By _B4ND1T_ • Score: 1 • April 26, 2025 1:52 PM
I know, I know the title seems like it has a straight answer, but please read the whole thing.. this is my side of the story, but for proper judgement, please read the whole thing:
Hi, I(22m) have been in a relationship with my girlfriend(22f) for more than a year. We started out as best friends in college and I have been working since I was 19(which is uncommon in the country I am in), so it has been very clear that my career prospects have been my number 1 priority.
Background: We were best friends and gradually became very close. I used to tell her that I don't do relationships since I don't have a lot of time to give to someone in this segment of my life. She always told me that it will all work out, don't worry and stuff like that. Me out of all people have never been inclined towards romantic relationships. I love making the closest of friends and being friendly with everyone around me, but I never had any romantic intentions with any girl that I was friends with. However with my current girlfriend, I got very comfortable, she used to always understand if I was replying to her texts late or missing calls(I used to work 6 hours after college). Sometimes we would be on call all night and sometimes we wouldn't be able to talk at all.
She got transferred to my class and became friends with me and hence she naturally started being introduced to my friend group and everything. The thing was, it would never cause any issue when I used to "live my life" by playing basketball in college breaks or go out and party on weekends. She would always just be happy to be on call/text w me whenever we ended up doing that. She used to often ask me why am I not approaching XYZ or pursuing ABC even though they seemed interested in me. My answer was always that I don't have time to give to them. My days are college and nights are work, any free time I get, I spend it rejuvenating by doing something recreational(like basketball or playing with my dog) or partying my worries away. She always said that "oh it's not that big of a deal, you're passionate about your line of work, that just gives off a very nice vibe. Obviously you would be busy with work. When you get to know XYZ or ABC, you'll get to know if they are okay with that or not. If they are, and they understand that, which I feel every girl should, then great. If not, then meh, you can keep living your life like you do untill you find someone who does."
Now we got very close over months and one time I actually ended up asking her if she would be okay with someone being that busy in a relationship with her. She said that there is nothing more hot in a dude than burning Passion. She said she is busy with her own life, has a couple of friends and things she does that eat up her time and honestly she wouldn't be able to give a huge amount of time to a guy either. In fact she said that she prefers a relationship dynamic where there isn't clinginess and nagging.
Over some months we got closer and I really felt that we are doing amazing as friends and since I do get the feeling that she liked me and I started liking her more than a friend as well, so I asked her if she wanted to be with me, to which she said yes I made it pretty clear at the beginning of the relationship that my work was gonna keep going on and I may not have the time to go on dates with her every week, she was totally cool with that. She also told me about so many conversations she had withher sister and bestfriend about getting together with me. And life was good.
Current Situation: I moved to a different city for an internship which is gonna turn into a full time thing once my semester ends. She is gonna move to another country in a few months for higher education. We loved each other so much and didn't wanna let go that we agreed to give it out best shot to long distance.
But now, it's like she has completely changed. I get about 4-5 hours of time at home when I'm awake out of which, 1-2 hours go in chores and sometimes even more. She has this semester free as she isn't doing any internship or anything else so she practically waits the whole day to sit on a call with me. Somedays the work extends by a few hours and eventually leads to lesser free time. She has started getting irritable by the exact thing that she said she completely understands and even loves in a partner. I spend literally all my "free time" on call with her. I somedays dont even call my parents, who long to hear from me every day.. I don't do anything after work but chores and be on call with her. And I have told this to her so many times to reassure her that I do prioritize her.
We have been having fights every other day about how less time I have for her. She feels that if we talk 30 minutes on a particular day and then I have to go sleep, then I should stay up and extra 15-30 mins so that I can talk to her. But the issue is if I do that, my already sensitive sleep schedule gets messed up and I am not able to give it my all at work. Sure I can do that every once in a while, but if I do that every single day, then what's the point of having a "bedtime" at all. I have told her multiple times that I cannot go to work like that and start getting sick if I don't get enough sleep. But she asks me to extend my bedtime by 15-30 mins every single day no matter how long we have been on a call.
I totally understand that long distance relationships are not a cakewalk, I understand her part of it completely. And try to have as functional conversations as possible. However whenever I tell her that I want to sleep, it ends up in a fight and instead of sleeping at 11PM, I end up sleeping around 2:30-3:00AM which totally messes up my whole week. Sometimes I have to beg her to let me sleep and we can continue talking the next day, but she just doesn't ever let me go to sleep and I can't bring myself to be rude and cut the call like that.
I was getting mentally boxed in because its been just work and home for the past few months and expressed that I would love to join a gym or find a basketball court. She said she is my biggest cheerleader and would love it if I find a basketball court near me. When I told her that if I do anything after my work hours, we would not be able to have longer chats because I would come home even late and after getting my chores done, it would be close to time to sleep. She said she totally supports me if that will help me recreate and be more mentally and physically healthy and we would talk whenever I get time. So I went ahead and did that one day since my physical abilities have been diminishing recently. I came home, took a shower, ate food while washing and drying clothes. It got to around 10:30. We got on a call and talked for half an hour, then since I was physically drained out as well as had work the next day, I told her I had to sleep. To which she said, "but we haven't even talked properly". I told her I really wanted to know what she was planning to tell me and had stories to share myself, but I needed to sleep desparately since I was completely exhausted, so we can continue tomorrow.
After hearing that, she got annoyed and said that she assumed that if I cut out "her time" to play basketball, I would cut out time from my sleep schedule or something and give it to her. I told her that I was perfectly clear with my sleep time not budging and I did go ahead and join basketball just because she said it would be fine with talking less on some days. This got blown up into a fight with her telling me that if this keeps up then I would never have time for her and I would never prioritize her and I get time out for everything in the world except her...
I have gotten the earlier feeling back that relationships aren't for me since I don't have time to give to another person every single day. I told her that somedays I might just come home late and go sleep early, but I would probably stay up late the next day and we talk for longer that day, but she says it's important to her that we are on a video call every single day and tell each other exactly what happened in our day. She says she needs it in a relationship. However, when we do go ahead and do that every single day, we stop talking about things larger than our life.. things which we used to talk about earlier. Things which didn't impact us on the daily, but were fascinating or just intellectually immersive. Long story short, since I HAVE to call her every single day and be on a call and listen to her tell me about her day in detail and then account for my day, it has started feeling like a task, which I have to get done with and only then I will be allowed to sleep.
I promised her that I would definitely stay up longer than 11 if she really needs me, like when she gets anxiety/panic attacks or is crying or something along those lines and made it very clear that I will be there for her if any issue arises. But she still pushes my sleep schedule every single day. I am only able to get sleep during the weekends and too get messed up sometimes when we are fighting all night.
I have told her all these things very transparently because we have a very communicative relationship to which she said that I don't get her, I don't care about her feelings and she would rather not tell me about her feelings again since it's always gonna end up in a fight. The background to THAT is the fact the she has been complaining about these things non stop for the past three months and I have been addressed every problem she brings up. But after doing that every other day and sleeping less than optimal, I have been getting lousy and more and more interested in resting and sleeping, which she presumes as me turning every feeling she tells me into a fight and not loving her like I did earlier. This is after me addressing all the issues AND never even raising my voice or being rude even when she does become rude.
So.... Am I being unreasonable in this relationship? Am I the problem? Should I be cutting out on sleep to chat with her all ngiht every other day? I feel like I am cheating her out of an ideal relationship and just wasting her time by being attached to her. We have different backgrounds and I understand it's normal to not have a complete sync on everything in life, but it just feels like this is a totally different person than who I got into a relationship with and I am freaking out since I don't know how to accomodate it all in my life.
Tldr: 22f said she was cool with and loved the fact that I had work going on in my life and made me(22m) comfortable enough to get into a relationship. Now because I'm staying alone and have a job, having less time for her because I have to sleep on time to get up early has become a problem causing almost-daily fights.
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