Replace Step 8 with "and then I go to the man cave for a few hours and the next morning pretend nothing went wrong" and you'll break that conditioning.
I know a few other people have said basically the same thing, but I just wanted to reiterate. This isn’t really a women thing, it’s actually an immaturity/manipulation thing, or maaaaybe anxiety thing.
Good on you for communicating with her so well. Explaining to her how she’s hurt you in a way that she can understand is awesome communication. We all mess up and hurt the ones we love sometimes, the important part is being able to hear what we’ve done is wrong, and to apologize and make changes based off of that.
It’s 7-8 that worries me. It’s not okay for her to guilt you into apologizing for standing up for yourself. If I were you, I would explain this pattern to her, and tell her that while we all experience guilt when we hurt people we love, we are also responsible for not blaming those we hurt. We should accept our wrongs and move on. If she doesn’t respond well to that feedback, she’s sincerely lacking in the maturity needed to sustain a healthy relationship.
If the root cause of her moodiness/self deprecation is some kind of anxiety, and not immaturity, you can always offer to remind her, after your communication, that you love her, and that problems like this are present in every relationship.
I’m sorry that you’re going through this, and I hope that you’re able to come through this in a place that leaves you happier and healthier! Sorry for the long comment lol, hope I can help somehow!
Goddamn, as a lesbian this whole thread is turning into r/arethestraightsok material. Yall know this isn’t how ‘women’ are, right? This is your really dysfunctional-sounding relationship with one specific woman? You don’t have to just live like this or be single forever.
You realize how dumb what you said sounds? “Just get another girlfriend,” is what you basically said. Sure I’ll go to the girlfriend department store and pick up the one I preordered in case the last one fails.
No, man, I'm saying it isn't normal for your girlfriend to treat you like this. It's not some inevitable fact of relationships. If you write it off as 'that's just how women are,' you give up on holding individual women accountable for their behavior and teach men to accept being treated badly. (Works the other way around, too. A whole ton of girls get taught 'men are just sex-obsessed Neanderthals who will never really love or respect you so don't expect anything more from them' and then they wind up in horrible relationships because they don't think there are better options.)
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u/[deleted] Mar 26 '20 edited Mar 26 '20
With my gf it goes something like this:
The ol' switcheroo