>@ICËJ KLIE<; @EKF 8 JGP
MY girlfriend can never give a straight answer to any question.
She is evasive and is vague about her finances and her past. My brother has already labelled her “tricky” and I think he’s right.
What also annoys me is that she likes to play mind games. She tries to trap me and trip me up.
At the moment she’s jealous of a perfectly innocent working relationship I have with a female colleague.
She thinks we’re having a sexual affair, which we are not.
Twice now I’ve caught her sitting in her car outside my work trying to spy on me.
A bit back I had to stay overnight in another town and she arrived at my hotel at 11pm with a suspicious look on her face.
Boring
She must have been devastated to find me having a boring dinner with two male suppliers.
Add to that the fact that she loves to ask me questions that she knows will provoke a row.
Have I written a will yet? Have I remortgaged the flat? Do I have any plans to redecorate the whole place next weekend?
I can’t win with her. I try to be loving and romantic, but she invariably throws my attempts back in my face.
For our anniversary I booked a top hotel, but the room was too small and she felt cold.
To make up for it I booked us into a fashionable restaurant, but the table was facing the wrong way and her starter was horrible.
Any time I try to make love to her she tells me that I’ve put on weight or my teeth need to be professionally cleaned.
I joke that she gargles with acid – how else can she be so cutting and so abrasive all of the time?
JANE SAYS: If your girlfriend is desperately unhappy in this relationship and if she finds you disappointing and embarrassing she needs to stop moaning and start talking about the future.
What you can’t do is continue to tear each other apart.
Sit her down and ask her outright if she’s actually interested in spending any more time in your company. OK, so you’re not perfect, but you’re not nasty or deliberately cruel either.
You have tried to do some nice things for her in recent times.
You’re sorry that the hotel and the restaurant didn’t work out, but is that really such a big deal in the whole plan of things?
The problem is that your girlfriend can’t simply be allowed to carry on insulting and demoralising you.
If she has particular issues with your behaviour, then suggest she airs them so that you can strive to be a better partner in future. But she also has to hear that she’s by no means perfect either.
What is she going to do to improve this miserable situation, because you can’t continue to be picked on and bullied for much longer?
Sadly, if you and she admit that you’re never going to make the other happy, and you realise that your best days are probably behind you, then you both have to wake up and start thinking about where you both go from here.