High maintenance much? How can I compromise and make things work?

[goingcrazyhere]

Hey all, first time posting here, so thanks much for your time in reading my tale of woe, which may or may not ramble on at parts... I'm a twenty-three year-old man, and the girl we're talking about just turned twenty-two. Both out of college, both living at home temporarily.

I'm here because my off-again, on-again girlfriend of several years is driving me effing bonkers and making me want to destroy my cellphone/delete my facebook/ live under a rock in solitude so as not to interact with anyone who could possibly be construed as more important than her. To say that she can be "unreasonable" is putting it lightly-- if my phone dies and she happens to call, it must be some master plot to avoid her. If I make plans to go to hang out with my best friend for a few hours on, let's say a Thursday, after she's spent literally every other night of the week at my house with me, I'm "choosing them over her" and will be be in the doghouse for days at a time.

This does not feel fair to me. Granted, there have been times when I've opted to go to a social gathering without her under various circumstance, as surely happens to every couple at some point. The problem is, more times than not that I've taken her to parties, small events with close friends, or even family functions, she's made a megabitch of herself to everyone in attendance with her sour, I'm-not-enjoying-myself-and-should-be-somewhere-else-that's-better attitude, off-putting comments, closed body language, and removal of herself from group interaction through constant text messaging. At one point in time, she even pulled me away from a conversation and slapped me at a close friend's going away party, all because I spent about ten minutes talking with a few friends of mine and she felt left out and ignored. No one understood why she did it, and afterward, they certainly didn't understand why I stayed with her.

Because of how negatively she's handled herself in even the simplest of past group interactions, we tend to lead separate social lives now and have practically no mutual friends. This is not healthy I'm sure, and its put a real strain on our relationship at times.

Why do I stay? The reasons I give myself are that we have some deep shared interests, genuinely excellent one-on-one conversations complete with great humor, and a healthy, intimate sex life when things are sailing smoothly- ie, I'm devoting all of my free time to her. The problems arise over her feelings of not being included in my apparently fabulous, jet-set social life-- but I suppose my question is: can she really blame me if I am hesitant to include her at times?

This is sounding sad, isn't it? I guess I just need to cut the cord here and realize that we aren't currently and probably never will be a real "team". I feel cold and sad to leave her alone-- she tells me she has close to no good friends (presumably because of her negative attitude, though she's vague about the actual reasons behind her friends choosing to ignore her), and her home life is not entirely stable with her parents separated. I know logically that I can't help her learn to "chill out" or "be cool" after nearly three years of constant mistrust, misplaced anger, and increasingly outrageous arguments; nor do I feel that I should want to change her shortcomings as I perceive them to make her fit the ideal I have in mind for us.

I just don't want to fight anymore, and though I'm sure you can gather that things are more complicated than I could possibly explain here, I'd like to hear an opinion or two on what's going through her mind when she melts down and accuses me of not trying hard enough to make things work between us, even when I'm doing everything I can to compromise and keep her happy.

Thanks again for any help you can offer, ladies.

J

[vashti]

I don't mean this to sound sarcastic, but does she suffer from mental illness?

I'm not sure how much help anyone can be. It is unhealthy that you choose to stay with a partner who is abusive, and the fact that you are trying to intellectualize her outrageous behavior is troubling. You KNOW you have to leave her if you are going to have a chance at real happiness. Maybe you should get some counseling to try to figure out why you won't let this go.

[Agape]

I have absolutely no qualification to say this . . but she sounds EXTREMELY dependent and jealous

If this attitude interferes with the relationships . . .then you need to end it. . . how long has this been going on?