I’m glad your GF went through with the move, fusoya.
I agree with OkatuLoki. Pushing someone into counseling because she “should” be there isn’t going to help much. She needs time to think about what happened, and throwing a therapist into the mix can be confusing.
And it may just be that she needs physical distance between her and her mother, which this move will give her. Fusoya’s GF can maintain boundaries that her mother will have to respect, and she will be away from the control and influence of her mother.
she may need some help…she’s continued to act pretty quiet and depressed since she got here, the opposite of the way she usually is. She still doesn’t want to discuss “the situation” with me at all either. I’m not going to push her into anything though. I think she just needs some time to get cooled down and adjusted.
That’s really the best strategy - as long as she’s not going into seriously depressed mode (Not eating, or eating all the time, not sleeping, or sleeping all the time, postponing daily ablutions for two or three days are all what I’d consider to be symptoms of seriously depressed mode - not wanting to talk much, or just seeming sad, even if it’s all the time, is not what hits my meter for seriously depressed behavior.) give her space and time. I’d say, let her know that when she wants to talk about it, you’ll be ready to listen, but don’t ask her about it until that time comes.
If that time hasn’t come after a couple of weeks, a month, or more, I’d start to consider bringing it up again. Until then, just work on making your life with her work. After all that’s not an inconsiderable stress in its own right.
We had a bit of a discussion/argument last night. She told me that she exaggerated the details a bit…her mom didn’t actually have an overdose, but she did pass out from the stress/consumption and had to be taken to the hospital. This explains why she was released so easily, and she is really going to go to an alcoholic support group.
My girlfriend was the one who exaggerated/lied. And she told me that her mother tried to kill herself because that’s what she thought was happening when it did…and after they left the hospital, I wasn’t getting much detail about what was going on up until we had a long talk last night. It’s becoming apparent that we still have a bunch of things to work out, both related to this incident and unrelated, but at this point I think it’s beyond the scope of SMDB-therapy.
OK, wow. That’s kind of a big red flag. ISTM (and I’ve been lurking this thread since the beginning even though I’m only posting now) that your gf said whatever she needed to in order to justify putting the move on hold.
If you aren’t completely furious, you’re a better man than I. That kind of lie, with the problems it implies, would be a possible deal breaker for me.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I can completely understand the gf if that’s what she thought had happened at the time, and then didn’t want to talk about it later. That’s a long way from trying to justify putting the move on hold.
I’m speaking from experience as a child of a mentally ill mother who had massive screaming fits for a solid month when I decided to go six hours away to college. (I mostly hid in my room that month.) It’s not easy to get away from the guilt of “abandoning” a parent like that, even when you’re also hugely relieved. Gf will need to work through that.
Again, she may be misrepresenting now, not then, and not be intending to lie, but having a hard time reconciling emotionally betraying her mother in some way.
I can see where that could be what is happening, but what fusoya is saying sets off alarm bells for me, too. I agree with you, fusoya - this is beyond the scope of SDMB-therapy. My best advice to you at this point would be to ask to have this thread closed.
