I (M, 35) met my now-girlfriend (F, 30) at the start of 2020. Neither of us was particularly looking for a relationship, but I guess sometimes you just can't ignore what's staring you in the face. She's completely wonderful - warm, insightful, funny and beautiful - to the point where her interest in me can sometimes feel like a clerical error, and yet I've never felt so appreciated. I'd go so far as to say that, quite apart from making me fall deeply in love with her, she's dangerously close to making me like myself.
And if that sounds too good to be true, let me just remind you that, as per the title of this thread, she chews like a yak with a mouthful of superglue and I don't know what to do about it.
Please understand that I really don't *want* to care, not least because it would almost certainly hurt her feelings if she knew that it bothered me, but it does bother me. I find myself rubbing my face to self-soothe when we eat together, feeling pronounced stress and anxiety about the sounds in the first instance, and then feeling even more stress and anxiety about the possibility of her clocking my stress and anxiety.
I'm not sure that I'm able to ignore this as I might never become desensitised to it, but equally I don't want to raise it with her if it might be a "me problem". I've done a bit of reading into misophonia (a condition whereby some people can have disproportionate emotional reactions to ordinary sounds) and I'm open to the possibility that I have some mild version of that going on, in which case maybe the answer is for me to get therapy?
However, this isn't something I've experienced again and again throughout my life. Only once before can I remember having an irrational response to the sound of someone eating. That was my sister crunching on breath mints when we were children, at least a quarter of a century ago, and we were constantly annoyed with each other about one thing or another back then so I'm not sure that there's a whole lot I can read into that. The sounds my girlfriend makes when she eats are something completely new and alien to me, and I think my reaction is specific to them.
Which brings me to the flipside: if it isn't just a "me problem" and her eating habits are going to bother other people in her personal and professional life, then do I have an obligation to tell her so that she has the chance to address it?
I just don't know what to do. Please help me before I stress-rub the cheeks right off my face.
TL;DR: Girlfriend makes remarkably loud noises while eating. I don't know if I should be keeping my mouth shut or politely asking her to.
Submitted January 01, 2021 at 11:46PM by shittyboyfriend9000 https://ift.tt/2Mvhbvv
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