Recently me and my girlfriend of 2 years (living together for ~1 year) have had quite a lot of arguments around the fact that I like to go on vacations with friends. My girlfriend and I have a really good and trusting relationship, we talk a lot about almost everything with each other and we both don't back away from 'hard' talks. We've had issues in the past, but we mostly come to a good in between solution on them and move on. But this one, we can't seem to crack.
Some context: Friends always have been very important to me. I have quite a lot of them, split up between different groups. When I have had issues with previous relationships or other 'life problems' I could always rely on my friends to catch me when something goes sideways. For my girlfriend this is different, she has only about 2-3 real friends, and really only one she can confide in when somethings up. She mostly goes to her parents for those kinds of situations but says even they don't quite understand her or only come up with solutions instead of just listening. Furthermore, she's an only child and I have an older brother and younger sister who I love to hang out with. We've had a long talk yesterday resulting in her admitting that she thinks the only one who really 'sees' her and listens to her is me. Which, I can imagine, can be frustrating at times.
Now a few months ago the topic came up that 2 of my friends (she's met before) would like to go on a surfing trip together for 2 weeks end of June. Meanwhile my girlfriend and I had already planned a holiday of three weeks in August. When I brought the surfing trip up, she got very emotional and couldn't understand why I'd want to spend so much time without her. Her being at home with nothing to do essentially while I am away having a fun time with friends, it seemed to sting her quite a bit. We've had a discussion which lasted till late at night, I understood her viewpoint and for her it's obviously not really a fun situation for me to be away for so long, and her being home alone struggling to fill the time. So I think I made a reasonable concession by cutting the trip to one week and at the time she seemed fine with this decision. She felt one week wouldn't be so bad, and we left it at that.
Now the trip is in about a month and since I have been invited to a few other events of which 2 also happen in June before the trip. Nothing big, just a day of card gaming with friends and a concert with a mate of mine. Mentioning the latter yesterday seemed to trigger my GF to think about all the times I will be away.
Now I know that she doesn't like it when I bring up events which she is not a part of, so I do feel a little bad when I do so. (Also I have had a pretty toxic relationship before in which I could not plan anything without my ex getting angry, so I always feel some resistance bringing stuff like this up). We both know she's working on the fact that she doesn't like when I am away, sometimes even a night I planned with mates seems too much for her, but other nights she's fine. But she says she thinks there are a few limits she really struggles with. Me being away for more than a day at a time is one of them she just can't wrap her head around. For her it's a fait accompli slowly creeping toward her, nothing she can do about it.
The problem seems to be part jealousy and part FOMO. She says she doesn't like it when I do all those things with friends because she'd rather I do them with her and that she really wants to be happy for me when away, but can't 'feel' it like I can the other way around. Furthermore she hates being home alone having nothing to do. We've found out that if she's distracted with other stuff, it's easier for her to be alone. For instance when she has a busy school week when I am away, she just focusses on that. But if she has the week off while I am away, she struggles way more to keep herself busy.
Now we're really looking for a way to deal with this problem. To us it doesn't seem like an issue to be breaking up over, because the rest of the relationship seems to work fine. Your average Wednesday so to speak is wonderful and nothing to be upset about. So we're looking for a way we can both be happy while I am away, me not thinking about her feeling miserable when I'm gone, and her feeling okay while I'm from home. I don't have the need to be away for more than a week each year, but I'd like for it to be something I can keep doing.
TL;DR: My girlfriend feels miserable when I am away from home for longer than a few days at a time while doing fun stuff without her being present. We've talked about it a lot but don't seem to be able to come up with a solution that suits us both.
Submitted May 24, 2022 at 11:52PM by Safe-Theme-1161 https://ift.tt/WotlRGF
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