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I totally understand the way she is acting. Too much stress can cause permanent mental health issues and weakens the immune system. Going to get some psychological help is to learn crucial coping mechanisms to allow her to de-stress. Coping mechanisms will help prevent a nervous breakdown and allow her to relax. Would recommend this for you as well. It's not shameful to ask for help.
There is a real danger she will burn out. In my own burnout experience, I was no longer able to work at my career ever again. And I developed alcohol dependence (no longer). I tried to work 2 more jobs similar to the one I had when I went down for the count. I could not cope with one tiny drop of stress without breaking down. It still affects me but thankfully my coping skills help me manage.
People stressing like she is are more likely to seek relief by self-medicating with substances. In many cases, it is a precursor to becoming dependent on pills, alcohol, street drugs, food. It is a sneaky process and very easily can happen to anyone in any walk of life, peasants to kings.
I don't think giving up on someone who is in a rough patch is the right thing. She needs help and support and you can be there for her. It helped me out with my stress to see the house is clean, things are picked up off the floor, and dinner ready even if you have already had a long day. It won't be forever.
Best of luck. DM me if you want.
If you want permission from a random stranger on the internet to end your relationship: I give you permission.
If you want advice on how to support her:
- Either give her space or find a way to be present which isn't stressful for her (walk quietly together, sit and watch TV, whatever).
- If cooking dinner is a source of stress, start meal planning and prepping together on the weekends and then make her dinner during the week.
- If working from home together is difficult, work from your office instead.
When my GF gets finished with work (she works a 9-5 desk job), she acts cold and rude towards me. Right after work she will go on a walk, go to the gym, or go to the pool, come back, and stay in the bedroom watching TV for the rest of the evening. I always ask her if she wants to watch a movie or go somewhere and she says no. I have asked her a few times if she is upset at me about something and she says "I'm not mad at you at all. I just had a very stressful day with work and need some alone time". If I ask what she wants for dinner, she says "I have no idea. I'll figure something out."
When she works at home the same day as me, I can feel the coldness from another room. She will be at her desk and I hear the huffing/puffing and sigh noises. If I go into the kitchen and make something that makes even a slight bit of noise like opening/closing a cabinet, I hear the sighing and huffing/puffing even more. Eventually she will say "can you please do that later" in a rude tone. I finally just had to go into my office 5 days a week to avoid the BS.
I get it, we all have stressful days at work but the issue is that this happens literally every single day. I was a middle school teacher for several years and had to deal with pre-teens and teens and Karen parents and I had fewer bad days than she does. The problem also is that she brought this on herself. About a month ago, she volunteered to do extra projects when she was already busy with normal work and now she is totally swamped and being nasty to me.
In a nice way I told her that I think it's a bad idea for her to take on extra projects when she is already swamped. I also explained that she should leave work at work and forget about it when she's done. She said "I'm not like you. It's hard for me to hold in my feelings. If I had a stressful day, it's hard for me to just act normal. I'm doing this extra work so I can stand out and get promoted. I can't just do my normal job duties and come home like you do." She didn't say it in a nice way and basically implied that I do the bare minimum at my job and then come home.
My GF has pretty bad anxiety which I think is what is primarily causing this behavior. Also, she seems to have some issues with wanting acceptance/recognition/praise from other people because her parents didn't give her any growing up. I think the extra work is causing her anxiety to skyrocket and wanting the extra work is about wanting her manager and higher level people at work to praise her.
She really needs to see a therapist for her anxiety but says "they don't know what I'm going through and talking about it isn't going to help me in any way".
I should add that she wasn't really this way before taking on extra projects. Maybe once or twice a week she had stressful days and acted like this but not it's every day.
What would you do?
Her work life is not only interfering with her private life, it has consumed her private life. It's up to her to find a balance between work life and private life but it sounds like she is unwilling to even try.
She basically ran you off from your remote work environment for your office 5 days a week. Think about that.
Her employer has probably noticed the change too; that she is struggling since volunteering for extra projects. She doesn't sound like a candidate for advancement. What she is doing will eventually have a detrimental effect on her overall health as well.
I am going to take the unpopular opinion on this thread.
This woman is no longer in love with the OP (if she ever was, because good God), and she is treating him badly so that he will end the relationship and leave. She may not be consciously aware of that fact, but perhaps she is aware of it.
Nobody should treat anyone like she treats the OP, especially not someone who cares about her like he obviously does. Especially not someone who is trashed because the first thing out of the person's mouth is "why didn't you take out the trash?" Huffing and puffing when he is going about his normal business - his JOB - behind closed doors.
At this point I don't really care about the woman's "stress" because she's just acting like a b*itch. IMO she's stepping up the behavior instead of getting a hold of it.
She doesn't need temporary space - she wants permanent space and she's not courageous or compassionate enough to get it herself. That's another strike against her.
I also think that people are too harshly judging him for "getting tired of a relationship" (to wit, his other thread(s). We don't know until we are there whether it's going to work. It is the luck of the draw - in far too many cases. The only thing he needs to consider is not moving in with someone right away or even in the first year or two.
And even that is not a guarantee of things working out.
Last edited by pathrunner; 10-16-2022 at 09:10 AM..
She got home from work about 1hr ago and walked in the door with an attitude. Rather than hearing "hi honey, how was your day" I get "why wasn't the trash taken out?"
I explained to her that I walked in the door about 10mins before her because I went to the gym and I just wanted to sit and chill for a bit after a exhausting workout. I got the eye roll treatment.
Then she comes to me and tells me that she really wants me to go into the office tomorrow because she needs some alone time and time to decompress. She says that I am a distraction for her when I have work calls (even though it's in another room with a door closed). I was planning on working from home tomorrow since it's Friday. This has happened before and it's usually when she has a lot of work to do.
She DESPERATELY needs to talk to a therapist about her stress and anxiety and work on some methods that don't involve being nasty to people around her.
Well, since you're the one working at home, and she's the one coming in from office work, in theory, you're the one who should be saying, "Hi honey, how was your day". But you already know in advance how her day went--just like all the other days, so you're choosing not to go there. But after a stressful day, it's pretty normal to collapse and spend some time decompressing, before mustering the energy to ask how one's partner's day went.
But as a chronic thing, that doesn't work in a relationship.
I don't see how you could be a distraction for her, if the two of you are working in separate rooms with the doors closed. It sounds like she has some entitlement issues.
I don’t understand these “I live with someone who hates me, what should I do” threads. You’re not married, you can literally walk out the door and never come back, but you let days, weeks, months, years go by, with a girlfriend/boyfriend that seldom brings you joy, predominately causes you grief… I just don’t understand. A crappy marriage, I get it, through lived experience, you hang around to try and salvage it to spare the legal repercussions of divorce… but a freeking girlfriend/boyfriend… good god it’s pathetic. She freekin hates you man. Why the heck are you coming home to her?
Often the bolded is an indication that the partner is hot. Many men will put up with almost anything for that.
Well, since you're the one working at home, and she's the one coming in from office work, in theory, you're the one who should be saying, "Hi honey, how was your day". But you already know in advance how her day went--just like all the other days, so you're choosing not to go there. But after a stressful day, it's pretty normal to collapse and spend some time decompressing, before mustering the energy to ask how one's partner's day went.
But as a chronic thing, that doesn't work in a relationship.
I don't see how you could be a distraction for her, if the two of you are working in separate rooms with the doors closed. It sounds like she has some entitlement issues.
Yes. Entitlement issues. OP, the relationship isn't working out. Give it up. You're not going to change her or make her fall in love with you.
Fellas. Adjust mating strategy. As women become more masculine and take on the traditional roles of men in the workplace you must also adjust.
She wants to come home and grab a beer and read the paper and watch the game . Lol.
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