I love my girlfriend very much. I think she is my soulmate and I want to marry her, and I don’t tell people that because they will think I’m naïve and not know what I’m talking about. I really love her and I miss her so much that my chest aches and hurts really bad.
We first started dating months before the 9 month count we have now. My girlfriend is bipolar and I think she has autism also. I love her so much but she had a manic episode and broke up with me because of it the first time. It broke my heart. I have a really hard time trusting people already, and she says she unconditionally loves me, so that threw me for a loop. I don’t think about it as often as I used to worry about it, wondering when the next episode would happen, but it probably still has a sizeable dent on my subconscious worrying.
I feel like her autistic tendencies get in the way of our relationship. I am not a good person at explaining my needs but I try my best to be very direct with her. One concept that is especially difficult is “learning how to love someone.” I try very hard to learn how to love her. I am very observant of what she likes and dislikes and asks for. Every time she says she likes something I write it down to not forget about it. I don’t think she does this or something similar. And I love her very much and wouldn’t trade her for the world. I just wish she would put more effort into making things happen when it comes to me. She does love me and she wants to try but I don’t feel loved if I have to direct her on all the steps on how to try. I want to feel like she is doing everything in her power to learn how to love me on her own also. I was thinking about couples therapy maybe. I am trying to be conscious about not straining myself and stretching too far when I shouldn’t be, but sometimes I just don’t feel loved or cared about at all from someone who says they want to be my forever. I know she wants to, I just need to feel it to.
When she was visiting just recently, she wouldn’t listen to what I was saying. I told her to not say, and even in a joking way, “you hate me,” because we both had mutually discussed before how we hate hearing that from the other. She kept doing it. She would flip away from me in bed without saying anything and that makes me worried she’s mad at me so I requested she stops doing that, but she kept doing it. She wouldn’t apologize for these things. I was clearly upset and started crying and she was just going on her phone turned away from me. I was very upset by this and I had to ask her to apologize multiple times. I wanted her to make the effort to apologize and comfort me herself but she said she is just completely lost on what to do. When she doesn’t know what to do, she freezes. I don’t know how to help with that and I try, but it makes me feel like she doesn’t care about me at all when it happens. I want her to be sorry when she does anything to upset me, even if she didn’t mean to upset me. When I accidentally upset her, I feel so so terrible because I did that and I immediately try my best to damage control. She doesn’t do that. She does love me. I want to feel that love. I want to be cared for, gently, and to know she loves me.
It’s really hard when you love each other so much but there are issues. I just want to see my girlfriend take initiative to fix those issues with me, and to learn to love me to. To care about me so deeply that the thought of even off-putting me slightly makes her uneasy, because it is that way for me. I don’t just want to be thought about I want to be anticipated. Love is so important and she is the most important thing in the world to me. I want to be the most important thing to her too. I want to know her so well I can order from her from any restaurant. I can make her feel better after any kind of hard day. I can buy her the perfect gift on every occasion, and I can read her mind if I tried. I want this from her also. Everything she says to me is so important and I want that to. I want her to study me in the same way I do her and I don’t want to have to ask for it. I don’t want to remind for it. I want it to be a conscious effort. It hurts me so much when she does something we have talked about multiple times I dislike. I try so hard to be the best version of myself for her. I am far from perfect but I am trying and I make that known. I got two books the other day. “loving someone with bipolar disorder” & “the autism partner handbook”
I want to be helpful and I want to try but I don’t want to have to explain everything. It makes me feel less loved when I do.