How do I (30M) get my girlfriend (28F) to stop accusing me of belittling her? I feel like she has an inferiority complex and is taking it out on me.

We've been dating for a bit over a year. I am from a working class area in Brooklyn, she is from a town of around 5k in south carolina. When we first dated, she always thought the being-from-brooklyn thing was cool, and would sort of look up to me and act like growing up in new york was some crazy cool experience and she would brag about it to other people. It wasn't exactly actually that interesting, but to her I suppose it was. It kind of felt weird how she treated the topic of Brooklyn, almost like it was some fantasy land. She always seemed like someone who really wanted to break out of her small town roots and have a more interesting life in a bigger city, and I think I was sort of like a 'portal' to that almost. We both live in Dayton Ohio right now.

However, this has started to get flipped around now.

Recently, in two separate outbursts, she accused me 'belittling' her. The first was that we went to the zoo and her friend brought their friend who was also from new york, and we talked about the city for a while. She got upset at that sort of, and later on mentioned that it felt like we were 'rubbing in everyones face' how cool we were. We weren't doing that, at all. We were mostly talking about various pizza spots. At one point we briefly talked about a music venue, and I guess that was what got her upset? I honestly have no idea, she didn't exactly clarify what exactly got her mad. She just said it was rude and made her feel bad, and that it felt like I was doing it on purpose to show off or something.

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Another incident was at a dinner with my sister who came to visit, and a few other friends who were there. The other friends brought up NYC, and we started talking about it. They were very interested in NYC in general and had a lot of questions. They asked me if I had met any celebrities and I mentioned I had seen Edward Norton one time but never met him, and after that my girlfriend went to the bathroom, and I got a text asking to meet near the back of the restaurant. I went, and she was like "what are you doing? why are you just at this table bragging about all of the cool celebrities you've met and how amazing you are to be from new york? did you come to this dinner just to fulfill your ego?" and just looked at me, really, really mad. I told her that they asked, I wasn't just telling them. After dinner she again brought it up and was very upset and said I was bragging and that I have a 'tendency' to do this... Based on two incidents? I almost never bring up new york unless someone asks me.

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Her accusations just feel baseless and... weird. I've never really found brooklyn to be super interesting or bragged about it that way, I didn't even live near the interesting parts like north brooklyn. I feel like she is almost projecting her insecurities on me and has a weird inferiority complex or something, and I feel like some part of me knew this when I dated her (with her constant hyping up of brooklyn and talking about how boring her life is in comparison) but I never thought it would turn into such negativity against me. Its almost like her previous complex about brooklyn has sort of been switched around.

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Overall our relationship is good, but this one thing is really weird and I don't really know how to deal with it at all.

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TL;DR - - Girlfriend used to be sort of obsessed that I was from NYC, now she seemingly hates anytime its brought up. I think she has some sort of inferiority complex and is lashing out at me over it.

Submitted September 26, 2019 at 01:08PM by metriklmetrik https://ift.tt/2lreded