Hey everyone,
It's been a while since I've posted on here, but once again I come back begging for your advice. My girlfriend and I have been together for 8 months and we've gotten really close. I'm sure she's the one I want to spend my life with.
I'm what you might call the epitome of a nice guy, I know that one of my weaknesses/strengths (I'm not sure which) is that I genuinely want people to be happy around me and if I screw something up my usual response is "I'm sorry" and I do truly feel it. Well every time I screw something up with my girlfriend I always apologize WAY too much and I KNOW it. I've even recently started apologizing for apologizing so much.
Tonight I called her at 11:30pm to leave a message because I thought she had her phone off since it was off before but it wasn't. I heard the first ring and hung up but it woke her up and pissed her off. I got the message "Now that im awake because someone decided to call me at 1130 pm I will have a wonderful freakin night". I immediately sent her a message apologizing but I didnt get anything back. Tonight I felt very depressed... I felt like telling her sorry a thousand times, but I realize that always saying sorry doens't really help much, I want to make her feel happy... not sad because I am. Feeling sorry for what I've done always leads me to the paridoxical emotion of feeling sorry for feeling sorry and I KNOW that the most that will help things is make her feel sympathy and that's just a temporary bandaid that I will have to later pay for down the road by deminishing her respect for me. So tonight I was thinking, the only other choice I have is to not feel sorry in the first place... find a way to break through her anger by making her laugh or something else, I can't let myself fall into these pits of depression otherwise what good is our relationship? The only problem is that I don't know how to do that... I don't know how to reach her when she's angry except by wearing my heart on my sleave and telling her how much I'm sorry and I love her.
Tomorrow I'm going to be at her house working on my car when she gets home (its there because her step-dad's a mechanic) how should I approach her when she gets there? My first natural reaction would probably be to reflect her anger a little and not say anything to her when she got home, my second reaction (and not any more logical) would be to smile weakly and try to appeal to her soft side by showing her that I was sad/sorry... but I need something new... I don't have the humorous wit to make her laugh when shes in a mood like that. I've bought her several roses and tulips in the last couple weeks for different reasons so I really need to let the romance card cool off a little before playing it again. So what do I do? Can anybody give me a little advice? Whats the best response to anger?
Thanks
Tennyson