Dealing with conflicting differences in long-term relationship

[4dvz]

Hello.

Meaning of this post is to help myself and hopefully some other people with similar issues, and at the same time help me get some steams out of my system.

I`ve been living under the same roof with my girlfriend for about 2 years now. We`ve never been 100% alike but we neither ever had unbearable conflicts in our styles of living. Lately tought things have taken a big leap towards a huge conflict:

She met a bunch of new friends maybe 4 weeks ago, and I`m glad she did as I wish the best for her of course. The problem is that the friends she met are way too outgoing/have too much spare time for our life as I perceive it. AND they are quite young, haven`t yet established their own lives, are single and hang with each other 24/7. And my girlfriend has kind of joined their livestyle, which leads to the huge conflict.. :
Since we live in good area, close to everything+her new friends don`t really have their own places, they hang around our house a lot. And to be honest as much as I wish my girlfriend to have as much friends as possible, I CAN`T stand them hanging at our place 4-5 days/week. They ask me out too and could be my friends which I respect and I have nothing against any of them as persons, but I just want my home to be a place where I can relax, and we have bedroom(I only sleep there),bathroom+quite big living room so as you may imagine everyone is 100% of the time in the same room when there`s people in our place, I don`t have a place to escape when I`m feeling tired and just want to sit at computer or something.

Lately we`ve had too many fights over this issue. My girlfriend is fed up with me and calls me an unsocial person who doesn`t care about other people, because mostly I`m against her inviting the posse in our place, and especially when she tells them it`s ok to crash at our place for a night.
During the past month, I`ve been kind of trying to just be at my own space at my computer when there are her friends at our place, but I just can`t relax and feel like exploding. I`m under a terrible stress and depression because of my work and it just kills me when after a working day my castle has been occupied by people.

I`ve been trying to ask my gf to hang with them elsewhere, but I have a bad feeling of it turning against me as it already has. And as I said, they often have no other place to hang at, according to my gf.
Yesterday my gf declared a "thinking time", but kind of drew it back after 7-8 hours.

I have never ever earlier been bothered with her having friends over, infact I have happily hanged with them too. But the current situation went over my limits right after she met the new posse she hangs out with. Of course it`s not just my home, it`s my girlfriends home too and she has a right to invite people over, but this is where the difference gets overwhelming for our relationship.

The more I seem "unsocial" in my girlfriends eyes, the more she gets fed up with me and I don`t want that.

What would you do in my position?

[xxazurexx]

I've never been in that situation, but I wouldn't like it and not particularly if I was coming home from a long hard day at work and to be greeted by a bunch of kids in my home. I'd feel like it was an invasion of my home and my privacy.

When I was younger and was living alone, I'd have friends over and all the time. But when I found myself in an exclusive thing and we lived together, I grew up and it all stopped. I was part of a couple' and I acted like it. Don't get me wrong, I'd have the odd friend over now and again and so would he, but I didn't fill my home with a gang of friends every night and I sure as hell wouldn't have been so thoughtless to have them all sitting and when he was due home from work.

Tell her to GROW UP and to quit treating your home like it's some 'youth' club or some charity home for 'waifs and strays' to crash in!

[4dvz]

Yeah thats exactly the way I think and see it, but she sees it differently and I have to come up with a solution that makes both of us happy. We have a good relationship besides this issue.

I know her very well and if I would tell her to grow up here the results would be far away from what I want to achieve because it would only get her angry which would lead to a fight instead of constructive discussion. In this matter we are such different persons, she is like she could be a member of some community whereas I`m happy for meeting up with my friends/one of them like once a week if even that, and I do it usually out from my home in the evening. And she is the kind of person who adapts a lot in herself from the persons she hangs out with, and again total opposite of me.

[VincenzoG91]

When I was 21, I was the first guy in my group of friends to have my own apartment. I wasn't done with college yet, but my dad got a new job in another state, and I didn't feel like moving with them and living in a small town. So it was sometimes tough to make ends meet, but I got my own studio apartment. It was just one room, 15 feet by 15 feet, with a small kitchen and a bathroom attached, plus a couple of closets. All my friends were still living at home, so when they wanted to party without disturbing their parents, they came over to my place.

By age 25, I'd had enough. At that time, I was living with two close friends as roommates, and we had a nice apartment with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a big living room. Friends came over seven days a week to hang out, bringing bags of fast food and snacks and drinks for themselves. We had to take out the trash and recycling every single day because it was filling up that quickly. And even though two of us roommates had standard office-type jobs, M-F, 8-5, our friends were often staying until 2:00 AM, even on weeknights. So two of us finally said enough, and told our friends they had to leave before midnight on weeknights. And when that first year ended, we didn't renew the lease, the two of us got a different apartment elsewhere, and laid down stricter rules about how often people could come over. The third roommate got a place with his girlfriend, and they never had anybody over because she wouldn't allow it.

So I understand the issue here. You need to talk to your girlfriend and come up with a compromise. If both of you are reasonable, you should be able to work something out. If she won't compromise, you might want to take a hard look at the overall relationship, because if there are other similar issues, you two just might not belong together. It doesn't make either of you bad people, just two people who won't be happy together in the long run.

[Caleb]

There is a difference between having a few friends over and between turning your house into a hostel. You should defensibly talk to her about it. There is a little thing called personal space. I think its time you should claim yours. I am sure that you wouldn't want to do anything to make her feel as if you are isolating her, but there are some boundaries that I think she should know how to respect. Perhaps its time for you to play the role of the man in the house and tell her that when a guy comes home after a hard days work, he doesn't always want to see everyone his girlfriend knows. He wants to see his girlfriend. There is a time and place for everything. I know that if I would come to an understanding that my own house has turned into a hotel, I would be darn right pissed off. So, yeah, I think that you should talk to her about the subject.

[4dvz]

I have talked about the subject with her practically like every day for the past 2 weeks or something, and each discussion (until yesterday which I will talk about in the end of this msg) has resulted in either she telling me that we don`t fit together or that I`m unsocial and wrong type for her. But she´s damn hard person to deal with, I mean I believe I could add to my cv "master of diplomacy" for always eventually solving conflicts with her with a way or another. Because her response to every issue kind of is that "It`s not working out, you are too different from me blahblah let`s end our relationship". <--- Now I totally understand that seems like I should end it myself and not tolerate that kind of bs, but once when the argument is over and settled, everything`s back to normal and we have everything you could ever wish from a relationship, and we never discuss that argument again, it always goes like that.

There are different types of personalities and with her trust me, "man of the house" does not work. She is unbeliavably selfish in these situations and does not give up on her opinions nor views, so it`s up to me to achieve peace by making her realize her own mistakes or if I fail to do so, then just stone-cold barter.

But anyways, I made some serious progress yesterday:
I haven`t had a chance to do what I was planning on doing this week; Waiting for her to be in unsocial mood or tired, and then invite many of my own friends in our place to do something noisy guy-stuff for day and night, and hope for her to realize what she has been doing and that home is a place where even she wants to relax when she wants to. But actually I got very lucky this time and didn`t have to do something so childish.
Her best friend, which she doesn`t see that much who also has an established life, apparently sided up with me when my gf was talking about the issue from her own point of view. And it made my gf tell me that she has been selfish and she will limit her friends coming over. We´ll see how it turns out..

But anyways I was kind of bothered that her best friend must had told her exactly the same things I have been trying to talk about the whole time, and she changed her mind and accepted the thing. Kind of frustrating, because I have not acted aggressively nor illogically, I have talked like a president of united states giving a motivational speech for the whole nation. And still someobdy else manages to change her mind with 1st attempt. Well, I guess it`s because she has been mad at me since the beginning of this big argument and didn`t even want to listen.. well, I`m glad if it stops here.

[Caleb]

Well, if all is well and going as it should, then there is no complain in order in the end of the day. What can I say? best of luck to ya then. It seems that you have got what you wanted for now. Though.. I will say that it seems that your gf is a little bit too open for suggestions. I know that personally I couldn't be with someone that fails to realize such basic things from the beginning. Lack of common sense is kind of a big issue for me. Not to mention that if I was in a position where every argument feels like the last, I would much rather go and find myself a serious partner who would actually listen to me. You know, to have that basic sense of stability and security within the relationship itself. I don't know, I couldn't deal being in a relationship where I would have to become a master of diplomacy. I would prefer being honest without having to sugarcoat common sense.

[4dvz]

I know what you mean but I also know I can handle her this way, the last issue was just getting out of hands and it doesn`t usually go that far. If I weight pros and cons, she definitely has more positive things in her. But yeah it annoys me like hell when I just wish she had some of that common sense when things like that happen.. But again, I take her the way she is, all the way, I don`t want to try and change her into something she`s not. Sometimes tough I really wonder do I want to be with a girl who could become a hippie or something like that if she would just meet new friends who would encourage her.. But as long as she stays normal enough and issues get solved, I`m happy.

[xxazurexx]

Well I guess you could just accept it and look on the bright side....your home at least will never be dull or boring

[Caleb]

Then perhaps you should introduce her to some of Jehovah's witnesses. I`m just kidding, of course;-) As I said before, best of luck to ya. Though if you ask me, change isn't always a bad thing. People are suppose to change a little when they are in a relationship in order to co-exsist. I mean, I could only imagine the look on my fiance`s face if I were to come home one day and tell her: "Oh, hi honey! wait a sec. come in girls.. sweetie, here, these are my hoe`s. Ho`s, honey. Feel free to raid the kitchen. Well, i`m going out again. Its `spin the hat` day at the local strip club and I promised the club owner I would be one of the judges ". I`m just joking of course, but you get the idea.

But you know, perhaps xxazurexx said it best. You'll never be bored, that's for sure;-)