In need of a third perspective on my relationship

[Libertarian Prepper]

Hi guys and girls,

 

Tl;DR

 

I've been in a relationship for the past 2 months. We use RTR to communicate constantly and this makes our conversations very emotionally intense. Some hurts and red flags have come up (I think on both ends) but she brought up some of hers after we had already started dating and having sex, and due to the nature of the hurts and the fact that she didn't tell me upfront (misled me for one of them) it's been very difficult emotionally for me to recover from that hurt.

 

Specifically, the worst red flag/hurt was around the recency of her breakup with her ex. We started talking (we met online on a dating website) in the first week of December and she had told me that she broke up with her ex in November, but that she had essentially started grieving the end of the relationship back in September and it was just a protracted breakup. Even then I thought 2 months was way too short for a 1.5 year relationship, but I was more or less okay with it.

 

5 weeks into the relationship, around the end of January, it came out that she had broken up with her ex just one week before we started talking, and that she had been having sex with him until the last day of the relationship. Clearly she could not have been getting over him in any sense of the word. After some talking she admitted and took responsibility for the misleading. We're not sure it was a conscious effort at the time. She understands why I'd naturally assume that if someone is "getting over" a relationship they're not actively having sex with the person. There was also no other reason for her to cite September except to make it seem as though the breakup period was longer.

 

Is this a dealbreaker-level red flag? Should I break up? There are tremendously good things about her and this relationship that probably more than balance things out, but sometimes I feel like the red flag is something I should break up over. For more (and a summary of the good and bad) please read more. There are also many confounding variables, like that I find intimacy and relationships difficult and often terrifying, and I could be looking for reasons to break up because of that, also. Or that I recently deFOO'ed. I would greatly appreciate if people read as much of the story as possible. I know it's long but I'm also afraid that people will comment and judge without full information.

 

Introduction

 

I've recently entered into a new relationship (December of 2015) and there are some red flags and issues that have been coming up which I really want some advice or just a third party perspective on.

 

Normally I would go to my friends (who all live abroad), but partly through my fault for neglecting them because of the time I've spent with my girlfriend, it's been very hard to actually get to any Skype calls. Hopefully I'll have one this weekend with one of my friends though.

 

My friends have not been very successful with relationships and so taking relationship advise from them feels a bit like reading a diet book written by a fat man. Primarily though I feel like I've been avoiding them as a way of avoiding important information about this relationship. A part of me fears that they'd tell me I should break up if they knew everything. Having said which, my girlfriend has been supportive of me contacting them, and when I told her just now that I wanted to post on this forum she was encouraging of that, too! She said that either way I need more information and a third perspective and she too was curious what people would say.

 

I think a part of me is also scared of people telling me that the red flags and hurts aren't that big of a deal, because then all of my triggers around intimacy and closeness with another human being would set off.

 

I'm going to try and be balanced and fair to both the good and bad aspects of the relationship.

 

Backstory

 

We met online through a dating site in the first week of December. After about a week of texting we moved to texting on Skype and then maybe within a week after that we had our first Skype video call. It lasted 8 hours. I've never spoken to someone for so long in my life! I easily get bored of people in general and being an introvert I reach social exhaustion levels very quickly, but this was different, I didn't want the conversation to end. Since then we've been communicating a LOT.

 

The logistical complication is that I live in the UK and she lives in the US. We decided the Christmas holidays were a good opportunity for both of us to meet in person, especially as I was getting furloughed and had a few extra holiday days, so we both flew to NY (a "neutral" location). We decided to save on costs by getting a shared AirBnB and also because we didn't want to say goodbye to each other at night. We had decided that sleeping together (I mean literally sleeping, not sex) was a possibility but if either of us didn't feel comfortable there was a couch as an option.

 

We setup some sexual boundaries: we could basically do anything except actual intercourse but we'd only do what both of us felt comfortable with. Bottom line is that by night 3 we had failed, there was way too much sexual tension and we both have pretty high sex drives, so we had sex. From then until the end of the trip we probably had sex averaging 2-3 times a day. I think on some level we both kind of hoped it would happen.

 

We saw each other again last week. My girlfriend came to the UK this time to visit me and we spent 9 whole days together. Right now our tentative plan is for her to move here in March or more likely April as she wants to quit her job and not live with her parents anymore and I'm bound by a contract that doesn't expire until 14 months from now (breaking it costs a ridiculous sum of money...).

 

The Good

 

I'll start with the great things about this relationship and my girlfriend:

• We constantly communicate with RTR and have done since day one. Actually since before we were committed to each other. This was largely my doing - I introduced the concept and constantly communicated my feelings and asked her about hers, and she reciprocated and loved the idea. She's ordered the book and is reading it.
• We split all of our costs half-half. When I came to NY and my flight was more expensive than hers, she paid for the AirBnB in its entirety to help balance that cost out.
• She wears little to no makeup. She also doesn't wear high heels to make her butt stick out.
• She's a minimalist, constantly downsizes, doesn't buy useless crap, and saves a very large portion of her paycheck every month.
• She embodies all the virtues I seek in others and strive for in myself: honesty, curiosity, compassion, kindness, integrity, and courage. She's not perfect of course and sometimes falls short, as do I, but she really strives towards them.
• She doesn't drink alcohol, smoke, or take drugs. A complete teetotaler, just like me. People like that are rare, even within the FDR community.
• She loves the idea of peaceful parenting! I'm not sure if she knew the terminology but from the beginning she came into the relationship with the idea that she'd never hit her (our) kids. That we should be respectful of their needs, treat them like people with feelings, etc.
• She's agnostic/atheist after being brought up very religious in Texas. She de-converted 2 years ago.
• I hadn't felt safe crying with another human being since I was 10. I haven't just felt safe crying with my girlfriend, I've felt safe weeping with her, and she handled it beautifully. This was trust she built up. If you had asked me 3 months ago when I thought I might feel safe crying in front of another person, I would have said 10 years to never.
• Following my example (and because of some of the revelations/realizations in the next section), she has actually committed to doing therapy. She's done two sessions and has another one booked for next week.
• She's listened to some podcasts and videos by Stef, read "On Truth", and generally done a lot of wisdom-gaining and self-knowledge since we've been together.
• We're incredibly open and honest in our communication, with very few exceptions (see below).
• She's the first and only person I've ever enjoyed having sex with (not that I have much experience - 2 other women).
• We're constantly curious about each others' feelings and are empathetic towards each other. When we're feeling disconnected or not empathetic we both tell the truth about it, we don't pretend to feel things we're not feeling and we admit/recognize when we're intellectualizing.
• We look out for each others' needs and highlight when the other person could be self-sacrificing (e.g. me staying up late to talk to her due to time zone differences and therefore losing sleep).
• She's very intelligent. I feel like she's my equal and this makes our conversations endlessly engaging and interesting.
• She's painfully aware of the discrimination boys face growing up in terms of emotional acceptance and abuse, and that men face in courts, in the media, etc. Moreover, she first broached this topic, not me. I would feel safe marrying and having children with her and knowing she'd never abuse the system in case of a divorce for money or custody.
• She's fit and healthy, and does a good amount of exercise. I do a fair bit too, and we have some good exercise plans together!

 

The Bad

 

• There have been a number of hurtful things that she's done. The first to come up were mean or cruel "joke"-like comments, except they weren't funny to me and they were hurtful. I'm a sensitive person and do not at all have a thick skin, nor do I want to, least of all in an intimate relationship. These were not intentional or conscious and when I pointed them out to her, sometimes after some convincing, she realized why they were hurtful and has since made a lot of effort (and success) in stopping or at least greatly reducing the frequency of these comments. I think in time they will stop completely. Verbal abuse can be very triggering for me and still now I feel anxious in conversations because I don't know when an attack might be coming. It's completely random and not on purpose from her end. This is the environment she grew up in and I'm challenging it. But it's getting better.
• One time I was punished for my empathy. When I expressed a great deal of empathy for the pain she felt during a medical procedure in the past, she lashed out and said "Well maybe you shouldn't be in the same room when I give birth to a child then". This was tremendously hurtful because she was both threatening to deprive me of that opportunity and punishing me for empathizing with her. Later on we realized and it was confirmed in therapy that she was basically pushing me away because she felt uncomfortable with how much I cared about her. She has since apologized many times for this, recognized how hurtful it was, brought it up in her first therapy session, etc. Moreover since then (there was another medical procedure recently that I went with her to) she has felt very comfortable with me being there for her and her pain. She has a very dissociated relationship with her pain in general because of her history of child abuse. But she's actually actively working on it now.
• The recency of her breakup with her ex. It's in the TL;dr above. She's had just one week to process and grieve over her previous breakup and she misled me about how long that was and presented the relationship as basically over 2 months earlier, when really she was still having sex with her ex of 1.5 years until the last day. This feels like a dealbreaker type of red flag. For more information, this is the only ex she's had that she's had a sexual relationship with. The last few times they had sex she actually cried during and suspects her ex never even noticed. They were not emotionally connected at all and yet she was the one who pushed for the sex more than him. Perhaps the worst thing is that she never thought these two details (the recency of the sex and the crying during sex) were red flags and bad experiences worth mentioning. She never hid them directly, I found out just by asking, but she never came forward because she didn't realize how much of a problem that is.
• A few weeks ago, her ex texted her and asked if she wanted to meet up (as they had vaguely agreed on before their breakup), and her response was hurtful. She told him she had a new boyfriend and didn't want to meet up right now. The "right now" made me feel even more like a rebound or replacement as if she were trying to line him up for a possible future meeting if we broke up. This was especially hurtful because she knew how hurt I was by the recency of the breakup. Because of this text incident, I felt even more used as a rebound and insecure in our relationship and commitment. Afterwards, she blocked all communication with him, but closure is something she should have given all three people involved upfront, and not after a long discussion with me. I suspect this was an attempt to self-sabotage in the relationship.
• She's withheld information about another ex which she didn't even really see as an ex because they had dated but never committed to each other and so weren't "official". That relationship lasted half a year and had the disturbing element of him encroaching on her sexually, groping, etc. They saw each other maybe a dozen times alone. Unfortunately, after the first time it happened she kept seeing him, and of course it happened another two times before she finally stopped seeing him. The fact that she had completely blanked on the worst of those encounters until she really thought about it is quite disturbing and scary, as there was physical violence involved. This was a few years ago now but she clearly hasn't processed or fully understood and felt what happened. It's on her to-discuss list with her therapist.
• 2-3 weeks ago I had a couple of panic attacks, for the first time in my life. I think those were shortly after the birthing room comment. I had never had these before in my life, and it was very scary. I can suspect what was going on for me emotionally but this post is already growing very long. I haven't had any since then and things have been better. Also, during these attacks my girlfriend answered a call to be with me in the middle of the night for her (timezone differences) to be there for me and asked me to call her whenever something like this happened again regardless of the time. Still, this is a worrying thing and shows how difficult it's been for me emotionally. I feel a lot of emotional turmoil in this relationship. Anxiety, fear of impending doom, and feeling overwhelmed are some of the "negative" (I know they're not really negative) emotions that come up a lot, both because of the closeness and triggers and because of the hurts.
• Especially since the birthing comment and then finding out more about her exes, it's been harder for me to enjoy our time together. I get triggered and think about these hurts pretty frequently and it really interferes with my enjoyment of the relationship. I also frequently feel disconnected and like I can't fully be there for or empathize with her.

Some of these negatives are red flags from her past, and others are hurtful things she's done. Those that are red flags from her past that she did not share upfront were also hurtful. For instance, had I known that she had had sex so recently with her ex and that she cried during it, I would have never went with shared accommodation on our first trip together. In a sense I did not give informed consent to sex because I did not know all that I should have known.

 

Can these hurts be recovered from (on my end)? Are they objectively that bad? The one I feel the worst about is the recency of her breakup with her ex and that she waited only a week before dating again after the end of a 1.5 year relationship, and the text she sent him.

 

Should I (like my therapist said) try to focus more on how my girlfriend acts in our relationship rather than on her past? Is this going to get better over time? A lot of these hurts are very recent. A part of me feels like her efforts to change are "too little, too late", but is that true?

 

I have a rule against dating people I'm not comfortable spending the rest of my life with as they are now. This rule is there to protect me from treating people as projects or from unrealistically hoping that they will change, because in my experience the vast majority of people have no desire to change and never do. However, my girlfriend is actually changing and growing and working on herself. She's taken on some serious commitments to therapy and self-work, there are clear improvements as the weeks go by in terms of reduced hurtful comments and improved empathy and curiosity, etc.

 

Confounding Variables

 

There is a bunch of stuff in my life both in my past and that's going on now that is complicating things, and I think it's important to do a brief overview:

• I have an ACE score of 6. I begun my path to self-knowledge just over 2 years ago but it's been rather iffy in some parts where I spent a lot of my time dissociating, especially after the breakup with my ex over 1.5 years ago.
• I have self-sabotaging parts of me (sorry for using the Internal Family Systems terminology) that are really uncomfortable with me being in a relationship.
• My original plan was: I'm 25 now. Wait till I'm 26 and have some more money saved up and can afford regular therapy. Do therapy for a couple of years. Hopefully find someone I want to be in a relationship with by the time I'm 30. I never expected things to turn out like this. Now I've accelerated my plans and I'm doing weekly therapy sessions (sometimes twice a week, sometimes I skip a week) and it's terrifying because of all my traumas.
• I've forsaken all of my coping mechanisms. I used to spend most of my free time watching movies and TV shows, playing video games, and watching porn. I no longer do any of these. I've lost interest completely. The only thing I've done is watch 2 movies and those were with my girlfriend because it was on our to-watch list.
• I've stopped talking to my parents around the beginning of January. I had been blocking their calls and mostly ignoring them for months before, until I got down to just emails. And then I've stopped replying to those and they haven't tried to contact me again in over a month.
• Stressful work.

 

Finally, I thought I'd share a text exchange we just had about this forum post:

 

Me: Do you mind me saying when we had sex? I mean when we first had sex? On the forum
Me: I feel like it's important
Her: No, baby.  Tell all the truth that you think is relevant!
Her: I’m really eager what people will say!
Me: It's going to be a long post :/
Me: I hope someone bothers to read it
Her: I’m sure the people who bother to read longer posts will have more valuable advice

[csekavec]

"Should I (like my therapist said) try to focus more on how my girlfriend acts in our relationship rather than on her past?"

 

Yes. The past is relevant but not as important is what is now.

 

"She had broken up with her ex just one week before we started talking, and that she had been having sex with him until the last day of the relationship. Clearly she could not have been getting over him in any sense of the word. After some talking she admitted and took responsibility for the misleading."

&

"She embodies all the virtues I seek in others and strive for in myself: honesty, curiosity, compassion, kindness, integrity, and courage."

 

This, and other contradictions are things you both need to work on. She has a lot of work to do in order to live up to your description of her.  Your description may be accurate - in time. But to say she embodies those things now is an insult to the sanctity of those lofty characteristics. 

 

Her and your history of sexual lies is disturbing. What I mean is that sex as an expression of celebrating shared values is not something hear either of you having experience with. It might very well be that in each other you finally have this expression. But it sounds like you both have a history of dissembling when it comes to the importance of sex therefore I suggest a lot of RTR and therapy work to overcome that. 

 

 

So that is what I have to say right now. I hope it helps. I really appreciate how much effort you put into your post and how vulnerable you allowed yourself to be in doing so.  

[Libertarian Prepper]

 

"Should I (like my therapist said) try to focus more on how my girlfriend acts in our relationship rather than on her past?"

 

Yes. The past is relevant but not as important is what is now.

 

"She had broken up with her ex just one week before we started talking, and that she had been having sex with him until the last day of the relationship. Clearly she could not have been getting over him in any sense of the word. After some talking she admitted and took responsibility for the misleading."

&

"She embodies all the virtues I seek in others and strive for in myself: honesty, curiosity, compassion, kindness, integrity, and courage."

 

This, and other contradictions are things you both need to work on. She has a lot of work to do in order to live up to your description of her.  Your description may be accurate - in time. But to say she embodies those things now is an insult to the sanctity of those lofty characteristics. 

 

Her and your history of sexual lies is disturbing. What I mean is that sex as an expression of celebrating shared values is not something hear either of you having experience with. It might very well be that in each other you finally have this expression. But it sounds like you both have a history of dissembling when it comes to the importance of sex therefore I suggest a lot of RTR and therapy work to overcome that. 

 

 

So that is what I have to say right now. I hope it helps. I really appreciate how much effort you put into your post and how vulnerable you allowed yourself to be in doing so.  

 

 

Thanks for reading my post and your reply!

 

You're right regarding the virtues and contradictions therein. After we first met and spoke for about a month I had a lot of respect for her virtues, but that was without full information, and once that came out (to her credit it was all information she brought up once I asked) I felt like her virtues were tainted. I went through a bit of a mental exercise at the time to re-evaluate her virtues in light of the new information and her actions (e.g. it's not kind, caring, or honest to get into a new relationship so quickly and mislead about the recency of the previous one). Since then she's been working on getting them back, but I think like with trust it's going to take a while.

 

You're also right that we both have a dubious history around sex. We've been RTR'ing around it and right now we do things like "emotional checks" before having sex to make sure we're both fully on-board and that it will be emotionally connected, and not something we'd regret later. I think I have some idea of what sex should be about, but what I've fallen short of sticking by that in practice.

 

Edit: Also, I edited the original post to add one more point I had forgotten about (which she helped me remember) but it's disappeared now. I guess it's just waiting for approval again.

Edited February 13, 2016 by Libertarian Prepper

[Libertarian Prepper]

I've just read the thread about apologies here and I'm thinking now that half the reason the hurtful things my girlfriend does are so hurtful is because she doesn't apologize properly afterwards. Certainly at the beginning her attitude was very defensive when I would point out some hurtful behaviors on her part (which is also a trigger for her related to her childhood and an abusive step-mom who always labeled her as a "bad person").

 

I think the pattern until a couple of weeks ago was roughly like this (in chronological order of events):

1. At first she didn't really think what she did was wrong (defensiveness).
2. After much talking, explanation, and increased frustration and anger on my part, she admitted what she did may have been wrong or was wrong.
3. She said she was sorry without necessarily knowing what sorry even feels like (this was revealed in one of her therapy sessions). Her apologies are often intellectualized and I can pick up on this quite well, so I often ask if she's connecting to what she's saying and she's always honest in admitting when she isn't connecting.

4. She seems more concerned with me breaking up with her than with my feelings of hurt. During the first few talks about this she'd cry but because that's such a trigger for me around emotional manipulation (a crying girlfriend makes me dissociate from my feelings and empathize with hers, something I'm getting better at over time too) she's doing much better with this now. I don't think she ever cried to intentionally manipulate me and to some extent this is an issue I need to deal with also so that we can both feel our feelings without overly-empathizing with each other.
5. She almost always added a "but" somewhere that invalidated whatever she just said before and provided an excuse.
6. She expected or asked for forgiveness as if it were some kind of on/off switch, when really forgiveness works the same way that love and trust does. She's since recognized this behavior and stopped.

 

We talked extensively about these things as and after they happened and she has made quite a lot of progress since. I can see improvements week by week where she takes ownership more readily, doesn't expect some kind of instant forgiveness but instead just lets me feel whatever I'm feeling and come to my own conclusions in my own time (regarding trusting her again), leaves the topic open for repeated conversations as much as is necessary, and commits to actual difficult things like weekly therapy, introspecting, being more self-aware, apologizing better, etc. But this is far from consistent and there are times when her apologies are like they used to be before, and that's frustrating. I guess a fundamental change like this would take a lot of time?

 

Because this kind of pattern of hurts followed by disingenuous or unfulfilling apologies is so pervasive throughout most of the relationship, it makes a lot of sense that I trust her less, feel anxious during many of our calls, and often have difficulty feeling connected during conversations. There needs to pass a lot of time where her apologies and reactions to hurts are much better and she's more consistent about them before she regains my trust again and I connect more easily during conversations. I also have a fear that I'm trying to get a square to fit into a circle sometimes.

 

Thoughts?

Edited February 13, 2016 by Libertarian Prepper

[Copper_Heart]

Hi there!

 

Progress is the most important part! If there is a honest effort and change for the better it seams like it will grow into a wonderful relationship. I will try to give you maybe some inside, although if you know about IFS you may already know about it.

 

• How much do you need here? Try to extrapolate your relationship to your relationship with your mother. Draw parallels. How much do you need her? Is there some codependency? It seams to me like your child self(crying) has awoken at some point and you are dealing with your traumas.
• How much is she okay with telling you about her past? How much are you ok with telling her about that. She started of with manipulation, did this changed now? Have you discussed your bad behaviors in how they are related to your childhood(both of you)?
• In general, do you fear to loose her?

There is a reason why it is hard to apologize and why it is hard to for you to get a "better deal" in terms of your relationship. Your touchiness and her aggression seem to be related and form a pattern.

 

Again, it is wonderful that you both are actively working on it. At some point you will grind all issues away.

[tux]

I can absolutely understand that you are excited to have met someone who shows an interest in self-developement and knowledge, but I suggest that you be more careful. This way of looking at and handling life is farily new to her and radically different from her prior lifestyle. This does not mean that you shoud be hostile towards her. Give her time, if it suits you, and see if she can stick with her new lifestyle and become a virtuous person. In the meantime, focus on your own development while you keep in touch. She may not be appropriate for you, but then you will at least have had time to become an even better person who will hopefully attract other quality people. 

• How much do you need here? Try to extrapolate your relationship to your relationship with your mother. Draw parallels. How much do you need her? Is there some codependency? It seams to me like your child self(crying) has awoken at some point and you are dealing with your traumas.
• In general, do you fear to loose her?

This is something I also suggest that you be aware of. Are you codependent? Is she fulfilling some unmet childhood need?

[Shaeroden]

is this girl in therapy?  what's her ACE score like?

[labmath2]

From your post it seems like she capitulates a lot to fit your needs. How do you know if she isn't doing things just to keep you around instead of for self improvement? You should both call in to the show if you can.

[Max Hartford]

Holy crap! You are way overthinking this! If you still enjoy her company, then stay with her. If you don't, then don't. 

[Libertarian Prepper]

Looks like there were more replies to my old thread than I last checked! Thanks guys, and sorry for not replying earlier.

 

Hi there!

 

Progress is the most important part! If there is a honest effort and change for the better it seams like it will grow into a wonderful relationship. I will try to give you maybe some inside, although if you know about IFS you may already know about it.

 

• How much do you need here? Try to extrapolate your relationship to your relationship with your mother. Draw parallels. How much do you need her? Is there some codependency? It seams to me like your child self(crying) has awoken at some point and you are dealing with your traumas.
• How much is she okay with telling you about her past? How much are you ok with telling her about that. She started of with manipulation, did this changed now? Have you discussed your bad behaviors in how they are related to your childhood(both of you)?
• In general, do you fear to loose her?

There is a reason why it is hard to apologize and why it is hard to for you to get a "better deal" in terms of your relationship. Your touchiness and her aggression seem to be related and form a pattern.

 

Again, it is wonderful that you both are actively working on it. At some point you will grind all issues away.

 

There is definitely an honest effort, and our interactions have improved a lot over the past half year since I posted this. We're doing a much better job of not being triggered in the first place, and if we are triggered, we're usually able to identify that relatively quickly and see that it's probably more about something that happened in the past than something going on right now. Therapy helped a lot with this process. As a result, I don't over-react as much. Of course she's also grown and improved a lot. I think in the last 6 months there might have been two occasions or so when she said something I considered hurtful. As opposed to a couple of times a week when I first posted this thread. We're really tapering off here We're also better at not triggering each other. So in the past we'd have more issues where if I got triggered, I'd act out in some way that would then trigger her, which would make things worse for me, and so on in a spiral of negative feedback. Now, whoever isn't triggered first is usually able to be more compassionate in the moment and recognize that the other person is triggered, which helps the triggered person calm down too.

 

I would say there's definitely been some overlap in terms of my mother. Not in terms of behavior, that's quite rare, but in terms of my neediness. That's really a combination of two factors:

- I deFOO'ed near the start of our relationship, so my need for a family and to be able to rely on someone is greater than it was before.

- My girlfriend is very kind and nurturing in many ways. I feel like in the past few months I've felt more loved by her than I have by my parents in my entire lifetime. While this is fantastic, it also means that my unmet needs from childhood are going to come up and I'll "revert" or get triggered to an earlier self more.

 

is this girl in therapy?  what's her ACE score like?

 

She was. I recommended IFS to her and I think she benefited from it a lot. We both were in therapy for a few months at the start of our relationship (mostly because of all the triggers and issues). Her ACE is a 5 (mine is 6). We've both stopped because of money issues but plan to restart once we've saved up more again

 

From your post it seems like she capitulates a lot to fit your needs. How do you know if she isn't doing things just to keep you around instead of for self improvement? You should both call in to the show if you can.

 

That was one of the doubts I had early on and we discussed it a fair bit. How do I really know she's doing xyz because she thinks it'd good and not just because that's something I want? She told me that sometimes it's both: she started therapy both because she wanted to remain in a relationship with me (and she wanted to reduce some of the bad behaviors she had) and because she thought it was good for her self-improvement.

 

I don't have any doubts about her sincerity anymore, and on the occasions where it's not something she's convinced is actually better/good, she tells me that. She did quite a bit of therapy, had some uncomfortable discussions with her family (not enough yet though I think), moved out from living with her abusive mother and abusive step-father, and even talked to her friends about some things (to try and help them) on the basis of some of the things we learned together. i.e. she's gone way above and beyond what someone just trying to "placate" me would do.

 

That's an interesting idea about calling into the Stef show. She's been listening to a few of his podcasts since we started our relationship, especially stuff around peaceful parenting, circumcision, and spanking. I'll propose the idea to her

 

Holy crap! You are way overthinking this! If you still enjoy her company, then stay with her. If you don't, then don't. 

 

Haha, yes, I overthink things a lot. My brain doesn't switch off. This has its advantages but it's also a real pain sometimes when I just want peace and quiet. I do enjoy her company! Despite being an introvert, I spend almost every available hour with her. Even when I'm doing something alone like coding or playing a video game, I enjoy being in her company and sharing what's happening. She's my favorite person Which is saying a lot, because I don't tend to like most people.

 

I like your simple reasoning, perhaps if I could think more like that it would enable me to be more present in the moment (see my other post).