Girlfriend still in love but wants to live separately

[daves]

Hi everyone, hoping to get some advice.

My girlfriend and I have been together for 3 years now. I am 28 and she is 24. The last couple months we've been fighting a lot and now an opportunity has come our way to rent a fully furnished second apartment for relatively inexpensive and lease free. We discussed the options of giving each other some space and concluded that we would take the place to see if we get to the bottom of our problems. I am staying in our place now (with 2 other roommates), and she is taking the new place. Its close by, we plan on hanging out a lot and all in all both want to work on fixing our relationship.

We've openly discussed the rocky ground we're on have maturely discussed the possibilities of incompatibility. However, these thoughts hadn't entered our mind until recently and I fear a move out and over analyzing could cause more damage than good. All in all, I love her a lot and she still loves me and we want it to work, we just are struggling getting on the same page on things. My question is, do you think a temparary move out and some space on both ends would be helpful or harmful at this point in time?

Thanks,

Dave

[VincenzoG91]

What kinds of things are you fighting about? Anger is often a mask covering another emotion, especially fear. Or maybe you two are fighting for control of the relationship, or there is a fundamental incompatibility. Are either of the roommates a problem? How much physical space and privacy do you have at the current place? How do the two of you expect that living apart will bring you closer together?

[oldskool83]

Living appart after your together is basicly setting yourself up for a break up. I would move out of your place with no roomates. Roomates cause anger and stress on who you are dating. From what i hear, i think this is going to be no good for either of you, your going to end up feeling more single and well not know what each other will be doing as much.

[daves]

@ Vince - Thank you, you hit a lot of things on the head there. Our fights are about differences in the other that are bothersome (things that didn't use to bother us), also control in the relationship, and core values. Fear is definitely a part of it too, mostly because I am afraid that in living apart, we are going to push away more which is not what I want.

The roomates are great friends of both of ours and not necessarily problems but you're right, it is very hard for us to get any time to ourselves. This is part of the decision for the move where her place could act as more of a space for the two of us and my place would be for fun social events. I'm not sure if living apart will bring us together and that's what I'm afraid of, it could do just the opposite. But she is pushing for it, at least for now, so we can clear our heads for a while. The silver lining is that we have a good deal of variability in this situation because neither place has a lease commitment, they're both running month to month and I could move into the other if we wanted.

@oldskool - This is good advice and it is the route that I initially wanted to take. She is headstrong that she needs some time right now and being disrespectful of that could also be a problem. I also realize that often times needing space is setting up for failure but I want to believe that we will miss each other enough to rekindle and pull back together. Smothering is never good, ya know. Thoughts on getting her to see your perspective?

[oldskool83]

ex gf told me to not sleep over as much...never got to see her after that lol. i take actions louder then words.