I'm 33(M) Virgo, and my fiancee 30(F) Scorpio and have been together for over 3 years. We had a serious argument yesterday and almost broke up. We've had arguments before where it could be weeks or months in between each. Each argument has incremental damage that adds to reasons for breakup, where old unresolved issues recur and get brought up. We have a newborn daughter around 6 months old, and have purchased a home together at the start of the year (We lived together for about 2 years rented prior). We only argued a handful of times during pregnancy, but one of them was quite serious, and it was during lockdown, just like yesterday.
I'm an ambitious, practical and logical guy that is focused on growth and results, and she is a kind, caring girl who values her closest relationships and friends dearly. Family is both important to us. We would both agree that we are not the most compatible personalities, and our hobbies are somewhat dissimilar. She likes watching programs to do with relationship dynamics for example, and I would prefer study finances, gaming, or play racket sports. We try to find common ground where she would watch me play video games or do gym together, but its not my primary choice for entertainment. I've tried repeatedly to look for more things we could be involved with, or understand her interests better so I could contribute and help her grow too, but perhaps its not the type of help she needs as her focus is not technical/scientific, but on people and relationships which is probably one of my weaker subjects.
I find myself doing a lot in the house, and I generally prefer it clean so this would mean minor things like doing dishes - I would wash several times a day including other people's mess and she is more tolerable with messes so maybe do it once a day and let it pile up a bit. This has made me realise that I'm much more conscientious/picky about this issue than her. Others may say its a small issue and stop looking for problems where there are none, whereas I see it as when you go to a toilet, then you would want to find it clean, so you leave it clean for others. For the most part, I try to just shut up and do everything if I'm not ok with it, and my fiancee is like that too when she has small issues about us. She does the clothes wash, and some cleaning we share, and now takes care of our daughter during the day, and return to work fully in New Year. She finds it difficult to sleep during the day, so I take all the night shifts and sometimes end up sleeping only at about 4am before work start around 9 - 10am. Overall, I feel like there is an imbalance in the number of duties I perform; preparing our financial future, taking care of the entire mortgage process/logistics, buying/getting all the furniture for our new flat and for the baby, while doing full time work, helping with taking care of child during day as we both WFH, I get all the groceries, and for the most part I do all the cooking too. I would say it is about 70:30 ratio, but maybe my partner would disagree and say its closer to 50:50. This has led to arguments.
Other issues include sex; we used to be quite active, but between pregnancy, newborn, and post partum depression, we haven't done anything intimate in 9 months or more, and we have been sleeping separate rooms so that we could at least get some continuous sleep without us having to both be woken up for feeding the baby. Communication; I feel like we both have problems with letting small issues build up until it leads to argument...sometimes it doesn't feel like it's worth bringing up to cause an argument, but emotionally it adds up to some aggravation. I will admit that I'm not the most patient/caring towards emotional issues, and this has become a central issue that clashes with my need to solve the problem rather than trying to listen and be supportive. My partner can be quite hormonal, and it has taken some time for me to get used to PCOS and endometriosis. No doubt that she would be much more active/confident/energetic had she not had these health problems, but because I've never had these things and my own personality, my responses would be less sensitive. I find the frequency of dealing with emotional problems problematic as my suggestions either don't work and I would much rather get on with my own goals that are tangible and solvable. I deterred this responsibility because I felt like it was her responsibility to become more emotionally stable, and as a result I've only made it worse. She has also been through some traumatic incidents with rape and sexual abuse...and being me, I made the mistake of initially trying to 'solve the problem'; "don't think about it", "get over it", "meditation", "control your emotions", to name some of my mistakes/bad advice that I thought would help. Of course, none of these work for her, where it may work for me. I can be very critical which is another source of issue, because I want her to improve, and it's how I improve when I do something wrong. The outcome is that she withdraws and doesn't feel confident in supporting me or giving her opinions anymore at the risk of being criticised. She feels devalued for the same reason, because I look so hard for facts and evidence and compare it against my world view and then basically refute it because it's not up to my standard. She understands I'm just trying to help her improve, but at times she feels like I'm just trying to change her.
All of these issues in combination has led the relationship down a difficult road; incompatibility, communication issues, patience, lacking emotional support, intimacy lacking etc. She doesn't feel valued, and feels that she can't contribute properly to my life because she doesn't have the technical knowledge or interest to help me pursue my life goals. Similarly, due to the way I've handled her past traumatic experiences, it's rare that she would want to tell me now about her current emotional issues, and would rather confide in her friend or family member. It makes it difficult for me to practice my listening skills and I even scheduled it to do this on a daily basis, but ultimately other things became a priority i.e. work/caring for our child etc., and didn't follow through properly.
She used to be the sunshine of people's lives, and now I've made her a bit cynical and much less positive, and she is sad about this. She loves me and wanted to make this work, but our argument got me so heated, I told her we should probably go our separate ways. I realise that I have some anger issues here as well due to my upbringing with being physical beaten as a child, shouted at, bullied in school and witnessing my dad treating my mum poorly etc., but I feel like that is something linked and a separate topic, which I am working on myself. It does however make me a bit more cold when I have arguments with people instead of empathetic which definitely doesn't help.
We had a 4hr conversation since, and I've mapped out a bunch of things to focus on, but we both understand, that if it requires extra work, and its not natural for both of us then it's difficult to keep the habit up.
How should I approach this going forward knowing that a lot of these issues won't be resolved overnight and requires long term practice on a weekly basis? I am of the belief that if both partners are serious enough and committed enough, then there is always a way. Advice appreciated.
I'm 33(M) Virgo, and my fiancee 30(F) Scorpio and have been together for over 3 years. We had a serious argument yesterday and almost broke up. We've had arguments before where it could be weeks or months in between each. Each argument has incremental damage that adds to reasons for breakup, where old unresolved issues recur and get brought up. We have a newborn daughter around 6 months old, and have purchased a home together at the start of the year (We lived together for about 2 years rented prior). We only argued a handful of times during pregnancy, but one of them was quite serious, and it was during lockdown, just like yesterday.I'm an ambitious, practical and logical guy that is focused on growth and results, and she is a kind, caring girl who values her closest relationships and friends dearly. Family is both important to us. We would both agree that we are not the most compatible personalities, and our hobbies are somewhat dissimilar. She likes watching programs to do with relationship dynamics for example, and I would prefer study finances, gaming, or play racket sports. We try to find common ground where she would watch me play video games or do gym together, but its not my primary choice for entertainment. I've tried repeatedly to look for more things we could be involved with, or understand her interests better so I could contribute and help her grow too, but perhaps its not the type of help she needs as her focus is not technical/scientific, but on people and relationships which is probably one of my weaker subjects.I find myself doing a lot in the house, and I generally prefer it clean so this would mean minor things like doing dishes - I would wash several times a day including other people's mess and she is more tolerable with messes so maybe do it once a day and let it pile up a bit. This has made me realise that I'm much more conscientious/picky about this issue than her. Others may say its a small issue and stop looking for problems where there are none, whereas I see it as when you go to a toilet, then you would want to find it clean, so you leave it clean for others. For the most part, I try to just shut up and do everything if I'm not ok with it, and my fiancee is like that too when she has small issues about us. She does the clothes wash, and some cleaning we share, and now takes care of our daughter during the day, and return to work fully in New Year. She finds it difficult to sleep during the day, so I take all the night shifts and sometimes end up sleeping only at about 4am before work start around 9 - 10am. Overall, I feel like there is an imbalance in the number of duties I perform; preparing our financial future, taking care of the entire mortgage process/logistics, buying/getting all the furniture for our new flat and for the baby, while doing full time work, helping with taking care of child during day as we both WFH, I get all the groceries, and for the most part I do all the cooking too. I would say it is about 70:30 ratio, but maybe my partner would disagree and say its closer to 50:50. This has led to arguments.Other issues include sex; we used to be quite active, but between pregnancy, newborn, and post partum depression, we haven't done anything intimate in 9 months or more, and we have been sleeping separate rooms so that we could at least get some continuous sleep without us having to both be woken up for feeding the baby. Communication; I feel like we both have problems with letting small issues build up until it leads to argument...sometimes it doesn't feel like it's worth bringing up to cause an argument, but emotionally it adds up to some aggravation. I will admit that I'm not the most patient/caring towards emotional issues, and this has become a central issue that clashes with my need to solve the problem rather than trying to listen and be supportive. My partner can be quite hormonal, and it has taken some time for me to get used to PCOS and endometriosis. No doubt that she would be much more active/confident/energetic had she not had these health problems, but because I've never had these things and my own personality, my responses would be less sensitive. I find the frequency of dealing with emotional problems problematic as my suggestions either don't work and I would much rather get on with my own goals that are tangible and solvable. I deterred this responsibility because I felt like it was her responsibility to become more emotionally stable, and as a result I've only made it worse. She has also been through some traumatic incidents with rape and sexual abuse...and being me, I made the mistake of initially trying to 'solve the problem'; "don't think about it", "get over it", "meditation", "control your emotions", to name some of my mistakes/bad advice that I thought would help. Of course, none of these work for her, where it may work for me. I can be very critical which is another source of issue, because I want her to improve, and it's how I improve when I do something wrong. The outcome is that she withdraws and doesn't feel confident in supporting me or giving her opinions anymore at the risk of being criticised. She feels devalued for the same reason, because I look so hard for facts and evidence and compare it against my world view and then basically refute it because it's not up to my standard. She understands I'm just trying to help her improve, but at times she feels like I'm just trying to change her.All of these issues in combination has led the relationship down a difficult road; incompatibility, communication issues, patience, lacking emotional support, intimacy lacking etc. She doesn't feel valued, and feels that she can't contribute properly to my life because she doesn't have the technical knowledge or interest to help me pursue my life goals. Similarly, due to the way I've handled her past traumatic experiences, it's rare that she would want to tell me now about her current emotional issues, and would rather confide in her friend or family member. It makes it difficult for me to practice my listening skills and I even scheduled it to do this on a daily basis, but ultimately other things became a priority i.e. work/caring for our child etc., and didn't follow through properly.She used to be the sunshine of people's lives, and now I've made her a bit cynical and much less positive, and she is sad about this. She loves me and wanted to make this work, but our argument got me so heated, I told her we should probably go our separate ways. I realise that I have some anger issues here as well due to my upbringing with being physical beaten as a child, shouted at, bullied in school and witnessing my dad treating my mum poorly etc., but I feel like that is something linked and a separate topic, which I am working on myself. It does however make me a bit more cold when I have arguments with people instead of empathetic which definitely doesn't help.We had a 4hr conversation since, and I've mapped out a bunch of things to focus on, but we both understand, that if it requires extra work, and its not natural for both of us then it's difficult to keep the habit up.How should I approach this going forward knowing that a lot of these issues won't be resolved overnight and requires long term practice on a weekly basis? I am of the belief that if both partners are serious enough and committed enough, then there is always a way. Advice appreciated. https://ift.tt/eA8V8J https://ift.tt/3mfIeYu
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