me and my girlfriend have been together for almost a year now. i love her a lot and i think genuinely she’s the most beautiful girl i’ve ever met, she’s like a painting. we have such a good connection with each other, we get each others humour and i’ve never felt so safe and comfortable around someone before.
anyway, there’ve been a couple of issues throughout our relationship. the main one that she keeps bringing up and has been almost since the start is that she doesn’t feel wanted enough. she says that i don’t text her enough, that she always texts me first, and that she wants me to cook for her more, to come to her house more, to come out with her friends more etc and to just make her feel more wanted.
the thing is, i’m autistic, and this just isn’t my love language. i compliment her a lot, i buy her treats a lot, i treat her to dinner sometimes. that’s the kind of things i do to show people i love and want them. the things she wants, it’s not that i can’t give them to her, it’s that they just don’t cross my mind at all. i’m the same with a lot of things, maybe i have adhd too idk, but i just completely forget to do things because there’s SO much in my mind.
she also knows i’m not able to go to hers because i have OCD and can’t use the bathroom there as it’s shared (i always live in places where i have my own bathroom).
so tonight she ended up giving me an ultimatum. she said that if i don’t start doing these things then i’ll have to tell her and break up with her.
i have been questioning our relationship a bit recently as we’ve been falling out a lot, but we cuddled a bunch tonight and just held each other and i really really do care for her and treasure her.
i’ve also been questioning my sexuality a bit recently (i have been my whole life tbh, i constantly go between lesbian and straight lol) and it’s been confusing for me after thinking i’d settled on being gay. idk. we’ve not been having sex at all really and i worry that it’s because of this but i can’t tell.
this has added a lot of extra stress, and i’ve had a bunch of other things on my mind like a had surgery in septemeber and i’m in my final year of college etc.
i told her i would try and make things work and attempt to do these things for her, but i fear that i will mess up and default back to my usual way of showing love eventually :/
i can’t decide whether i have made the right decision here. i’m honestly so confused but i don’t want to lose her. she told me i’m the love of her life and that she can’t lose me either.
tldr: my girlfriend gave me an ultimatum and said if i don’t show her a different kind of love language than what i do then i need to break up with her
4 comments
You know that sexuality is fluid right
She told you what she needs, and you’re saying here that you can’t give it. So break up. There is no solution here, unless you’re willing to work on remembering what she likes.
Which you could. Write it on your calendar, set an alarm to remind you, don’t wait to do things “naturally” do it consciously. I don’t just instinctively do thoughtful things for my partner every day. I pay attention to what they say they would like, and make a plan to do those things, even if they wouldn’t naturally occur to me.
Just like you can remember to brush your teeth or lock your door, you can remember to do something that makes your girlfriend feel loved.
At some point you have to actually put in the effort to meet her needs. She’s telling you very clearly what she needs from you and your “it just doesn’t cross my mind” mindset is not good enough. A huge part of being in a relationship is actually putting in the time and effort to learn how they want to be loved and actually doing it, otherwise the relationship will die.
I think you might just not be compatible.
You could love her to the moon and back, that doesn’t change that she wants and expects things that you simply can’t give her. That doesn’t make her wrong for wanting those things and it doesn’t make you a bad person for not giving them to her. You’re simply not compatible.