My girlfriend is hypervigilant and I feel judged

[dlp777]

ok, never posted before

i am 27, my girlfriend is 24.

we have recently moved in together after a year and a half of being together. We have been living together for 5 months before then, because she basically lived at mine. We now have a new house (rental).

We have only been in for a week, and nothing is ready yet. Our sofas haven’t arrived, we don’t have our telly yet, nothing is sorted and so we’re staying there, but it doesn’t feel like home yet.

on the day we moved in, I texted her to say “I’m coming home now” and she said I “could have sounded more excited”.
I hate it when she tells me how I should be feeling. Everyone shows excitement in different ways and she has such rigid expectations. I have to act in a certain way or she doesn’t like it.

She was sobbing this morning because she feels like I’m not excited. This is because we woke up and had breakfast in silence because I was tired. She said the atmosphere was off and it’s all meant to be fun and exciting.
She keeps saying things like “I want you to be the most excited and see this as the best thing ever” or “we’re supposed to be jumping around in excitement in our first house”.

Another issues is, she can’t take any criticism. I told her I hate it when she tells me how I feel, and I’ve hated it this whole time. It turns into a huge thing and she says things like “I want you to love everything about me” or “you’ve hated something about me for 18 months”

I do really love her and she makes me happy most of the time, but always seems to think I’m lying when I say nice things. She never takes my word for it.

I don’t want everyone to come on here and just trash talk her, I need tsome constructive advice to help me/her please, or tell me if I’m in the wrong?

thank you

She sounds so juvenile and wildly insecure. A total nightmare in fact. You must be drained all the time.

Yes, it’s actually clear from the OP we’re only getting one side. If the OP is sitting about in glum silence on a regular basis, it may be less surprising that she’s hypervigilant to his/her moods. You just don’t sound well-matched, OP.

Speaking as an old woman: get out now. She sounds loveable in the same way a kitten or a small puppy can be loveable—cute, excited, passionate, seemingly attached. But she is hollow at the core and can’t successfully regulate her emotions. She wants to—and insists on—living life performatively and at a high peak of excitement. She sounds like she models herself as a manic pixie dream girl. Lovely to date. Hell to live with. Save yourself years of heartbreak and let her go and find a better match.

That may well be true. However it’s also perfectly possible that the OP is a tetchy, depressive grump and she’s hypervigilant to changes in his/ her mood and overcompensates. Either way, I think they’re ill-matched.

Well I'm not particularly chatty at breakfast and can easily sit in

i am neither glum nor sullen. Just processing the start of the day and lost in my own thoughts for a while.

I'd find it very tiresome to have someone telling me how I 'should' be feeling or acting at any given time, tbh.

I'd leave her like a shot. She sounds nuts. You're in for a world of trouble if you stay with her.

@Megamooch I'm a complete grump but you don't sound annoying at all. Why not romanticise your life?

@GreyCarpet as I say, I'm quite grumpy, also very reserved and grew up quite shy. But I also grew up in a household with a depressed, angry father, whose moods dictated how the rest of us had to act and feel, and I get red flags from the OP. It's week 1 of living in their own place, it's not unreasonable for the gf to expect her partner to speak to her. I get the impression gf just wants a little romance. The text about going home, all OP had to say was 'on my way home, can't wait to see you and spend tonight in OUR flat!' and I bet she'd have been happy. Do you remember being 24? She shouldn't be telling OP how to feel, but I suspect that's a clumsy way of expressing her disappointment that OP isn't more enthusiastic.

This sounds like a classic anxious/avoidant attachment relationship.

This isn't just her. You sound detached and disconnected. You both need to work on this either together or alone.

Anxious attachers attract avoidance and vice versa so you will just keep repeating the pattern unless addressed.

Have a read of this:

www.rebeccavivashcounselling.com/post/cracking-the-code-anxious-and-avoidant-attachment-styles-demystified

There's loads of stuff on the interweb about it. There's a fantastic TED talk on it if you can find it.

Just to add the avoidant attachers are often VERY resistant to the fact that they may be part of the problem. But you not connecting is fuelling her anxiety, making her feel not safe and then amplifying all the behaviours you talk about in her that you don't like. Everything you've said that she's said just yells that she is needing connection with you. But she's just pushing you away as you feel criticised for not feeling right or not expressing it in the right way.. It's a horrible vicious circle.

My DH and I are anxious/avoidants and I could have written your post (or a very very similar one) a few years ago. But we have both worked really hard on it and are in a much better place. So it is possible but very hard to overcome. If you really want to make this one work, then couples therapy for both of you is probably a good idea.

She sounds absolutely fucking tiring, needy and high maintenance

I couldn't love like that OP

Christ, she sounds EXHAUSTING!!!

People who get pissy when others don't react in the way they think they should are the absolute worst.

You need to run, and fast.

She sounds like hard work.

She also sounds like she believes what she sees on social media.

You're not a good fit for each other. She's looking for a Disney relationship not a real world one.

That's not what hypervigilant means

While I agree she sounds exhausting I have to say you're setting your stall out early! You have to make some bloody effort at breakfast one week in. Buck up!

She does though sound exhausting and there is also a time to recognize you do not live to make others happy - that is on each of us.

Think you need to discuss expectations and your boundaries before week 2!

She sounds exhausting. I couldn’t be doing with that.

I used to be bothered about my husbands reactions. I wouldn't vocalise it but I did used to worry that he wasn't happy when I thought he would be.

Now I love that he's calm, steady and supportive. It's just the way he is with everything in life.

It's very clear that the OP does mean hyper vigilant: an enhanced state of sensory sensitivity. The ability to notice changes in the environment, in people and patterns.

She is constantly hyper attuned to what she perceives has him being unhappy.

I lived with a twat like that once. Constantly watching my every move and jumping on me if I didn't seem happy enough about something or whatever emotion he'd decided I wasn't showing enough.

Bin her off, she's coming across as hard work. This love island generation don't know how to live in the real world.

Is she actually literally jumping with joy? All the time?
If she is not, does she actually live normally but now and again look round the house and give a little shiver of excitement and grin and express how pleased she is to be there? Do you or could you do that - do you just not think that way so it never occurs to you to notice the flat/her/what is going on, out loud? Could you learn?

I also understand what @junecat is saying of their experience.

When I was younger I used to care far, far too much about the mood of my partner (day to day). I worried they were unhappy, that they didn't have EVERYTHING. I really did care and I wanted to fix it. I thought it was my job.

I am older now. Lived more. I am tired. I have a lot of responsibilities. I simply have moved by this phase. I do not have capacity to care so much. This is the hard thing about being young. I wish I had been more focussed on myself, on getting ahead of my own worries. It is not easy being in your twenties.

You can set your boundaries OP. I think your partner is enmeshed with you. And you don't like that. Do listen to what you want.

Yes, but I’m wondering whether the OP is, unbeknownst to him/herself in fact using it correctly — if they’re often grumpy and silent, it’s possible the girlfriend actually is hypervigilant as to their mood changes.

Exactly but I hate when someone else said she sounded nuts its not its how our brains are

Sounds similar to an ex colleague, soon as they get a bee in a bonnet then hell have no fury but as soon as you say x item they think its personal criticism even when they say no sugar coating and be honest etc,

People want to have conversation over breakfast? I would HATE that. The highlight of my morning is having my cup of tea and toast first thing with just my phone to browse. No need to engage my brain with other people’s demands, just quietly absorbing caffeine on my own for 10 minutes before I wake the kids up

@LifeofBrienne and is that how you felt one week into living with your first partner/husband..? I doubt it.

I'm fine in the morning whatever time I get up but come from a family that mostly are definitely not. Just how they all are. I just got on with my day and left them to it.

We're all different. You can't change those things about yourself you are either a morning person or you are not.