My [M 23] girlfriend [F 22] has an avoidant attachment style, how do lessen the amount of conflicts that we have?

Me and my girlfriend have been dating for quite a few months now and we have a loving relationship. We care about each other a lot and are both trying to improve ourselves in order to better the relationship. However, I have began to realize that she has an avoidant attachment style and tends to be quite reactive in nature. She has a lot of anxiety and oftentimes, issues will overwhelm her and she will be overwhelmed and unable to process her thoughts. This is something that I have been trying to support her through but the issue is that in these moments, she tends to question our entire relationship and also act very reactively to try to protect herself such as closing contact with me for sometimes a day in order to cool down, or she will tell me that we're not compatible with each other and that maybe this isn't working out. Sometimes I feel like I am the scapegoat for her other problems, and although she notices this, it's difficult for her to not think this when she is spiraling. The good in this is that once she is able to calm down, she is always able to come back to me and apologize for her behaviour, and we try to come up with a course of action to deal with this in the future.

She also tends to allow for issues she is having in other parts of her life bleed into our relationship. Oftentimes, if she is feels behind at work or school, or perhaps she hasn't seen her friends in a while, she feel a lot of anxiety and be more cold to me and will tell me that we should see each other less because these issues popped up because we hung out too much. Although this is rarely the culprit because we really do not see each other that often (maybe twice a week) and she is a major procrastinator and when she needs to do work, she doesn't and watches youtube or checks instagram instead.

I find this tough to deal with, but I see a lot of good in this relationship because I am anxious by nature and have a lot of insecurities in this relationship. She is patient and always tries to understand me and supports me when I am going through rough patches. When we aren't in conflict, we are very loving and she is very maternal by nature, and the way that she cares for me is something I have not experienced in a relationship before. Our chemistry is amazing and we never run out of things to talk about.

Knowing all of this, I am finding it hard sometimes to constantly have to deal with the fear that she is going to end things because things are going tough for her. This is tough for me and I want to know how to better deal with her in those moments that she is overwhelmed and creates space between us to protect herself.

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tl;dr: my girlfriend has an avoidant attachment style and often blames our relationship for taking up too much time, how do i deal with this?

Submitted March 30, 2020 at 03:19PM by ClearZebra6 https://ift.tt/2w66yY6