My girlfriend (41 F) and I (38 F) just celebrated our first year together last weekend and I have very mixed feelings after our date. While I won't flat out say the spark is on life support, these days I just feel her to be quite different from the woman that first pursued me. In our first few months together, she'd text me regularly, asking me how my day was going, talking super flirty and complimenting me, telling me cute stories or names she was coming up with for me, sending me selfies at bedtime, even the occasional thirst trap. Maybe in hindsight I didn't take full notice of how intense and fast this was going, but I welcomed it because it felt good and sincere. Slowly, I noticed a decrease in all of this. No more bedtime selfies, no more stories, fewer messages in general. Additionally, whereas there were there a few instances during our first months where she would open up about her own personal feelings, that essentially stopped as well at one point. I thought I was being insecure at first for worrying about it, but once I felt more certain that there was a shift in her behavior, I had to bring it up for my own sense of security. I told her "Hey, I'm sensing a little less affection from you recently. You okay?" She said she had been inundated with work and more exhausted than ever, but that didn't mean she didn't care or love me. Cool, I took her word for it. Except more months passed and that courtship and occasional emotional openness just kept decreasing. I decided to ask again, patiently and gently. Except this time I got a defensive response. She told me I was taking more than I was giving, I once again chose to believe her, I apologized and said I wanted to do better for her and for us.
I think it's also important to note that, for whatever reason, our sex life hasn't become any less intense. It's like when we're physically intimate (NOT emotionally), she opens up, showers me with affection, and tells that me she needs me and loves me so much. It confuses me. When the clothes are off and the lights are low, she'll be telling me how healing I am to her and that she wants to do everything with me. But when we're just sitting or hanging together, clothes on and lights fully on, I struggle to not feel an emotional wall in front of her.
Anyway, as I said, we just had our first anniversary celebration. She told me she wanted a surprise so I tried my best to impress her. I arranged a whole day for us where we visited spots that had marked our year together (where we had our first kiss, where we became official), made us a meal that resembled what we had on our first date, and even sprinkled handmade gifts at different spots. To her credit, she got me a little photo album of us and a cute card (although I have to say I wrote way more on hers than she did on mine). Once we got to our final stop for the day, I wanted to use it to talk more vulnerably about what I hoped for us, what she meant to me, what I wanted to offer. While I was talking, she kind of cut me off by saying "You wanna be my hot ass girlfriend," as if she needed some levity to break how serious I was being. I couldn't find it in me to get back on track and just said "Yeah, I do." Then we went home, had some very hot sex (as always), but I needed some reassurance so I asked her while we were cuddling "Did you like our date today?" and she just said "Yeah, it was very thoughtful." I don't know, I feel like I either made her uncomfortable with how "serious" my planning was or she just didn't enjoy it. How do I address this? Has anyone here successfully made an emotionally closed off partner aware of their emotional needs and felt heard? Is there a chance this is salvageable?
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TL;DR – My girlfriend started our relationship pursuing me hot and fast, then seemingly became emotionally closed off, still is very into me physically, and I felt like she dismissed my very serious feelings on our anniversary. How do I talk to her about this?