told me she is an anxious person and can easily get triggered. She has also had a lot of trauma from her past that has affected her quite a lot. I myself, have a anger issues that I have been working on fixing and keeping under control. I admit, I messed up in the beginning, when we would have an argument, I would lose control and become aggressive by yelling at her. She is traumatized by that from the past and everytime I would yell at her, she would get triggered.
I started working on controlling my anger by going to therapy and it has worked. When we have arguments now, I haven’t yelled in awhile and I have been keeping my calm. I’m still working on continuing to be calm. However, my girlfreind has become really anxious and she started going to therapy to control her anxiety. She recently told me, that I trigger her anxiety because she feels like I’m gonna be aggressive and yell at her again even though I haven’t in awhile and she sees the progress I’m making and continuing to make. I don’t blame her though, as before I would yell a lot and scare her and this progress I have been making has been fairly recent.
She has told me that she wants to continue the relationship but I see she always gets anxious around me. She tells me she’s working with her therapist to control it. I feel that I won’t go away as long ad I’m around. I have a habit of blaming myself for problems and in this situation, I’m blaming myself and I feel like the only way to help her stop her anxiety is to not be around her and I feel like I need to break up with her or at least take a break to help her heal. I don’t want to, I also want to continue this relationship but I feel like breaking up is the best thing to do here.
TL;DR I feel like I’m causing anxiety for my girlfreind. She is going to therapy to fix it but I feel like breaking up with her is the best thing to do to help her with her anxiety.
3 comments
Don’t break up with her, just continue to work on yourself and be patient with her anxiety.
She doesn’t need abandonment issues while she works through her anxiety and trauma. Just be patient with her when she is anxious and continue to show her you are not scary. Be consistent and calm. That is the best thing you can do for her
It’s possible. But I think you should treat her with respect. That means if you want to break up for your sake, you break up. But you respect her to decide what she wants and what is best for her. Breaking up with someone for their sake means you are treating them like a child instead of a partner, which is a good reason to end the relationship, but it means you are both breaking up and being condescending at the same time. She’s an adult. Let her make her own choices.