Should I be worried about my girlfriend's feelings

Hi Matteo, 

It sounds like you are seeing some things in your girlfriend' s behavior are not sitting quite right with you and are bringing up some concerns. Often our "gut feelings" pick up on things that we may or may not pick up on consciously and offer us information, be it non-specific on a certain situation. It sounds like this may be the case with some of the patterns that you are seeing in your current relationship.

When we look at what makes a healthy relationship, there are a lot of factors that go into it. For example, often we talk about respect but don't necessarily clarify what that means. We can disagree with another person and still show respect. We do so by listening non-judgmentally to the other person regardless of our thoughts. Being emotionally affirming and understanding can also happen whether we agree or disagree with someone as can valuing the other person's opinion. 

Honesty and accountability are also important hallmarks of a healthy relationship. Accepting responsibility for ourselves and admitting when we are wrong is something that is important not just in intimate partner relationships. We are all humans who are imperfect. Mistakes will happen. The question is what do we choose to do after a mistake or bad decision occurs. This is where communicating openly and truthfully even when it's hard comes into play. 

Non threatening behavior, or safety is another very important aspect of a healthy relationship. Often we may feel physically safe but do not feel safe emotionally or spiritually. When we don't feel safe in talking and expressing ourselves freely this is a sign that we may be in a situation that feels unsafe.

Safety often comes from a place of mutual trust and support. When a partner supports our goals in life this can be a very powerful motivator. In a healthy relationship our partner will also respect our right to our own feelings, friends, activities, and opinions. Whether our partner takes part in these things with us or feels differently, in a healthy relationship they will still respect us and our perspective.

It sounds like there is a difference in expectation in your current relationship between what your partner expects of you and what she is willing to give in return. For some couples this type of arrangement may work, but in order for it to work, extensive conversation and negotiation around this must take place so that both understand what they are consenting to. 

For example, perhaps one person in the relationship prefers to be out of the spotlight because of their career or personal preferences while the other really likes posting on social media. In a healthy relationship a conversation would take place around this and boundaries that both people feel comfortable with would be established. Perhaps the person who likes using social media continues to post taking extra care to not tag their partner or post images that include their partner unless the other explicitly states that they are comfortable. This scenario is purely for an example, as I realize that your situation is different. If you feel comfortable/safe enough to have a conversation around her requests with social media, perhaps this is a good topic to explore and iron out what you each need and consent (and also do not consent) to.

A word about feelings. The feelings that we have are ours and ours alone and no else has the power to tell us how we should feel. Our feelings are valid 100% of the time. In fact we might experience a very similar situation as another person yet we end up having very different feelings about it. Here's the concept that can sometimes be a bit hard to internalize in such a situation; we can have opposing feelings about something and yet both be valid in our feelings. When it comes to feelings there is no "right" or "wrong" way to feel about something. Think of our brains as supercomputers that are using pre-built code to analyze all of our experiences. The code that we are "running on" is as unique as we are with no people's "code" being the same. That means that the output (our feelings) are valid because they are unique to our "code".

Communication is another tricky and difficult yet essential piece to interacting with other people. Until we ask a person "what are your thoughts about _____" we actually don't know what they are thinking. We might be able to come up with some pretty good guesses based on our past interactions and context clues, but these are guesses that we are filling in missing information on. It is this very filling in of the information that often leads us down a road that proves to be inaccurate or not the best on more occasions than we would care to think.

What is the overall communication between yourself and your partner like? When you get into an argument do you both shout and bring up a whole list of things that you are displeased with only to shut down and storm away as things get more heated? Or are you able to have calm conversations in which each person states what their needs are while the other person listens. If things get heated are you able to take a pause and then revisit the conversation at a later time using "I" statements?

Having a good relationship with another person takes working on both ourselves and together as a unit. Ultimately, despite our best efforts, we may come to realize that a particular person is not a good match for us and decide to part ways. If that happens, it's important to remember that does not mean that either of us are bad people or that we failed. It simply means that our "stuff" didn't happen to go together with another person's "stuff". We will meet people in our lives in which our "stuff" works with theirs and others in which our "stuff" doesn't work. A simple example, if I am an animal lover and meet someone who is highly allergic, our "stuff" simply doesn't go together.

Hope this helps with exploring your current relationship situation