A
male
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:I've dated my girlfriend for the past five years. They've been really great in a lot of ways and she's made me very happy and I like to think that I've made her very happy too...But in the past six months, my wires have been very frayed. You see, I've come to realize that our relationship is a supreme emotional rollercoaster. One week there's a huge fight and shes moving on from me. Two weeks later, there's noone else in the world for her but me. The next week, she's super needy because she wants me to pay more attention to her and start planning a wedding(During my two-week grad school exam period), the week after, she explodes over something else, maybe the fact that I'm not as "interested" in marriage (beause I am trying to study). If I don't show enough emotion, it just blows into another fight or extends the continuing one.(for example, she will get mad about something like me going to spend time with my dad instead of taking her shopping, we will have a fight where I will defend myself instead of apologising for being so rude, it will escalate, she will continually prolong the argument despite my best efforts to apologise for something I don't think I did wrong, for literally five to six hours, I will go home exhausted, and if I don't get up at three in the morning and rush over-I don't want to go back to that-, apparently I don't love her enough like most boyfriends do)For the past four years that this has been going on (amazingly, we completely avoided it in the first year, or maybe I didn't notice it duing the honeymoon period) I've just been riding along, trying to keep up and claw us back to where we are when things are happy. But in the past six months, I feel like I am losing steam. She is on this emotional high right now, where everything is rose and we are madly in love. It's nice in a sense, meaning there is no fighting, arguing or screaming. But its also tiring to keep up with (she calls me while she knows I am beating out an assignment due the next morning, right during prime work time, to talk to me for 45mins, telling me how much she loves me: Its nice, but I would rather have a quick "love ya and thinkin about ya, now get back to work" call and save these talks for weekend nights when I am not under time pressure. Now, unlike before, I don't have the emotional energy to keep up with this. I just want us to level off, calm down and not see drama in everything that happens and goes on and in every moment.I don't know how to raise this without huge drama or argument and I don't know how to proceed. I do love her and for a long time, I stood up and took it, attributing it to "that thing thats going to be over soon." But as those things happened and passed, it just kept up and I don't see any end in sight. I want to deal with it and settle down, I just don't know how?
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female
reader, Tisha-1  +, writes (11 February 2009):
 Woof. This sounds like you are sick of the rollercoaster of emotions that she seems to bring to the relationship. Now then, please don't mind my asking, but you've been dating her for five years, right? And it's only been in the last six months that she's been so up/down, off/on again, high on you/totally off you? Or is this just something that you have come to notice recently?
Your age group, 22-25, is this also her age range?
Okay, a few thoughts for you. First of all, she may be thinking "I've gotta get married soon or I'm an old maid, all my friends are getting married and having babies, look at them, their boyfriends love them and actually want to marry them, if he really loved me, he'd be falling all over himself to make this work, why doesn't he love me enough? I'm going to leave him and make him see what he's missing, oh, damn, I love him too much to let this separation last, he's the only guy I've ever loved and the only guy I ever will love and I can't let that go, but dammit, why isn't he committing to me, why is he putting school first, he has to show me that he loves me more than school...."
Whew, I'm exhausted just writing that, and I'll bet you are just reading it. It's all very dramatic, and I did that for demonstration purposes.
Forgive me, readers, in advance, for sweeping generalizations. We women are wired a bit differently from you men. We want and expect our men to think about us and only us 24 hours a day. We demand that when you wake up, you are already thinking about us, and when you go to bed, you are also thinking about only us. And all the time in between rising for the day and going to sleep you have been thinking about us and only us. You see, often at your girlfriend's age, we women tend to get a bit lopsided that way. I mean that we tend to throw ALL of our emotional energy and demands onto the one guy, that poor solitary, single guy who happens to love us. He is our everything, and we simply cannot understand why he doesn't put us into that same 95 him (or her)/ 5 the rest of the world ratio.
So, my guess is that your girl is now impatient for you to demonstrate this to her in a concrete way, and that you ask her to marry you, and the fact that you actually have another life that doesn’t put her right at the top priority drives her absolutely nuts.
So while you love her and want to make her happy, you are not going to be able to do this. Yes, you heard me right. You are not responsible for her happiness and contentment. SHE is. You contribute a most important part and you are crucial to her life, but ultimately, she is the one who determines if she will or won’t be happy. She just hasn’t figured this out yet. You’re getting there, but you’re ahead of her right now. So you have to gentle her along, if you want to keep her as your girlfriend.
This may get ugly, but you have to keep a calm and serene demeanor. You must let her know that you love her. You also have a life outside your relationship with her. She needs to realize that and to find some balance in her life too.
So a sample discussion, and this must be done WITHOUT sarcasm in your tone. “Mary, my love, I would adore nothing better than to spend 20 hours talking about love and how much I love you. But right now, I need you to help me and to understand me, as I’m trying to understand you. I’m in the middle of a hugely stressful time at school. This is crucial to my future, I mean my entire future. If I don’t do well here and now, this could critically affect my career prospects and my goals and I just don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to make this into a big deal. You have to TRUST me here, I LOVE you and I LOVE being your boyfriend. But right now, you have to give me the benefit of the doubt. If I don’t call you 5 times a day, it doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. If I don’t have the time to talk right in the middle of my preparations for an exam or a paper, it doesn’t mean I don’t love you. I DO love you. It’s just that this time, this schooling, NOW is the time that it matters most. Fourth grade was important, as was seventh and eleventh and well, you get the idea. All those past years of schooling were hugely important. And I have so loved having you as part of them and as a major part of my life, and as THE love of my life. But right now, I need you to give me the space and the air to get what I need to get done accomplished.”
She is going to pout and cry and will not want to believe that you could possibly put something other than her in your top priority bracket. So this is your balance point. She’ll either get this, or she won’t. And if she won’t, and I hate to let womanhood, my sisters, down like this, but if she won’t, she is going to be too much work all your life.
You see, this is how she is reacting under stress. If you can’t handle this, you’re not going to be happy the next time a major stressor in your lives together comes up. Now, she may have something else going on. Someone in her family may have died? A close friend perhaps cut ties with her? She failed a class and didn’t get a job? She’s had a health scare, maybe even a pregnancy scare?
So be honest with yourself about her, is there something that has changed in her life and your relationship in the last six months that has brought on this behavior? You’ve been her boyfriend for five years. If you don’t know what’s happening with her, then you really do need to pay attention if you want to keep her around. But by the same token, you need to be clear with her about your own worries and concerns.
Focus on balance, on the love you have for her and don’t let her drag you into an argument. If you don’t argue, she’ll have to come around, that is, if she’s mentally balanced.
Good luck!
A
female
reader, salvadda +, writes (11 February 2009):
 After reading what u wrote I believe u love this woman. Women r very complex creatures *s* It is very hard to deal with emotions that r racing. If u might in a nice way explain that u do love her and maybe seek some counseling. If she is racing as u say there might be some other reason. Ask her nicely to talk to her doctor about it also. It might be something she can't control *bipolar* I do think u should talk her very nicely and try to explain these things to her. Maybe tell her that u will stand by her also. I can't imagine the stress both of u have, and it will not get better unless u both seek help. Maybe next time u go visit ur father ask her if she would like to join u. There is nothing that can't be resolved if u try and have it in ur heart to want too. Most men would have had enough by now, but bless ur heart for wanting to making it work. Good luck to both of you.
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