How to deal with a busy girlfriend?

[TKCerbs]

Trying to keep this short. I've been dating my gf for 3 months, when we first started dating, our work shifts were very similar and made spending time together at our leisure very easy. She bought a puppy a couple weeks into dating because she always wanted one and it seemed like a good time to get one.

Well, about 3 weeks into dating, she got moved to the afternoon shift, which really screws with our week because I work days, leaving little/no time together on weekday at all. And with the puppy, what time she DOES have after work she has to take care of it, and its a handful.

I was a bit of an asshole the last couple weeks about the time we spend together, which started to create a rift and push her a bit away from me, and we had a silly fight last week and a couple of days to cool off. After that, we talked and she told me she wants it to work, but the way I've been acting is changing her feelings about me, and she isn't sure she even has time for a relationship. I could see she wasn't trying to end it, but opening the door for me to get out if I wanted to, which I didn't, so we agreed to take things a little less seriously, and work on it from a dating standpoint. Yesterday we spent the entire day together just chilling and having fun and it was awesome.

So my question to the community is, how do I make sure I don't go stir crazy during the week when we're not together? I'm not clingly and value my time alone as much as my time with her, but now it seems its almost all "me time". I don't have a puppy that occupies my free time, and my hobbies and friends only go so far, going a week without seeing her sometimes drives me a little nuts. After a few days of hearing from her for a 30 second phone conversation, I start to over-analyze things a bit and then get annoyed at things I shouldn't (ie I will start to think that because she doesn't ask how my day was, she doesn't care). I was considering buying a pair of kittens but that would make things worse between us because then the puppy wouldn't be able to come over, so she wouldn't either.

I'm not dumping her, she is great, calls every night, and is doing what she can to make it work, but until she can get back onto dayshift (which may not be for a long time), our time together will be limited to 1-2 days a week tops. I also accept that with her puppy, I fall down a peg on her priority list. That I had to accept very soon after she bought it, and am willing to work with it.

[tonygina]

Make the most of the time yall do have together. Join her during the time she's caring for the puppy. Go over and help out with it. It will give you that much more time with her.

[TKCerbs]

Make the most of the time yall do have together. Join her during the time she's caring for the puppy. Go over and help out with it. It will give you that much more time with her.

I help with the puppy on the weekends, but because she gets off work and wants to go to bed, it usually means she picks up puppy, goes home and walks it, and goes to bed. She gets spotty sleep every night because the puppy wakes her up every couple of hours. I think she just wants that time as "her" time to get home from work, unwind, play with the dog, and get to bed. So that answer works on the weekends for sure, but not during the week.

[tonygina]

Well,the puppy came at the wrong time then. Lol I'm not sure what to say. If I were in the situation and I cared about my man, my man would come before anything! She may not have hit that point in the relationship yet. I always want to be with my man. That's just me though.

[TKCerbs]

Well,the puppy came at the wrong time then. Lol I'm not sure what to say. If I were in the situation and I cared about my man, my man would come before anything! She may not have hit that point in the relationship yet. I always want to be with my man. That's just me though.

I agree that the puppy timing sucked, but I wouldn't ask a single mom to put her child aside for me, nor would I ask someone to put anything else that personal aside. I don't want to be the center of her universe, I just want some insight from someone else who has had a situation where you maybe work opposite shifts and share a busy lifestyle where you only see each other a couple of times week.

We started out seeing each other a lot because our schedules matched up, and now they don't. So the difficulty is in the fact we've dialed it down, reduced our intimacy level a bit, but are still going relatively well. Life happens, and if everytime something doesn't go my way I quit, I'll have nothing. The time we spend together is usually good (except the past couple of weeks, but it was mostly because I was being a dick about the time we do have together).