Another "can relationship be saved" question. I'm at a loss, internet.

Post date: 2018-12-09 21:01:11
Views: 292
We love each other, and we see a future together. But my needs aren't being met, baggage and neuroses are clashing, and I don't know what to do, or when or whether to cut losses. The usual. Snowflakes inside.

The setup: Heterosexual couple in our mid 30s. Together for close to 3 years. We're both looking to settle down, probably start a family. If this doesn't work, we can't drag it out forever, and should get out of each other's way.

The good: We love each other. A lot. We have a lot of fun together, running around town, traveling, watching movies, yakking. When it comes to getting shit done, we're a smooth, effective, low-drama team. Our sex life started ok-ish and has only been getting better with time, now it's damn good. I feel that gf is smart, devoted, reliable, fun, and sexy and beautiful. I tell her this all the time and she glows. She's hyper-competent at all things that come her way. I feel like I'm in good hands with her. She's a near-professional level cook and loves to feed me, and she's a doctor who is very good with bodies - getting them to feel good, and getting the kinks out of them. She enthusiastically teaches me these things and I'm grateful. I'm a mild to moderate insomniac, and in bed with gf, I sleep like a baby - and that's weirdly poignant to me. I can imagine myself growing old with her. And If I put myself in her shoes, I think she would say that I am kind and attentive and entertaining, that I make her feel seen and accepted and safe, and that I challenge her intellectually, in a good way.

This section is shorter than the others, but that doesn't mean that the bad outweighs the good. This list means the world to me.

The bad: I often feel emotionally neglected, and second-place. Just like me, all her close friends get fed, massaged, and logistically supported. I'm missing any kind of token of love that's particular to me: no spontaneous "I love you" or "I miss you" or "I'm thinking of you", no little gifts, no songs or articles or pictures or videos, no "let's do X I thought you'd like it," no "hey you're hot" or "I love how you're funny/smart/whatever" or "nice shirt!". If I say such things, she will sometimes kinda reciprocate, but she won't say them on her own. At the same time she is often gently/coyly critical - of my fashion choices, appearance, amateurishness of my amateur carpentry projects, etc. She comes from a much higher socioeconomic position than me, and sometimes, despite myself, it feels like she thinks she's above me, or that I should be grateful to have her at all. She's sometimes suddenly emotionally cold, with no context of conflict or anything - she barely greets me, doesn't reciprocate kind words or touch, talks to me like I could be anybody, asks no questions - this can last for hours or days.

We come from different worlds, intellectually and professionally. I'm in tech, like the art world, and indie/avant-garde culture. She's in medicine and likes pop culture and Earthy things. She openly thinks tech and the corporate world where I work are mostly evil, and my cultural interests pretentious and far from her reality. I find everything interesting, so I've enthusiastically developed a serious amateur interest in medicine and food through her tutelage. This lets her career and interests have a big life in our relationship, we talk about them endlessly. I'm resentful that "my things" get comparatively little play. I'm currently going through a major career transition, and I haven't been able to share nearly as much of that with her as I'd like, from any angle, because she hasn't learned enough of the basics. When I do talk, she tries to zero in on some small point and provide a quick and tidy solution so we can move on, or she'll just look bored and change the subject.

She has a caustic view of men - I understand it, but I don't feel like I deserve to be in those crosshairs: She's quick to read gender/power-dynamics into many situations, and those are the angles she's interested in (among women as well as men, but always gender-driven). When she first met my circle of friends, those dynamics were the first thing she wanted to talk about - I was shocked by both the cynicism and what I saw as a rush to judgment. She's made it clear that it's hard for her to trust men, that when it comes to demonstrating decency, the burden of proof is on the man. My integrity has been questioned in ways I find very hurtful - for example when she asked if I would make a move on a much-younger junior colleague I was mentoring, and I said that I would never go there for obvious reasons, she rolled her eyes and told me that I wasn't fooling anybody. She's implied that my need for more attention or love is the product of a fragile male ego, and she's cast what I see as garden-variety low-grade moodiness/dickishness, which I'm more than ready to own and apologise for, as dangerous male behavior.

The dilemma: I've developed my own theory as to what's happening, and it's a grim picture:
Gf has some dark things in her past. She grew up with a benevolent but often-absent father and a controlling cold mother. From childhood on she was a tightly-wound perfectionist, and her teenage years were plagued by depression and eating disorders. Her 20s were spent in the dance world, where she absorbed a lot of trauma - destructive messages about her body and femininity, sadistic choreographers, sexually aggressive directors. In her telling, the handful of long term relationships she had were with emotionally distant, sometimes narcissistic, sometimes abusive (emotionally, once physically) men, and I'm her first break from that pattern. To this day she has bouts of severe depression (all day in bed, eating bananas and not showering) for a couple of weeks per year, and a few months of mild dysthymia.

I tend to be a caretaker personality, and I automatically take great interest in people's wellbeing, sometimes to the detriment of my own. In my social circle, I'm seen as the good listener and the person people go to to vent or get a new perspective. Also, since a young age, I've been friends with many women and I think I've had by-default feminist leanings before I knew the word. I think, because of these things, and a conscious desire to break her old patterns, gf pursued me. I was what she wanted on paper. I think she eventually fell in love with me, though sometimes I wonder if she ever did. From my end, I adopted a nasty care-takery pose, and it took me a good six months to see how problematic that was, to stop treating her with kid gloves and start asserting my own needs - which is when our sex life got good and our problems started.

She says she loves me and wants the relationship to work, and I try to believe her. I understand that she's often battling with anxiety and depression. I understand where she's coming from. But when I've tried to tell her about unmet needs, she shoots them down by asking for examples, and then either saying that I misunderstood her in that instance, that my own insecurities made me demand more than was reasonable, or that my previous girlfriends had more in common with me and gave me unreasonable expectations. Or she accuses me of wanting her to be a different person.

I've spent a few years in therapy, and it seriously helped me get past my own cold and aggressive parents and chaotic upbringing. I believe in it and the insight and habits it gave me. She's never had any form of counselling - she recognises that she has a past to overcome, but says she's both too private and independent for counselling, and believes her tools are sufficient to see her through on her own. She thinks our problems are between us and rooted in bad communication, and are not caused by her issues, and all we need to stay together is her fix-it-all toolkit of fierce devotion, radical honesty, and willingness to announce hurt feelings in real time. Frankly, I think these tools are insufficient and too generic. Also, I just can't believe that her trauma, bad prior relationships, depression, and views of men are not behind at least some of the problems in our relationship. She's rejected couples and individual counselling, and I feel weird pushing the issue, but if what we're currently doing is not working then I feel like it's either a counselling-based ultimatum, or calling it quits.

Is there some option or angle I'm not seeing? I want to make this work, but the trajectory is clearly in the wrong direction.
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