New And Could Really Do With Some Advice!

[gregey26]

Hi all, im 25 year old male and have been with my g/f for around 8 months. She is 20 and she has been in past relationships before, however this was my first serious relationship. Over all the time that we have been together I have had an amazing time on the whole, we have great chats, enjoy the same things, have the same humour, she tells me she loves me and i do her and generally get on like a house on fire.

During our time together I have always worried and still do that she does not feel as strongly about me as i do her, for instance if I pick her up and she seems like she doesn't want to talk I start thinking I must of upset her, to not waffle on in a nut shell sometime I feel she does not make as much effort in our relationship as me and as a result this makes me feel very low about things. I am now starting to feel that the problem might be my insecurity/low-self esteem. For instance if she doesnt text me back within 3 hours or so it really bugs me, or if she doesn't instigate us seeing each other I think see doesn't want to see me......Recently we spent the week together (normally live apart, but see each other 3-4 times a week) during this week she started a new job, was very stressed because in hindsight she had a lot on....this lead to her giving me very little attention and I took this badly in honesty and I realise that I was wrong, eventually it came to a head on friday when we were both out and drunk and I confronted her saying she did not make me feel great about us etc etc........

Now when we woke up in the morning I thought alot about what had happened and i feel really bad, I now realise that I am insecure in someways about my relationship. She came to see me last night and I decided to write her a letter telling her what she ment to me and what I thought was the problem ' my insecurity'. we chatted and she told me she loves me and i did her, we agreed that the past week had not been good and I explained i think that im insecure, she agreed. It was a pleasent chat, however I did ask her how she felt and she explained that she still loves me but she is very annoyed and wasn't really looking forward to seeing me that night.....to being with I took this as a sign we would break up (my insecureness) however now I feel this is just me insecureness, the simple fact she is willing to work with me and get us back to being great again is good and she still loves me. I think the root of my problem is that I see my self sub conciously in a very bad way, although I could list 20 good things about me I feel my subconcious thought chain is always negative. Has anyone else been in this situation, how can I stop worrying and start enjoying the great times we have? How can I start realising she does love me and that she might just not show it as much? Am I being like this because if I don't feel like she makes me feel like the most important thing in her life it makes me sad? Any advice would be great, I know I love this girl (although at times my insecureness makes me think she is not worth the time becasue she doesnt care) and I know she loves me, I need to stop trying to control? Thanks for reading

[pisces25]

You know even though you consider yourself insecure, it is quite possible you guys have an incompatibility in terms of communication like you prefer a lot of it and she is happy just to get on with whatever is going on at the time and doesn't necessarily place you as priority. Just out of curiosity do you have your own friendship group and hobbies? If not, that is one way you can tackle this as it is important to remain individual in a relationship. She might get sick of the smothering or your insecurities otherwise. You need to examine WHY you are feeling so insecure. It doesn't come from nowhere, there are reasons why you feel like that. Are you scared of being abandoned, afraid of being alone, feel like you don't deserve a relationship? etc etc. Being in a relationship and love in general means relinquishing control. You have no control over how the other person feels and the decisions that person makes. Being in a relationship means being vulnerable. Our first instinct is to protect our ego from being hurt. But if you look at it from another angle, and that is an opportunity to grow and experience love, perhaps you may begin to see things differently. Don't be fooled into thinking she is filling a gap in your life. It just appears that way.

[gregey26]

I see what you mean, yes for many years i have built a great friendship group but since i have been in a relationship I have always tried to see her as much as possible although still seeing my friends once a week, where as before it would be 4-5 times a week, this is something i have decided to change. I feel as if i have almost obsessed of her, all though i love her more than anything in the world i think i need to start saying 'well i do love her more than anything in the world but she doesnt have to be my world' if you get what i mean. I feel as if i can only be happy with her confirmation she feels the same, for instance if something is bothering/worrying me as soon as she does something that shows me love I feel so much better and feel stupid for worrying! In terms of compatibility i think we are, for instance she is not being out of order when she does somethings and she does show me love quite alot of the time but i wonder wether my insecurity has recognised these things she does as 'not enough' I feel sometimes that only her absolute undivided attention will be enough and surely this can not be normal in any relationship? for instance would i only be compatible with a girl that wants compelete time devotion? For all the time we have been together it just feels so right 80% of the time and things are great, however i feel things cannot move forward without me stopping worrying!!! I am very afraid of being abandond or cheated on and this might stem from my past as i have always felt low self confidence in some situations and I have been through some tough times and done so bad things so i wonder wether my veiw of myself is that great?? Would seeing a councellor help do you think?can they treat stuff like this? Exersise to make me feel good about myself? thanks for your reply much appreciated

[pisces25]

Seems perhaps you are seeking validation from her that you are a good person, rather than validation that she loves you. Someone once told me we don't fall in love with someone, we fall in love with how they make us feel.

If you feel you are slightly obsessed or your anxieties are driving you to despair then yes counselling can help as it will draw out the root of your issues and give you some tools to deal with it. But prior to that perhaps try going back to seeing your friends more and get your own life back a little. Independence is sexy. Clingy-ness is not.

[gregey26]

okay, that makes sense.....think im going to try and get a little of my old life back and see how it goes, i have booked into councelling just now too....although this just arose today: as i previously mentioned i felt really insecure and we had discussions that left her unhappy last week (me feeling she makes no effort). i text her today seeing how she was doing, told her a little of what i had been up to, she replied with a nice text then i replied, she then replied saying she had had a row with her parents, so i replied asking what was up and saying if she wanted to talk i was there........she had work at two and i text her at about 12.45.....i heard nothing until ten to 2 and then got a text simply saying ' could you do me a favour? can you log onto one of my back accounts and transfer 10 pound over to my other account by three thirty, would that be okay? thank you i appreciate it! xxxxx' from this i felt really hurt (again am i readin into it too much?) i was thinking well why didnt she want to reply to my text trying to talk but then she does when she wants a favour doing? or could she have just been really busy and it was shitty at home and she didnt have time to text back or do the transfer? stuff like this makes me upset/insecure....what are your thoughts? sorry to go on lol

[BackUpOrGetStng]

Stop contacting her so much. You are too clingy and that is a turnoff. She doesn't want to contact you, because she knows it is going to be a long drawn out process and she won't be able to get anything else done.

[TeeJay19]

Yeah, give her a little space. It sounds like you may be smothering Give her a chance to miss you a little bit. You need to have lives outside the relationship. That way the time you do spend together is more special and you don't start to get sick of each other.

You say this is your first serious relationship. Have you had many relationships in the past? If not this may be part of the problem. I know I'm almost your age and have never had a serious relationship and it's certainly been hard on my self confidence. And any time I do start seeing a girl I tend to come on too strong and want to see her all the time because I'm so hungry for a relationship.

Counselling can definitely help, but most importantly you need to start hanging out with friends again, finding hobbies etc. Try to get to a place where you don't NEED a relationship and you'll find you're relationship will be much healthier.

[Jeff12]

Start slowly are interested in this.

[gregey26]

thanks for the info, i have now doen the following to try and help sort things out:
1. Booked into a counseling session a week today.
2. Realised I should not text too much when we are apart, let her make the first move sometimes!
3. I have booked into a pool team for every thursday night with some mates, going to have one night a week socialising down the pub with friends and going to go swimming with another mate every week.
4. I have started jogging today, this i hope will increase my motivation i hope and make me feel good.

I hope that these things will help, I became now i realsie almost obssesed over the relationship, and couldnt see anything else outside of it, I realsie this is a big strian on the relatioship and I need to back off in terms of how dominant it should be in my life however remembering that her love for me is not a result of seeing her and texting her all the time. she loves me because im me and no other reason. I hoep things can go back to normal with a little time and hopefully we can be as happy as we were a few months ago. I really hope so
any more advice on building relationship confidence would be great, need all the help i can get lol
thanks guys

[Malind1]

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