Is it wrong for me(21m) to be annoyed by her(21f)?
Me(21m) and my gf(21f) have been dating for about 10 months. We are happy pretty together and share many good moments, jokes and laughs. We’ve never had an argument or big disagreement, but there are a few things that have bugged me throughout our relationship.
For example, she always has to be touching me (I should mention her love language is physical touch/affection, while mine is quality time and conversation.) No matter if it’s just laying her head in my lap (which I don’t mind as much), sitting so close to me that it feels like I’m sharing my skin, popping any bump or pimple I have, flicking my lips while I’m trying to watch a show/movie, and grabbing my face and shoving it into her breast and hugging me so tight I can’t breathe sometimes. I’ve expressed to her how sometimes I don’t like to be touched and I don’t want these advances all the time. When I am ok with being touched like this it’s not as bad but somehow she always chooses very inopportune moments for these things, like when I have guest over and she’ll follow me into my room or bathroom just to try to make out with me for long periods of time and turn me on when I simply just need to grab something from my bedroom or use the bathroom.
There are also some aspects of her personality that I just can’t deal with sometimes. She has problems saying no to people even if it’s inconvenient to her or will cause her stress. Like she’ll complain to me how her coworkers walk all over her and make her do extra work and how it makes her so mad but she won’t stand up for herself because she’ll feel bad. That I somewhat understand because it can be nerve racking to shake up the work environment. Or recently she gave her email to a religious group and complained that they took up a lot of her time talking to her and then she was upset when they actually emailed her later inviting her to a service. This one I don’t get at all because she simply could’ve just said “no, not interested” and kept walking, but again she said she would feel bad if she didn’t talk to them.
I also have a little bit of a problem with her ideas of romance, it feels almost childlike. As I mentioned the badly timed make out sessions, but she’ll also try to get me to stay in my room with her to cuddle and kiss even though I have guest in the living room. I try to tell her that I can’t stay with her right now because I have people over but she’ll pout and say “but I haven’t seen you all day” as if we haven’t spent the last 3 days together (before and after work) in a row and she can’t stand to have my attention divided for a couple hours while friends are over.
There are some smaller things that I get annoyed by like her trying to show me memes and videos while I’m trying to watch or read something, but she’ll only do this if it’s something that I want to watch/read. If it’s something she’s put on she’ll make me put my phone away, even if we’ve watched her chosen piece multiple times before. And by multiple times I mean we watched her movie of choice less than 2 weeks ago and it’s the 4th time we’ve watched it in total.
Anytime I try to bring up how these things she does frustrate me and how we don’t need to be connected to the hip, or touching all the time and she’ll counter with “but I love you so much and I barely get to see you” and it’s hard to finish the conversation because that much is kinda true. I do work a lot but I always make time for her and we go on/have multiple date nights a month. So it’s not like we never see each other. She has a key to my place so sometimes she just pops up randomly before i go to work and we’ll hang out then as well. It’s mostly frustrating because even when I tell her I want to be alone for the night she’ll come over and try to coddle me and figure out what’s wrong, when to be honest it’s just been a long day at work and I want to just be alone and lay down in bed for the rest of the night.
I feel like it’s wrong to be annoyed by her like this because she’s very caring and supportive of me but sometimes our personalities/relationship styles just clash so hard. I do love her and I want to be with her for a long time but I don’t know how much longer I can deal with the touching, PDA, and lack of respect for my personal time if she’s not willing to actually have a conversation about it.
Any ideas on how I can open up a conversation so that we can both feel heard and reach a compromise that fits both our love styles?
Posted Jun 18, 2023, 5:50 AM UTC