Hi there,
I am courting a woman now and we love each other and want to marry. I am 33 and she is 36. Normally we get along really well, but there is this one problem that keeps bothering me.
That is, my girlfriend is very talkative and right now we are in a situation that she is far away and we can only meet in chat, sometimes with mic and cam, sometimes without.
Normally we have really nice chats but today it was different. I am currently not in such a good mood, maybe a slight depression. I have these bouts of fearfulness about life in general, that things seem hard and that my emotions are awkward and so on. So I told to my girlfriend that I don't enjoy long conversations for now. I said it wasn't her fault.
But she got very upset and immediately said bye and left chat. She has done that before a few times and I know she is weeping then and feels unloved.
I'm not sure, but for some reason my girlfriend often thinks I must be available to her, and when sometimes I don't feel like talking she thinks I am not happy with her. In fact she seems to equate romantic love with being happy with each other. So whenever I am in a depressed mood, which happens to me sometimes, she thinks I don't love her.
I find that very hard to handle. Because when that happens I not only have to deal with my depression but also with thinking that my girlfriend has no understanding and that she causes me stress. However, I do know that marital love has to do with accepting suffering for the sake of love, it has to do with often making sacrifices.
Also, while my girlfriend is difficult sometimes she doesn't bear grudges for long and sooner or later she overcomes the problem and things turn normal again.
But now I would like to improve the situation. What can I do if my girlfriend wants casual and funny talk, or romantic talk, and yet I struggle with depression and feeling empty and therefor cannot sparkle and shine in conversations and prefer to be quiet? I can overcome myself to some extent and I can force myself to talk, but this doesn't feel very good and I end up longing to go away to be alone.
Another thing that came up recently was that my girlfriend told me she found love emotionally painful sometimes. She has had some trouble with her first husband (she is a widow), and now it seems she often has fears of loosing me, which is giving her this pain in love. But she told me she has solved this by deciding she would only love me normally, and not more. And I don't know what that means. I also know a thing or two about the pains that sometimes come up in love, but basically I find our love a source of strength and peace and it's not painful to me. I have told my girlfriend that we must look at other successful couples in order to see what they are doing so that their marriage is a success. My girlfriend says that we need to be able to trust each other blindly.
She is speaking a lot about trust, but it seems we have a different idea of what trust is. For example, I think that when I have a depression with a clear reason, then trust means that I tell my girlfriend about it so we can talk about it. But my girlfriend says that if I would really trust her I wouldn't even state the problem because there wouldn't be any.
I also have some problems with this relationship which may prove to be a challenge for us in the long run. For example, it seems to me that my girlfriend is really desperate for marrying. She lives in an asian country where unmarried women have it really hard, so part of her motivation for marrying is in getting to a better place in life. I can understand that but it is giving problems sometimes, for example I have told her I would like to visit her to see if we really fit to each other, but she says I shall save the money, come a bit later and marry her right away. My family is of course very sceptical of this, but we are europeans living in a different society and we might misunderstand my girlfriend which is of a pakistani background.
I would also like to know what place you give to feelings in general, when it comes to romantic love. In my life I have had these feelings, but they were not always right and they did not always prove exact. For example, before I met my girlfriend I met another woman and within some days fell in love with her and had butterflies in my stomach about her. Some days later I realized I wouldn't fit to this woman and returned to normal feeling. So I am wondering if I can have the famous butterfly feelings so quickly, maybe it is just a sexual thing? I had these feelings with my girlfriend too at first but now they are not coming to me again.
What bothers me much is that my girlfriend says she is weeping much about me, because I just wouldn't understand always. And then she says it's ok, she just weeps often because she is sensitive. I would like to help her when she is sad but sometimes I am overwhelmed by all these emotional things.
Any advice?
I am courting a woman now and we love each other and want to marry. I am 33 and she is 36. Normally we get along really well, but there is this one problem that keeps bothering me.
That is, my girlfriend is very talkative and right now we are in a situation that she is far away and we can only meet in chat, sometimes with mic and cam, sometimes without.
Normally we have really nice chats but today it was different. I am currently not in such a good mood, maybe a slight depression. I have these bouts of fearfulness about life in general, that things seem hard and that my emotions are awkward and so on. So I told to my girlfriend that I don't enjoy long conversations for now. I said it wasn't her fault.
But she got very upset and immediately said bye and left chat. She has done that before a few times and I know she is weeping then and feels unloved.
I'm not sure, but for some reason my girlfriend often thinks I must be available to her, and when sometimes I don't feel like talking she thinks I am not happy with her. In fact she seems to equate romantic love with being happy with each other. So whenever I am in a depressed mood, which happens to me sometimes, she thinks I don't love her.
I find that very hard to handle. Because when that happens I not only have to deal with my depression but also with thinking that my girlfriend has no understanding and that she causes me stress. However, I do know that marital love has to do with accepting suffering for the sake of love, it has to do with often making sacrifices.
Also, while my girlfriend is difficult sometimes she doesn't bear grudges for long and sooner or later she overcomes the problem and things turn normal again.
But now I would like to improve the situation. What can I do if my girlfriend wants casual and funny talk, or romantic talk, and yet I struggle with depression and feeling empty and therefor cannot sparkle and shine in conversations and prefer to be quiet? I can overcome myself to some extent and I can force myself to talk, but this doesn't feel very good and I end up longing to go away to be alone.
Another thing that came up recently was that my girlfriend told me she found love emotionally painful sometimes. She has had some trouble with her first husband (she is a widow), and now it seems she often has fears of loosing me, which is giving her this pain in love. But she told me she has solved this by deciding she would only love me normally, and not more. And I don't know what that means. I also know a thing or two about the pains that sometimes come up in love, but basically I find our love a source of strength and peace and it's not painful to me. I have told my girlfriend that we must look at other successful couples in order to see what they are doing so that their marriage is a success. My girlfriend says that we need to be able to trust each other blindly.
She is speaking a lot about trust, but it seems we have a different idea of what trust is. For example, I think that when I have a depression with a clear reason, then trust means that I tell my girlfriend about it so we can talk about it. But my girlfriend says that if I would really trust her I wouldn't even state the problem because there wouldn't be any.
I also have some problems with this relationship which may prove to be a challenge for us in the long run. For example, it seems to me that my girlfriend is really desperate for marrying. She lives in an asian country where unmarried women have it really hard, so part of her motivation for marrying is in getting to a better place in life. I can understand that but it is giving problems sometimes, for example I have told her I would like to visit her to see if we really fit to each other, but she says I shall save the money, come a bit later and marry her right away. My family is of course very sceptical of this, but we are europeans living in a different society and we might misunderstand my girlfriend which is of a pakistani background.
I would also like to know what place you give to feelings in general, when it comes to romantic love. In my life I have had these feelings, but they were not always right and they did not always prove exact. For example, before I met my girlfriend I met another woman and within some days fell in love with her and had butterflies in my stomach about her. Some days later I realized I wouldn't fit to this woman and returned to normal feeling. So I am wondering if I can have the famous butterfly feelings so quickly, maybe it is just a sexual thing? I had these feelings with my girlfriend too at first but now they are not coming to me again.
What bothers me much is that my girlfriend says she is weeping much about me, because I just wouldn't understand always. And then she says it's ok, she just weeps often because she is sensitive. I would like to help her when she is sad but sometimes I am overwhelmed by all these emotional things.
Any advice?
