Inertia is a powerful thing, particularly in relationships.
There’s an old saying (attributed to Henry Ford, I think): “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
It sounds like it’s time for a change.
Well, that sounds strange on her part. She has major, crippling trust issues simply because you aren’t as talkative about your feelings? That speaks to other issues with your SO. More red flags.
Regarding “the good times”, I spent a decade trying to get those good times back. I should not have.
If it helps, my life is objectively better since my divorce; it turns out circling the drain gets you nothing but misery.
I’m having a hard time understanding the connection here: you are bad at communicating and sharing your feelings, which is a very common attribute of many men, and so she doesn’t trust you? I am not sure how that follows. If you said she was frustrated by it, that would make plenty of sense, but where does the mistrust come from?
Where does this feeling come from? It seems like you have been trying to fix things and it hasn’t gotten better. In fact, the marriage proposal fix has made things worse. When is it time to abandon this theory?
There are plenty of people these days who are convinced that “I’m always right and therefore anything wrong must be with my partner.” The OP’s SO sounds like that type.
Being careful to remember we’re only getting one side, but…yeah.
Based on those descriptions alone, Borderline Personality Disorder sounds like a fit. And borderlines are incredibly difficult to deal with.
Yeah, up until this point, I figured there had been cheating; possibly a lot of it. Or maybe drug abuse. Or OP gambled away her car. Even then, the onus is on the SO to decide if this is a deal-breaker or not. If not, then they have to let it go; otherwise it’s their mistrust that’s killing the relationship, not whatever predicated the mistrust. I’m not arguing that cheating, or drug abuse, or poodle gambling rings are acceptable, but the answer is to break up or put it in the past; not keep relitigating it.
All that goes out the window with OP’s report that this is about failure to adequately or “correctly” communicate their feelings. That’s just not a ”trust” issue. Intentionally or not, you are being gas-lit.
This.
You are hooked to a wacko. Run away! Run away!!
Even if it were all your fault and you were the only one who did things wrong, you should still not marry her. As it is, that’s almost unheard of in any relationship, and I doubt it’s true of yours.
I know two years feels like a long time, but in the larger scheme of things, it’s really not. The kids will recover. If you think it would be possible and a good thing, you could even ask to maintain contact with them. Then you can get individual therapy for your own issues and be better prepared for your next, ideally healthier, relationship.
No matter what, you deserve to be valued and to live in a peaceful household. If that household is just you for a while, that’s still okay. Don’t marry her.
Thank you for this. I have considered this idea a lot lately. Life is so stressful already…it’s even harder to come home to a huge anxiety cloud, with eggshells all over the ground, leading me to always feel on edge and wondering when the next argument and fight is going to happen. It’s exhausting.
I agree. The constant relitigating makes me feel like my partner has no hope in my ability to change and grow and be able to be more honest, authentic, and to improve my communication skills. The constant feeling I have of needing to walk on eggshells just to “keep the peace” is so tiring and just makes me feel like I am never enough and like I can’t do anything right.
I am curious why you say that I am being “gas-lit”? Maybe I just don’t fully understand the entirety of what that entails or the ramifications of it, but I think my understanding of gaslighting might be so simplistic that I just assume I can’t be suffering from that.
I say gas-lit because you are being told, to the point you have internalized it, that to “grow” or “be authentic” or “improve my communication skills” are appropriate things to have “trust issues” about. Betrayal is cause to distrust (cheating, theft, abuse). Having a different style or degree of communication is just not. Your SO is entitled to not like how (or how much) you communicate. They are entitled to tell you so. They are entitled to leave you over it. They are not entitled to have “trust issues” over it and to lay the entire blame on you and guilt you into feeling you have betrayed them. That’s why I say gas-lit; they’ve convinced you of something that just doesn’t have anything to do with your actual behavior.
It’s quite possible they’re not doing this on purpose. They may well have “trust issues”, but they weren’t caused by you not expressing your feelings. They predated you and they’re for your SO to work on.
My earlier point was that even if you had objectively betrayed your SO, the proper choice is to dump you or forgive you (possibly with conditions). It’s not proper to perpetually bludgeon somebody with “trust issues” even if you did cheat on them. If you don’t trust somebody, get away from them.
This is probably accurate too. Her ex (the stepkid’s bio father) was abusive, a perpetual liar, hid addictions, and cheated on her frequently. Her next relationship also involved lying and cheating. So she naturally became dispositioned to not trust anyone but her own gut. So it results in her automatically feeling uneasy anytime my mood changes or anytime I get stressed out cause of work, or get quiet-ish because I’m tired and wanting to relax. Being told that there must be something “up” with me just because she feels uncertain or her gut feels off just makes me feel like I’m always doing something wrong.
Emphasis added
And there’s the problem. You’re not doing anything wrong. These “trust issues” are her problem, not your problem. Her making it into your problem absolves her of taking responsibility and having to work on it.
You are not a doormat. Remember that.
That’s what she tells you happened, but given the way she’s treating you, I would call the cause and effect into question.
I’ve known a couple of people who could not maintain relationships. In every case, they always described their partner as the ‘crazy’ one after a breakup. One friend of mine had the bad luck to find multiple ‘totally insane’ women - in fact, every one he ever dated or married. All of them seemed like perfectly nice people to me. My friend, on the other hand, was an opinionated hothead. I’m pretty sure which direction the ‘crazy’ ran in his relationships.
Thank you for your candidness and bluntness. You’re right: I can’t hate this solved by anyone else but me. And frankly, I’m surprised at the unanimity of the responses here. But, of course, sitting on the fence is not going to solve anything or make any part of this situation better. Something’s gotta give, and my partner has demonstrated time and again that she won’t be the one to make any decision towards ending things, so the ball is in my court…
Thank you for the reminder. I’ve felt like a doormat in previous relationships and I swore I wouldn’t let myself get into that situation again.
The empathetic part of me believes her when she talks about her past and trauma; it believes her when she tells me how she’s working on herself and putting effort into her trust issues and anxiety. And I have seen some of that improvement and it’s been nice to see her working on herself. But that all stopped several months ago (her therapy, I mean; I’m not sure if or what she has been doing to work on herself since). Whereas I have been ACTIVELY seeking therapy, trying new things to help me understand my thoughts and feelings and to give myself some “me time”…
It might help if we had more details about your issues, which you’ve been pretty vague about.
Why don’t you try steelmanning her arguments here. What exactly is her beef with you? Name some specific things you have done that have hurt her or hurt your trust. What are you in therapy for? What do you think needs fixing?