I’m 25 and have been in a LRT for the past 3 years. She’s my first girlfriend and is 23. Although I’ve been on a few dates with other girls before her, I was basically a virgin (as was she) who had never kissed a girl. I’m educated, decent looking, well spoken, socially comfortable and well liked and respected by people. However my self-esteem hasn’t always been high, which is why I was a late bloomer in the dating game.
About her
4/10 and is about 20 lbs overweight. She’s rather average looking. She does put effort into her appearance and is working hard at trying to lose weight. She was about 70 lbs overweight when we met and has since lost about 50 lbs. When I met her, I definitely settled on the “looks” aspect and it created problems as I would always feel sad when looking at attractive girls. I also went through a phase of wanting experience with other women, which eventually passed. I guess it was fear of commitment. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was thinner and she has cuteness potential if she continues to lose the excess weight and gets back to her original, healthy weight. But I decided to look past the physical and fell in love with her personality. She has an amazing sense of humor, is upbeat and spontaneous, is very fun and cool, has a giving and generous personality and great values (cultural background). However, her conflict management style is immature and inflexible at best. When we have a fight, I always have to manage it and end up having to bend over backwards to resolve it because she acts like a stubborn child. This leaves me with feelings of resentment and frustration. I now realize this is total AFC behaviour on my part.
I’ve sometimes felt that I’ve settled on many aspects (her looks, intellectual level, lack of sophistication). The gap is not huge, but it’s there and she senses it. However I feel that she makes up for it with other qualities, which is why these aspects aren’t such a big deal for me anymore. We’ve recently been fighting a lot and, by looking back on my behaviour, I’m not as much of a challenge as I used to be and she complains that I’m predictable and that there’s no more excitement in our relationship. She has also complained that we don’t see each other often enough (we hang out once a week).
1. For a long time, we’ve been fighting about getting engaged. She absolutely wants a timeframe and has said “if you intend on dating me for 5 years, this won’t work”. She says she loves me, wants to be with me forever, and thinks I’ll make a great father and husband. I’ve searched this board and found great advice on this topic, so I won’t comment further.
2. She sometimes playfully flirts with other men. She’s a very outgoing person and I realize that she flirts because of her low self-esteem. This has never bothered me until recently. She became friends with a guy who works at her gym, whom she admitted was attractive, took pictures of him with her cellphone, stored them in her mp3 player and computer. She also gave him lifts home because he had lost his license. I became suspicious and checked her email, without her knowing (she had given me her password a long time ago). It was ethically wrong of me to do so but my common sense was telling me otherwise. I found email exchanges between them. In one of them she joked: “p.s.: I’m holding you to that make out session”. Another e-mail had the following subject line: “to a sexy guy ;-)” and contained the pictures she had taken of him. He was apparently quitting the gym, and she indicated that she wasn’t looking forward to him leaving.
I confronted her with this evidence and she was so surprised that I read her email without her permission that she hung up on me. Here’s where it gets cringeworthy on my part... A few days later I sent her an email stating what she did was disrespectful, and that I was surprised she hadn’t even bothered explaining herself or apologizing. Meanwhile, a mutual friend told me that she apparently felt she did nothing wrong and was upset at ME for breaching her privacy. Long story short, we communicated by email and she tried turning the tables by stating that what I did was creepy and showed I was insecure. She then justified, with believable stories, every piece of evidence. She was upset that I mistrusted her, interpreted things and created stories in my head. Apparently it was all just inside jokes between them. :moon: Yeah...I know...
We had a fight a few days later about this whole situation and I basically acted like a doormat and ended up admitting that what I did was wrong and that....I love her, even when I’m upset at her. Her response, as a joke, was along the lines of “I don’t love you when you screw up”. Keep in mind that she always tries to act tough because she's quite sensitive and can't admit her wrongs or apologize. She knows this and has told me that she was raised to never apologize. However I also told her to wake the f**k up and realize she is imperfect just like every one else and needs to start working on becoming more humble instead of acting like an ass when there’s a problem. I explained to her how her “cement block” conflict management style was creating problems and that she was lucky that I’m so patient.
I know, it’s bad. I acted like a wuss and lost the edge that had her literally obsessed over me in the first year of the relationship. I don’t know if it’s dead yet, but I’ve started thinking of calling it quits because of the multitude of red flags. I don’t want to throw away a potentially good relationship that can be saved and improved, just as I don’t want to settle for less on too many aspects. Aside from the fights, we have an incredible chemistry that has only gotten better with time. The bad isn’t overweighing the good, yet. At this point, I would say it's half/half.
Should I stay and see if things improve, or should I break up with her and hope to find someone better?
About her
4/10 and is about 20 lbs overweight. She’s rather average looking. She does put effort into her appearance and is working hard at trying to lose weight. She was about 70 lbs overweight when we met and has since lost about 50 lbs. When I met her, I definitely settled on the “looks” aspect and it created problems as I would always feel sad when looking at attractive girls. I also went through a phase of wanting experience with other women, which eventually passed. I guess it was fear of commitment. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was thinner and she has cuteness potential if she continues to lose the excess weight and gets back to her original, healthy weight. But I decided to look past the physical and fell in love with her personality. She has an amazing sense of humor, is upbeat and spontaneous, is very fun and cool, has a giving and generous personality and great values (cultural background). However, her conflict management style is immature and inflexible at best. When we have a fight, I always have to manage it and end up having to bend over backwards to resolve it because she acts like a stubborn child. This leaves me with feelings of resentment and frustration. I now realize this is total AFC behaviour on my part.
I’ve sometimes felt that I’ve settled on many aspects (her looks, intellectual level, lack of sophistication). The gap is not huge, but it’s there and she senses it. However I feel that she makes up for it with other qualities, which is why these aspects aren’t such a big deal for me anymore. We’ve recently been fighting a lot and, by looking back on my behaviour, I’m not as much of a challenge as I used to be and she complains that I’m predictable and that there’s no more excitement in our relationship. She has also complained that we don’t see each other often enough (we hang out once a week).
1. For a long time, we’ve been fighting about getting engaged. She absolutely wants a timeframe and has said “if you intend on dating me for 5 years, this won’t work”. She says she loves me, wants to be with me forever, and thinks I’ll make a great father and husband. I’ve searched this board and found great advice on this topic, so I won’t comment further.
2. She sometimes playfully flirts with other men. She’s a very outgoing person and I realize that she flirts because of her low self-esteem. This has never bothered me until recently. She became friends with a guy who works at her gym, whom she admitted was attractive, took pictures of him with her cellphone, stored them in her mp3 player and computer. She also gave him lifts home because he had lost his license. I became suspicious and checked her email, without her knowing (she had given me her password a long time ago). It was ethically wrong of me to do so but my common sense was telling me otherwise. I found email exchanges between them. In one of them she joked: “p.s.: I’m holding you to that make out session”. Another e-mail had the following subject line: “to a sexy guy ;-)” and contained the pictures she had taken of him. He was apparently quitting the gym, and she indicated that she wasn’t looking forward to him leaving.
I confronted her with this evidence and she was so surprised that I read her email without her permission that she hung up on me. Here’s where it gets cringeworthy on my part... A few days later I sent her an email stating what she did was disrespectful, and that I was surprised she hadn’t even bothered explaining herself or apologizing. Meanwhile, a mutual friend told me that she apparently felt she did nothing wrong and was upset at ME for breaching her privacy. Long story short, we communicated by email and she tried turning the tables by stating that what I did was creepy and showed I was insecure. She then justified, with believable stories, every piece of evidence. She was upset that I mistrusted her, interpreted things and created stories in my head. Apparently it was all just inside jokes between them. :moon: Yeah...I know...
We had a fight a few days later about this whole situation and I basically acted like a doormat and ended up admitting that what I did was wrong and that....I love her, even when I’m upset at her. Her response, as a joke, was along the lines of “I don’t love you when you screw up”. Keep in mind that she always tries to act tough because she's quite sensitive and can't admit her wrongs or apologize. She knows this and has told me that she was raised to never apologize. However I also told her to wake the f**k up and realize she is imperfect just like every one else and needs to start working on becoming more humble instead of acting like an ass when there’s a problem. I explained to her how her “cement block” conflict management style was creating problems and that she was lucky that I’m so patient.
I know, it’s bad. I acted like a wuss and lost the edge that had her literally obsessed over me in the first year of the relationship. I don’t know if it’s dead yet, but I’ve started thinking of calling it quits because of the multitude of red flags. I don’t want to throw away a potentially good relationship that can be saved and improved, just as I don’t want to settle for less on too many aspects. Aside from the fights, we have an incredible chemistry that has only gotten better with time. The bad isn’t overweighing the good, yet. At this point, I would say it's half/half.
Should I stay and see if things improve, or should I break up with her and hope to find someone better?
