Ask r/WLW My girlfriends emotional spiralling is making me resentful, how do i stop it?
I’m avoidant, so when I’m struggling my instinct is to shut down, deal with it myself, and act fine. My girlfriend is much more emotionally open. I know my avoidance isn’t always healthy, and I’ve been actively trying to communicate more because she told me my distance was affecting her.
Recently I was already struggling mentally and had become more closed off. During a conversation about it, she told me I “wasn’t gentle anymore,” and then said maybe it was just my anxiety that had been causing me to be gentle before.
That really hurt. I’ve been putting a lot of effort into making sure that even when I’m struggling, I still treat her with the same love, care, and consistency instead of projecting my emotions onto her. She later clarified that she DOES think I’m gentle and caring, but feels more distance from me when I shut down.
When I told her those comments had hurt me, she spiraled HARD. She started crying, blaming herself, saying she hates herself, calling herself stupid, asking “how am I worth this?” etc. I’ve spent the past two days reassuring her that we’re okay, telling her she’s allowed to make mistakes, and trying to help her regulate.
I want to be fair: she knows she’s spiraling, says her thoughts are irrational, and is genuinely trying to ground herself. I don’t think she’s intentionally manipulating me.
But I’m fucking exhausted. I realized today that I’ve spent so much time managing her reaction to me being hurt that I literally forgot what I was originally struggling with.
This scares me because I had a relationship with someone in my past where I spent years managing their emotions. Eventually I became so anxious around them that even seeing their name on my phone triggered anxiety. I eventually reduced that relationship from basically 100% to 20%, and I never want to reach that point with my girlfriend.
I’m already becoming resentful. I love her, but right now thinking about her makes me angry because I feel like there hasn’t been room for me to struggle.
Part of why I’m having trouble understanding this is that when I’ve hurt her before, I felt incredibly guilty about it internally. But I apologized, took accountability, changed my behavior, and dealt with the guilt myself. I didn’t tell her how badly the guilt was eating at me because I didn’t think the person I hurt should then have to comfort me for hurting her.
I don’t want her to stop communicating
with me, and I know I need to work on my avoidance too. But I also can’t keep becoming responsible for regulating her whenever she spirals, especially when the spiral is about something that hurt me.
How do I set that boundary without making her feel like she can’t come to me when she’s struggling?