This one is a really long one so bear with me folks.
We have been dating for almost two years now. Our relationship started like any normal relationship with butterflies and excitement to see eachother and so much love to give eachother. However, in the past year it’s felt like I have needed to be cautious about everything I do or say so I don’t trample her feelings on accident. One such example of this is our time spent together. When the week is about to begin and we discuss our plans for the week, I can tell she is fully expecting me to fill up all of the available time she has on her schedule. For example, if she works Monday Wednesday and Friday from 4pm-11pm, and she works out at 1pm before she begins work, she will want me to spend time with her beginning at 9am or 10am. For a majority of our relationship I have told her that I can workout with her before she goes to work but I can not be with her that early in the morning. She asks my why I can’t come over at 9am and I always tell her because I can’t. I feel like I can’t tell her that I feel like I am disrespecting her parents for being over so early in the morning because she will just say that they do not care about me coming over that early. I know that they do not care but I care about that. I also want to have some morning time to myself but I feel like I can not say that to her or else she will tell me that I do not want to see her and that I do not love her. She will often say this to me when I deny seeing her for a few hours.
I feel like I give her all of my available time all of the time. When she does not work she wants me to come over around 10 in the morning and then expects me to stay with her all day long until my curfew ends at 10pm. I feel like I am never home to help out my family with chores or talk to them because I am always spending time with her. I feel like I can not explain this to her because I can see her shutting me down and saying that I do not want to see her and that I do not love her. On weekends she expects me to be with her all the time she is available and this will sometimes conflict with my personal interests. I will want to go outdoors to go rock climbing one day which is sometimes an all day thing because the location where I live is far from any worthwhile places to go climbing at, and if I tell her that I have made plans with a friend or group of friends she will get upset with me for making plans to go out. She will tell me that I am leaving and abandoning her. One time I had planned an overnight trip at a climbing location and when I told her that the place where I would be camping out at would not have reception she became very upset with me and told me that I was willingly choosing a place with no reception to not talk to her. She told me that I was okay with not talking to her and I tried reassuring her that I was not happy that the place had no reception but I could not help it that there was no reception. I told her that I would try my absolute hardest to still message her in the areas where I did find reception and that I would message her via satellite the times that I could and she was still visibly upset and said that I would forget to message her. She said that I was okay with not speaking to her all day which was not true.
Another thing that makes me doubt if we’re compatible together is whenever she is cooking. Sometimes her mother will ask her to cook something before she comes home from work and she asks me to help her out or be down in the kitchen with her. I will go down and try my best to help her out in the way her mother wants her to make the food but sometimes I notice she does things that I think are dangerous and make me worried. The most recent example of this was when she was cutting potatoes that were wet from being washed. She was holding the knife only by the hand and didn’t hold the blade with her index and thumb. I have worked with knifes for two years because of my job and I know that this way of holding it is very dangerous because a person could easily lose control and cut themselves. She was placing the knife right on top of the potato and pressing straight down on it instead of pressing and slicing forward. I asked her if I could give her a word of advice with how she was handling the knife and I told her that the way she was holding it and cutting was dangerous and that I was worried she would cut herself. I asked her if I could show her the proper way to hold it or if she would like me to cut the potatoes for her and she became very angry with me. She stopped talking to me and told me to just leave upstairs back to her room and to not talk to her. I told her that I was not trying to judge her and that I was simply just worried about her safety and I believe she took it as me calling her stupid and questioning her ability to cut a potato. The way she became so angry at me for worrying about her really made me question if we would be able to live together as a married couple because instances like this in the kitchen have occurred before. When I am not helping her because she has not asked me to help her, I stand around her conversing with her and interacting with her. I hand her things she asks me to give her. However, sometimes when she is going to move to the sink or the stove, and I am standing in between her path, she tells me in a rude manner “move”. She never says excuse me or sorry, just “move”. She acts like my presence in the kitchen is a major inconvenience and makes me feel like I am not wanted near her. Sometimes when I talk to her about this feeling I get of not feeling welcomed she tells me she just feels overstimulated by my presence and that i need to do what she asks quickly or else I will overstimulate her and cause her to react that way. I choose to not press further and explain that even though I understand she maybe become overstimulated, I still feel like I deserve to not be treated like my presence is a major inconvenience. When she finished cutting the potatoes and came back upstairs. She layed down in bed and turned away from me without saying a word. She just opened her phone and began scrolling TikTok without paying any attention to me. I tried to interact with her by holding her shoulder gently or leaning in closer but she would push me away and make it known through her body language that she did not want to talk to me. Eventually after the thirty minutes she returned to normal and accepted my attempts of communicating with her and she began talking to me about the tiktoks she was watching. I decided to not ask her further about the knife situation because I knew she would become upset with me and shut me out again.
I do not like conflict with her so I try to avoid it as much as possible because when she is happy and we are talking I also feel very happy. Even when I am still upset about something that occurred a few hours ago or even a few days ago, I feel like I can not bring it up because it would ruin the mood we’re both in and I do not like starting arguments.
We have also had arguments before with other woman who we do not know. She has asked me multiple times in the past if I check out other women when we workout at the gym together and I always tell her honestly and truthfully that I do not check out other women. She tells me that she feels like I am checking out other women because she never sees me checking her out. She says she doesn’t see me staring at her lower body and that she thinks that I am instead looking at other women instead of her. I reassure her that I am not looking at other women and that i only have eyes for her. I do look at her lower body but I do not stare for long and I told her that I would make it more obvious for her to notice in the future as a way to fix this. However I suspect she thinks I have feelings for any girl or anything that is portraying a women, such as real life or in media. We recently had an argument regarding an animated movie called the chainsaw man movie. I had been a longtime fan of the animated series and was looking forward to the animated movie release, but one day we were on FaceTime and she came across a TikTok about the movie that said there was partial nudity in the movie. She told me about this and said that I was not allowed to watch the movie. I laughed thinking she was joking because of tone she used which sounded sarcastic and joking to me. She became upset because she thought I was dismissing her comment and her wishes. It turns out she was being serious about me and restricting me from
Watching the movie. I was so confused as to why it mattered that there was partial nudity in this animated movie and she said I wasn’t allowed to see any other naked or half naked women. I could not believe what she was telling me because to me it felt like she saw me as this little kid who could not control what’s in his pants and would fall for an animated character that isn’t real. After realizing she was serious about her not wanting me to watch the movie, I gave in and stopped pushing back on wanting to watch it because fighting over an anime movie was not worth an argument in my eyes. It took a while to calm her down and then after a day or two she messaged me saying that she was okay about watching the movie but only if we watched it together because she was also a fan of the anime. I told her no that I was not going to watch the movie because she had made it known that she didn’t want me to watch it and I was going to respect her wishes. She kept insisting that it was okay but I felt in my mind that she was trying to trap me so that she could say that despite me knowing how she felt about the movie I was still going to watch it, even if it was with her.
She also became upset when we were watching a Korean drama and I made a comment on the main characters outfit (who is a girl). I commented how she was “dripped out” and I said this because she had a whole outfit on just to go stand outside the door of her friends house in the middle of the night. My girlfriend said to me “you’re not allowed to compliment other girls”. I was very confused if she was being serious or not and I asked her, which was a mistake. She got more upset and said that I was not taking her seriously and that I was making fun of her for asking if she was serious about what she said. I tried telling her I was just commenting on how she was overdressed for the scenario and that she was not a real person anyways even if it was an actress, it was a character they were portraying. She went back to normal after some reassurance, but I seriously can not understand why saying she was dripped out was such a bad thing to say.
Now that I have said all this it is also important to note that I am not a saint myself, nor will I ever claim to be one. I have also been a bad partner at times, some times very worse than other. There have been times where I have been so in in the wrong and have been the one to hurt her feelings. A while ago we were in a stage where we were discussing our future plans together. I was very uncertain, and I still am, about if we can eventually become married one day. She had asked me to tell her how I feel about her and if I can imagine my life with another person. I told her that I can imagine my life with someone else because that is how I was feeling at the time. I felt like I could not marry her for things like the ones I have mentioned above. I could not tell her all the negative feelings I felt about our relationship at the time because it was too much of a dump to lay on her in the moment, and I had been having thoughts of us breaking up in the two months leading up to when I told her I could see myself being with another person. I had been thinking that we were just dragging things in our relationship and that we were in denial about our happiness with eachother. When I would make a mistake and she would become upset or sad, we would argue and discuss the thing and I would tell her I would work to become better for her. I would continue to tell her I was trying and working towards bettering myself as a person for her because I wanted to make her truly happy, not only 50% of the time but 100% of the time. She would tell me that the highs felt really high and the lows would feel very low with me. I would really try to work on myself and better myself but every now and then the same issues would resurface and I would make a mistake again that would hurt her, and the cycle would continue to repeat itself. I felt like because I was not changing enough for her that she would be better off without me and she would be better off finding someone who would only make her happy all of the time. I would tell her that she should breakup with me because I could not do it myself because I am a coward. The entire relationship I felt like I was giving her false hope despite my best efforts to change as a person. After I told her I could see myself with another person, she cried so much and so hard that it absolutely broke my heart to see her like that, so I told her that I was unsure of what I was saying and that I didn’t know if I truly felt that way. We eventually decided to continue the relationship for a few more months on the condition that I would tell her how I truthfully felt about her. After three months I told her I could see marriage as a very real path together and that I was wrong in how I felt three months ago. In those moments I felt like I could really marry her but then those thoughts of all the bad times and things that would happen would come back into my mind and I would feel in my gut that I was unsure if I was right to say what I said. I was unsure if I really meant I could see myself marrying her.
This is my first real relationship and I truly do love my girlfriend, but I can’t help feel the way I do about our relationship and her and the future that I want. I want to be with someone who won’t become upset with me for going outdoors once in a while, be it either climbing or hiking, and someone who also enjoys the things I enjoy. She does not enjoy my hobbies at all like how I do which is why I feel this way. I want someone who will not talk to me disrespectfully just for being in the way on accident or because I want to help them. Every now and then I continue to ask myself if I should swallow this massive pill and end things with her for her sake and mine. She has told me that when she thinks about all the bad times we’ve had, her brain screams at her to breakup with me and get away but her heart tells her to stay. When I think of all the bad times we have spent together I also think it’s best that we breakup but I really don’t want to because I love her so much. But now I am thinking that even though I love her so much, I would love her enough to know I want to marry her if she was a different person, and I feel horrible for even saying that out loud. I don’t know if we can work things out at this point in our relationship. I think that we have such contrasting views and personalities to come to an agreement where we both get everything we want from eachother, and I also feel like I can not talk to her about this or she will say I am playing the victim for explaining my feelings. I am really lost in this matter and I feel like I can’t hold my sanity together for much longer.
Please let me know what I should do and please ask questions if you need to I will try to respond back to provide further clarity in areas that may be lacking
TL;DR : My girlfriend asks me for all that I can give her and asks me to do things that I view as unreasonable and I feel like I can not tell her no without being seen as playing the victim. I have also done much wrong and now I don’t know if we should work towards a future or stop holding on and let go