Thank you for your response.

I guess I didn’t make it clear that I would have to travel to see my parents so my choice is spend it fully with them or spend a day alone waiting for her.

Neither of us tears each other down when we communicate. We are pretty good at talking things through but for some reason I still feel incredibly hurt and frustrated at this one.

Sadly no, we’re definitely not ‘there’ yet.  I haven’t even met her ex, though she knows about me.  In any case, I would have to be invited, and I have’t been.

I am coming to the conclusion that my gf is just not ready for a relationship.  I now realise that many people who are in fact not ready can actually feel they really want relationships.

Thank you!

Wow Anita good memory (or I’m sure it came up in my profile)!  It was only when I was half way through this post that I remembered I had posted about her here before. Yeah I ‘won’ the dating site thing in the end.  It was utter naivety on her part. There have been a few other situations where I’ve wondered if we come from separate planets.

She believed that because her intentions are always good (and they are), that hurt can’t be caused.  I feel like I’m educating her at times, it’s hard work and quite frankly not my job.

Don’t get me wrong, she has brought me great things.  I wouldn’t be at my current level of self-understanding if it wasn’t for dealing with the feelings and challenges our relationship has brought.  It has been rich in many ways and we have had good times.

She isn’t ready.  She isn’t free.  Yet she is the one who introduced the label of partner.  She is the one who made us ‘exclusive’. So tiring.

She told me once she ‘can’t function’ without someone romantically involved in her life.  That’s unhealthy.  She has barely ever been single in her life.  I think she needs to be, whether she likes it or not.

She is showing some self-awareness; it’s ever so slow but it’s there.  I need to step out of the ‘partner’ role while it develops.

I care deeply for her and want more than anything in this for us both to be happy and healthy.  I am confident I can take care of myself in those respects.  I want to see her free and functioning and blossoming.  I am getting to the point where I feel I am just enabling her if the status quo remains the same.

I hope I don’t sound patronising of her.  I bring my own issues to the table for sure but feel I have a reasonable toolbox to deal with them, even if I make mistakes sometimes, and I do.

I’m going to talk to her this week.

p.s. It’s not so much Christmas itself that’s the issue.  We’ve been together just shy of a year, I can be apart from her on Christmas day, but it’s the ex in-laws habit, the expectation that I would wait around until she could squeeze me in.  I have done something very ‘un-me’ and confided in friends about this today.  Both were utterly shocked and thought it was unacceptable.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by saskia.

I know how it reads.  I don’t know.  She can be vague and fudgy and I hate it. Very very avoidant of her own issues, until now. She’s an oddly sheltered person, for someone who’s done a lot, lived in many countries and is pretty educated.  Maybe that’s what comes from holing yourself up in your room.  Once, she asked me what Chinese food was like.  Another time, she couldn’t understand why it might be considered unsafe to walk in parks after dark.  A couple of the quirky ‘other planet’ moments.

Ah.  I’m being judgy.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by saskia.