Thinking about telling my girlfriend about what I've been going through. I was gearing up to do that before she got really mad at me, and now I'm not sure. I don't trust her completely and that has always been a problem.
Sometimes I have thought that she would not side with me about my abuse history. This is a longstanding worry of mine- that she will turn against me and not support me. It's hard for me to assess evidence for or against. On the one hand, she usually does side with authority. But on the other she has been really gentle and empathetic with me sometimes. It doesn't feel consistent or reliable.
Our communication dynamics are a problem anyway. When she gets overwhelmed she says mean things, makes rash decisions and leaves it to me to repair the conflict. I haven't done that this time (on purpose, I'm fighting the urge to jump in and try to talk it out). I don't really have the energy to baby her about a lack of emotional regulation any more. I think I've enabled her never learning that by being too understanding about it, and too willing to just be grateful she's out of the bad mood and move on without talking about it. That is the problem in my family of origin too. That might makes right and we never talk about it. I don't want to carry this pattern (walking on eggshells) into a new family and pass it on unchanged. I really don't want to do that. Even if I did, I recognise that it's making me sick.
So, I think I'm recognising that I will not tell her until we have worked on our communication and conflict dynamics and I can be reasonably sure she will support me, and never say what I've told her back to me to be mean
Her having OCD means she can be really intense about household things sometimes. She really wants to lay down the rules and control things. This really aggravates my democratic instincts and hatred of being told what to do. I didn't realise how entrenched she was in those patterns until she came to visit me and had to accept a different set of household norms. I didn't realise that was going to be such a big deal for her. I feel humiliated that we argued so much about the heating and I had to tell her, I can't afford both electricity and heat this week. It feels unjust that she couldn't accept that wasn't negotiable, that I literally do not have money for it. Her lack of ability to accept that it was a reality I could not change really frustrated me. It brought home how much more I am struggling. But she was blaming me for how it affected her, without any concern for how it affected me to not be able to afford these things but also to be humiliated by having that drawn attention to.
