Adrian, thank you for giving me a little insight to what was going on in your relationship.  It is helpful to hear similar stories and relate to them so easily.  Lately I have just been getting the feeling that nothing is enough.  There is always a fault somewhere and nothing I do will be able to make this person happy.  I think coming to this realization will be good for me.  I laughed at your story of parking the car because it didn’t matter where we went there was always something said about how and where I parked.  I remember when I first met her we parked along a river and her friends owned a home on the other side of it.  When we were at the friends house she kept mentioning the way I had parked the night before was not the best place for that campsite.  Who cares you know?  There was the time we were in public and I tossed a tool in the back of her truck and she yelled, “don’t throw that at me!”  I tossed it in the back, not even in her direction.  I became nervous and scared of what people around us would think I was doing.  It made me nervous and I just got in my truck and left.  Just rereading your stories makes me exhausted and i feel the same when I reread mine.  She had come home and saw me on the couch with the dogs just being comfortable and immediately started getting angry at me for “not being productive.”  She kept going on and on in anger.  She walked to the back bedroom and saw that I had folded all of the laundry.  She came out and said, “why didn’t you say anything, thank you.”  I guess I just wanted to see how angry she was actually going to get over nothing.  She never asked me to do that, I guess it was just something that I was supposed to.  Thanks again Adrian for taking the time to see the commonalities in our stories.  It helps to know that you are doing well and was able to remove yourself from the anger and control.

Adrian, thank you for taking the time to write this to me, especially since you’re a first time poster.  It means a lot.  Early on in the relationship it was amazing.  There was no disrespect and we had a lot of fun together.  I believe around the 5 or 6 month mark I noticed her becoming angry at small things.  She got upset in a parking lot when I met her to help her get something from the store.  A lot of times I feel like every relationship is difficult and we all go through our ups and downs which makes it difficult to see how bad things actually are.  The biggest problem I have is when I try to address my feelings and how I am treated sometimes.  I am always met with defensiveness and she is unable to see how her way of treating me is not respectful.  I feel like there is a lack of empathy on her part and has an inability to put herself in my shoes.  She is very big on respect for herself.  If I do something that can offend her or make her upset she will tell me in one second that what I said or did is not ok.  I respect her so I always hear her out and apologize and say that I didn’t intend to disrespect her in anyway and that I’ll be more aware of how I can do this and that in the future.  On the flip side when I am disrespected and attempting to voice my feelings and frustrations I am given no chance to calmly talk about it before she is getting defensive and coming up with ways that what she did is ok.  It’s frustrating.  I know both people in a relationship deserve to have their feelings heard and understood so that is one thing that I have a hard time being ok with.  Was your girlfriend willing to hear you talk about your feelings when you felt like you were being treated poorly?  Did she say hurtful things to you, or make you try to feel insecure?  Was there a final tipping point for you where you felt like ok, this girl is not going to change, I have to leave?  Sometimes I feel like there is a script that I am supposed to be following and because I never got her script for the play that we are playing out in her mind, I make mistakes and when I do that unintentionally then it is brought to my attention.  I always have the feeling like what I am doing is never enough.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  I could be doing a lot of stuff around the house and the one thing that I forget to do or whatever is brought to my attention.  She is a fault finder and always looking for something to tell me that I did wrong.  It gets exhausting because I just want to be appreciated.

Anita, I forgot to answer your question about looking inward about the unresolved pain i was carrying regarding my dad passing away from cancer and the answer is yes.  I started reading books about grieving and forgiving myself for being scared and not being there when he took his last breath.  I spoke to my sister and my mom about how each of us dealt with and remember the last moments.  its was very therapeutic because we had not spoken about it together since it happened 9 years ago.

Hey Riris, so we have been together for a year and two months now.  Her childhood consisted of her mom and dad and an older sister.  The mom has has a drinking problem for over 30 years.  It has always been an issue even when my girlfriend was young.  Her dad didn’t seem to have any issues but ended up having an affair later that was very hard on everyone especially my girlfriend.  As they were growing up her sister was very cruel to her and they did not get along.  She has had a number of very troubling relationships where her boyfriend at the time left in the middle of the night.  Also, there was physical abuse at one point in another relationship and there is a restraining order there.

Anita, Thank you so much for your response, insight and honesty.  It is very difficult because she is never able to see what is happening clearly.  She got frustrated looking something up on the computer and I saw that she needed help so I got on my phone and looked it up and showed her.  She snapped at me and said that my input wasn’t any good.  I walked out of the room and she came out and said I was getting angry again.  I tried explaining that I was trying to help but she became louder and louder and wouldn’t hear me.  The situation calms and the blame for it is put on me.  It has become a hit to my self confidence over time.  My self respect has been declining and I have not been feelings as good about myself as I generally would.  I don’t know why but we have began to think that the reasoning behind this is because of unresolved pain from my dads death years ago.  I never really thought it was an issue but it is what she says may be the reason i am feeling so bad.  She has suggested a few times that I talk to someone about it.  As far as her talking to anyone, I know that she will never think that there are issues she has to work out.  Through numerous times of getting angry and blaming I have never seen her look inward, the problems always come from the outside and she is just reacting with honest emotion.  I am starting to think a lot about what you said about me not being able to help her.  It makes me really sad because I love her, but I hate the way she treats me and isn’t even aware of how it makes me feel.