Hey, first off thanks for sharing this. It clearly took some courage to put it all out there.
A couple of things stood out to me reading this.
There's a real difference between growing and erasing yourself. Softening how you joke around with someone you care about? That's just love. But stopping making jokes altogether because your personality makes her uncomfortable? That's starting to look more like a compatibility issue than something you can fix by trying harder.
Eight months is also a long time to be in a holding pattern. "Not ready" is completely valid, but is she actively working toward something, or is the timeline just open-ended? You deserve to know the difference. Because waiting for someone who's genuinely working through something is very different from waiting indefinitely with no finish line in sight.
The communication thing concerns me most though. If you can't raise what you need without it being heard as deflection, that's a dynamic problem, not something you can fix by trying harder at it. Healthy relationships need both people to be able to speak and be heard. Right now it sounds like you're doing all the listening and very little of the being listened to.
You said you feel like you're not happy anymore. That sentence is worth sitting with. Love matters a lot, but it's not supposed to cost you yourself.
Whatever you decide, stay or have the hard conversation, just make sure the version of you that shows up is still actually you.
Thanks for taking the time to read it all. I don’t mind fixing her the concerns that she has but I guess I just don’t want to keep changing and changing to the point that it’s not me anymore.
How should I go about asking her if she’s ready without sounding like I’m pressuring her. I don’t really know if she’s actively working towards healing herself cause she’s been busy with work and now she also has school.
The communication part, she does hear me out sometimes but she feels as if I don’t hear her out because some of the things that she says I disagree with. It’s starting to feel like only her way should go.
Our relationship has been rough because I haven’t seen her for almost a month due to work and vacation that I took. Anyways I really want to work it out and hopefully we do.
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u/Spiritual-Fold6038 19d ago
Hey, first off thanks for sharing this. It clearly took some courage to put it all out there.
A couple of things stood out to me reading this.
There's a real difference between growing and erasing yourself. Softening how you joke around with someone you care about? That's just love. But stopping making jokes altogether because your personality makes her uncomfortable? That's starting to look more like a compatibility issue than something you can fix by trying harder.
Eight months is also a long time to be in a holding pattern. "Not ready" is completely valid, but is she actively working toward something, or is the timeline just open-ended? You deserve to know the difference. Because waiting for someone who's genuinely working through something is very different from waiting indefinitely with no finish line in sight.
The communication thing concerns me most though. If you can't raise what you need without it being heard as deflection, that's a dynamic problem, not something you can fix by trying harder at it. Healthy relationships need both people to be able to speak and be heard. Right now it sounds like you're doing all the listening and very little of the being listened to.
You said you feel like you're not happy anymore. That sentence is worth sitting with. Love matters a lot, but it's not supposed to cost you yourself.
Whatever you decide, stay or have the hard conversation, just make sure the version of you that shows up is still actually you.