My Girlfriend Hates Being Alone
Fuzz
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Registered User regular
Here's my day: woke up at 9 and went shopping with my girlfriend until around 2, ran into a friend who invites me to a bit of a workout later on today. I ask my gf to come along and she declines. 4 rolls around and I'm doing stretches, going on a run, and doing post-run stretches/crunches and such.
I'm not entirely too fit and it was rather cold out, it's now 6:30 and I still have an after-running cough. My friend's roommate, also a friend, stops me to give me a thing he made for the flash on my camera.
I get back to my girlfriend's apt at 6 and she is furious. I calmly explain how I only worked out, and came back, and that I had insisted on inviting her. Now she has locked herself in the bathroom, is sleeping on the floor, and the last thing she said to me was "leave me alone"
now, I'm sitting on her bed. If I leave, she'll get even more upset for leaving her alone.
My gf has problems being alone. She explains that she doesn't have any hobbies or close friends to fill her time, so when I'm not around she just sits on her bed and waits for me. I love my girlfriend, I really do, and I'd really like to work this out. I've been blessed with an insane amount of patience, luckily, but I really want to solve this, you know?
I've tried getting her into hobbies, or encouraging her to make friends with her roommates, but she always just gives up, claiming she isn't good enough.
What do I say to her? How do I solve an issue like this? I figure a psychologist could help, but we really don't have the money for that..
I'm not entirely too fit and it was rather cold out, it's now 6:30 and I still have an after-running cough. My friend's roommate, also a friend, stops me to give me a thing he made for the flash on my camera.
I get back to my girlfriend's apt at 6 and she is furious. I calmly explain how I only worked out, and came back, and that I had insisted on inviting her. Now she has locked herself in the bathroom, is sleeping on the floor, and the last thing she said to me was "leave me alone"
now, I'm sitting on her bed. If I leave, she'll get even more upset for leaving her alone.
My gf has problems being alone. She explains that she doesn't have any hobbies or close friends to fill her time, so when I'm not around she just sits on her bed and waits for me. I love my girlfriend, I really do, and I'd really like to work this out. I've been blessed with an insane amount of patience, luckily, but I really want to solve this, you know?
I've tried getting her into hobbies, or encouraging her to make friends with her roommates, but she always just gives up, claiming she isn't good enough.
What do I say to her? How do I solve an issue like this? I figure a psychologist could help, but we really don't have the money for that..
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My wife is the same way as your girlfriend. We had this same talk.
Which I guess you have figured out.
Also there is free counseling out there. Try googling for free counseling in your area.
Sounds more like a pet than a girlfriend.
On a serious note, sounds like she has major self-esteem and dependency issues. You won't be able to make her change, she has to want to. And she doesn't.
The fact that she does not even want you trying to improve yourself likely means she's afraid you'll leave her if you're actually fit, happy, and able to see that other people value you. That's crazy-think right there. Personally, I would extricate myself from the situation ASAP.
Do you know if her roommates have attempted to involve her in any stuff? Talking to them about it by yourself probably isn't an option, maybe you can involve her roommates with stuff you do with her. Having fun with them could help her have fun with them alone.
Edit: And this is unfortunate, but like any serious personal problem, nothing is going to get better until she decides she wants it bad enough not to give up at the first sign of difficulty. But this is something that she really needs to deal with, what is she going to do if you get hit with a bus, or get fed up with her being so dependant.
Her behaviour is really quite childish. You invite her to go with you to something, she declines, than freaks out over you going to do the activity.
It's not really something you can solve without her cooperation, consent, and commitment. And it sounds like she's lacking in at least two of those.
That behavior is unhealthy. She needs help.
Yeah, threatening her to shape up is great advice.
Have the talk Dastardly suggested.
And, no, I didn't suggest threatening her at all. In fact, wait... no. False alarm. No suggestion of threats there.
Edit: To clarify, I'd simply told my wife that its important to me to pursue my own hobbies and maintain my friendships while making sure I spent time with her. I mean, even if your girlfriend were to have a problem that therapy could help, it's not as if she's going to drastically change. If you choose to stay with her, your personal time will probably always be an issue and so you have to set boundaries.
Sorry - my first statement was sarcastic, and based on the post I quoted.
My second was the actual advice I wanted to put forth.
All I have to add is that this won't be solved by you spending more time with her or anything of that nature. Even for old married couples, it is unhealthy to be co-dependent.
Also, not having ANY hobbies is kind of....odd. She literally just sits on the bed for hours waiting for you to get home? She doesn't even read, or anything? God damn...that's fucking boring. I actually feel super bad for her, because I'd be bored out of my mind.
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It's really hard for somebody who has relatively normal thought patterns to understand how she's working herself up to that kind of state in just a couple hours. I remember how it works, and it isn't pretty. It's like your brain goes out of control and negative thoughts swirl around and around, escalating out of control. Those negative thoughts are probably filtering through all her social interactions, so no matter what you see, she thinks that the people she meets don't like her or that she's not interesting enough for them, etc.
It's possible to break out of this, but it requires being very motivated to do so, ideally working with a professional (I recommend cognitive-behavioural therapy, which is very practical and contains clear steps to change your thought patterns), and being willing to do the homework that the professional gives you. She might not be at that stage yet, and it's important for you to understand that if she's not ready, the only thing you can do is be understanding and make your own decisions about whether you're willing to stay with her until she's ready. In my case, I didn't actually make a change until the boyfriend I was relying on broke up with me, but everybody's different, so maybe just knowing how concerned you are will motivate her to get help.
Good luck, and please do remember to always take care of yourself as well as her. She'll appreciate that as she (hopefully) works through the recovery process.
They have occasionally, but one is a really, really weird girl, and the other is more of a party girl. Of note is the strange girl has a bunch of friends.
They mostly get along, but I fear the fact that I'm always with my gf stops her from being closer with them. I'll point out here that I eventually got her out of the bathroom and talked about this very thing. Her roommates are hanging out with some friends in the living room, but she refuses to "hang" with them tonight.*
duuuuuuuude!
She watched a bit of Disney, but she would never watch a series of shows like that by herself, even if she likes the show.
She's not a gamer because she kinda looks down on it, but she loves Mario Kart Wii, so I leave my Wii at her place. She'll ocassionally play by herself, but last night she finished unlocking everything, soo... yeah..
Yeah, a few times. At first we would hang out a few times a week, and at some point it was like "well, why can I hang out with your friends?"
We did that for a while, but she admits that she doesn't really have fun, so why should she bother? And so then it became "yeah, you can hang out with your friends, but then I'm going to be home alone."
It's gotten so I spend more and more time with her, the only times we're not together is when we're in class, some of which we share, or I'm at my friend's for an hour or so.
She says she doesn't want to get in the way of me and my friends, and I pointed out that her and I are very committed and will be together for a very long time, which may not be the case with my friends and me. That helped for a bit, but then it went back to this.
She goes to the gym with me sometimes, but she refuses working out outside, which is what we were doing, so.. yeah..
She likes to read magazines, clip coupons, and watch a few tv shows, but that's it.
Her parents split up when she was pretty young. They always made her focus on studies and "wife work." which is lame..
And then her parents started new families and she was pushed into college. It's sad, but when her parents get asked how many kids they have, both families forget to count her in
Sometimes I think they work her too hard, she's about to graduate from UF and she isn't even 21 yet!
This describes her perfectly. I've gotten in the habit of telling her to "stay positive," but that doesn't really do much..
a lot of my friends noticed the road we were going down and suggested that the shock of this may be the only thing to eventually help her, which I can see, but I just can't go through with it, even if I know she'll be happy eventually.
Do you know what, this is getting in the way of you and your friends. Complaining that she does have anything to do when you go out with your friends is honestly not your problem. She is emotionally blackmailing you to hang out with her and that is flat out wrong and is not what occurs in healthy relationship. She may turn it into a typical "You don't want to spend time with me!", explain to her that yes, you do want to spend time with her, and you want the majority of the time spent with her. But that doesn't mean that you can also spend time with your friends or by yourself just to recharge. If she then counters well that isn't how she feels. Tell her that's great, but that is not how you feel.
In direct response to the Gym. Sometimes in cases like this, you need to tell them that they are wrong and leave them alone so they can realise it.
You spent 5 hours with her, and then asked her if she wanted to spend more time with you.
She said no, she did not say I don't want you to go.
You don't deserve to be treated like this. In all honesty if I was in this situation, I would have headed back home. It's not fair to get yelled at for doing something when they didn't tell you not to do it.
The big problem in this relationship is that you have continued to let this happen. She has learned that if she yells and complains enough she gets attention, this is not healthy.
You need to set firm boundaries and stick with them. You said she is mostly a great girl, and she could very well be great! I don't know to be honest. But ask yourself this, are you really happy sacrificing your interests and hobbies when she does not sacrifice anything? I mean she says if you aren't around she doesn't do anything, well then I really need to ask what did she do before you two met?
Some people are mentioning therapy, it could well help her. But what your relationship needs is firm boundaries.
Satans..... hints.....
Can I suggest that you set a watch or phone alarm to go off every 90 minutes or two hours or so while you're with her, and just start keeping a tally of whether or not you're enjoying yourself when it goes off? Use a binary system (yes/no, no in-between), and be harsh.
Because I have a feeling you'll find that maybe you're not enjoying spending time with her as much as you think you are.
I get pretty irrational when it comes to this sort of thing. My husband deals with it by trying to schedule things for when I'm busy, and when he can't I try to get him to give me an educated guess for when he'll be home. This can really help because if you're looking at a set amount of time, you can probably find some things to do that will fill it neatly. If you're constantly expecting your loved one to walk through the door, the mentality is that you don't want to start anything you'll have to stop so you can do something together, so you just sit and wait and waste time. It feels terrible. If you're going to be later than you say, call as soon as you know. If you keep her in the loop she still won't always be happy about it, but people are often a lot more calm when they know what to expect. Overestimate a bit so that if you're early it's a nice surprise instead of something she's been waiting for for an hour, and if you're on time she'll be ready and happy to see you.
If you can give her a "it's just for 2/3/4 hours" (pick ONE), faced with a definite block of time she may get used to it and find herself something to do, and it will let you escape to see your friends or do things you need to do sometimes. That said, don't be late. This is where my husband falls down; he is quite bad at keeping track of time. Now not only am I pissed he's late, I'm also a worrier and I'll come up with all kinds of horrible things that could have happened to him. Doing this is basically buying you your time at the expense of a bad time when you get home if you happen to fuck it up.
If your girlfriend is like me, part of her problem may well be that she needs structure and an idea of what to expect, and she doesn't even know it. It took me about 26 years to realize it. She really should look into therapy, but you have to *want* therapy, and she may not realize she needs it at this point enough to want it.
Also, I probably don't have to tell you this, but I'm going to anyway just in case: NEVER EVER downplay one party to another. If you say to your friends that you know, you know, you don't want to leave but your gf is up your ass, they'll develop a negative opinion of her that they don't need to have and she will probably catch on to anyway. This will not be fun for you to clean up. If you downplay them to her with an "I don't even really WANT to go, but I told them I would," then first of all it looks like you're wasting your time hanging out with people you don't like and ditching her to do it. Second, hanging out with your friends isn't something you should need to excuse in the amounts you're talking about in your post, and it feels like an easy way out but if you get started doing this it can become expected, and if you show signs someday that you actually do want to hang out with them it will feel that much more like a rejection to her because she already 'knows' how you feel about it.
This is all a lot of work. I do my best to be reasonable, but if something small goes wrong with my day it can jerk me into a downward spiral pretty quick. My husband has the patience of a saint, and if he were any more social by nature than he is or any less saintly he honestly probably wouldn't have wanted to deal with it at all. You sound very similar to him, and if I didn't know my husband was playing video games with me all day I may have worried that you were him. That tells me that you probably love her enough to make it work, and that you've been with her long enough that if she pulls it together even just a bit her clinginess probably isn't a dealbreaker for you... she just needs to actually do it. And Headless is right, it's not your responsibility to entertain her.
Hahahhah what? "Hmm, I grade this activity a 6 on the bf enjoy-o-meter. You better shape up, honey, or else I'm going to my friends. You got thirty minutes."
Haha. It does sound weird when you rephrase it, but it can be a useful reality check to actually have to think, "Am I happy?"
I think Thanatos means to keep this to yourself and use it to figure out if you actually want to be in the relationship or not.
She's engaging in childish behavior (specifically the sitting on the bed waiting for you, the rest of it I don't find that odd for an emotional person). I think Thanatos is right - she sounds like a real drag and I'm not sure if you really are into this relationship or just feel sorry for her or worry about what she would do if you were to leave her. Having a relationship where you're forced to be together every second possible (i.e. when you're not at work or in class) sucks. People always need their own space from time to time.
Whoever said "what is she going to do if you get hit by a bus?" is right - what would she do? Go to work, and then come home and lie in bed all day and night alone?
I'm about to go out with her, so I'll write more later.
Well, you could substitute anything, "get abducted by aliens" , "enter a monastery", or "get sick of this manipulative bullshit"
It certainly sounds like your GF may be depressed as others have said, and you can try to help her with that, but unless she comes to the point of truly wanting to change, nothing will get better.
A) She'll learn that she can't get mad at you for silly reasons
If she is choosing not to have other hobbies or friends, that's her deal. When she's alone, if she figures the best thing to do with her time is sit on a bed, alone, then that's her choice. It's not your fault she is choosing this.
I know it's hard when someone you care about is upset/mad...and all you want to do is be with them and make it better, but really, it's for both of your own good. Talking to her isn't enough, you need to act to show her you're serious.
If you're judging on that scale you're never going to get a good answer. I think you need an in-between in there. If you're saying 'I'm not constantly enjoying myself when I spend time with someone' that doesn't mean it's a bad relationship.
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That's not what he's looking for. What he's looking for is a two hour cycle of thinking, "I'm not enjoying myself... I'm still not enjoying myself... holy crap I am not happy."
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That's odd to me. You'd think it'd be a "Yes" most of the time with some "No's" thrown in due to whatever variable caused some stress (disagreements, poor driving ability, etc). I generally enjoy being around my friends, hence them being friends. If at any point I found that I didn't like being with said people too much, I wouldn't stick around anymore.
Same applies to girlfriends. If you find yourself unhappy more often than happy with her, I'd say it's time to sit down and find a way to solve the issue, whether that means leaving or finding a compromise.
I feel Thanantos may be spot on.
I really just want to take out the bad stuff, and then whoa awesome relationship central.
This weekend her roommates are throwing a little party, and they've invited her. It's "No Boyfriends Allowed" and I insisted on her going. She said she "might stay for a bit."