Throwaway891011

This is a fair point I’m aware of, she’s from Romania. Her previous relationships were with more… culturally familiar partners, but as I mentioned she dealt with infidelity (among other things) in those and mentioned when we first started dating that my demeanor was a refreshing change In the context of this I could understand a strong aversion for allowing my mother to treat us to a meal - however, it didn’t actually even happen, and I don’t think holding a grudge for months over an incident like that is something that has a cultural explanation. Perhaps there were similar events in the past where I wasn’t aware I caused offense (and she didn’t say anything) culminating here, but I’m not exactly recalling too many examples where that could really apply. Holding on to her pride feels like the right words

Thanks all for the feedback - just having outside perspective is helpful. Both my partner and I have had past relationships where we were cheated on, I don’t think she would do this and it doesn’t read that way to me from my experience. Mental issues seems to fit much more - she grew up in a very troubled part of the world and in the past has shared with me some childhood experiences which I have to imagine could follow a person their whole life. There is some cultural differences to contend with too - it’s very much the expectation over there that the children take care of the parents. And she certainly does financially, which I found admirable at first because they do need the help. She does take it almost to an extreme though it seems like - to the point where it causes conflict with her older sister at times, although I don’t have a clear window into that with the language difference. Combination of those two factors swirled in with her high strung nature feel like is what the source of all this grief over who pays for what when my parents are involved - though where the line is with cultural differences and mental issues has been hard for me to tell. I can understand it in a way and I can’t fault her for experiences causing some kind of long term psychological harm, but I know it’s not something I can fix either. It does put me in the position of opening a conversation with her about this, as we haven’t done too much talking since last night when she said she doesn’t want to be involved with family gatherings anymore; I don’t want to throw in the towel on the relationship without first trying to meet a middle ground with her. My hope would be that she would be able to separate cultural norms from whatever emotional issues she’s experiencing, acknowledge it can’t go on like it has, and get some kind of commitment that there will be an attempt to improve though we would possibly need some kind of professional help. Splitting up would be pretty disastrous in social ways, but truly - we’re crammed into this tiny apartment because it’d be quite a financial hardship to move out

Just to preface this, I’m (male) an easy going person who generally prefers to sidestep conflict, my partner (female) is pretty high strung/ high stress and quick to anger. We’ve been together 5 years through highs and lows - job changes, spent quarantine together in a studio apt <500 sq ft, Ukraine conflict (she’s from Eastern Europe), etc. At first our personalities complemented each other well, she kept me from feeling stuck in a rut and I kept her grounded and feeling too stuck in her own head. Last January, my mother came in town to visit us as travel during the holidays themselves is prohibitively expensive. My partner insists all parts of my mom’s visit should be paid for by me - that’s fine. My mom herself finds it objectionable, my partner and I exist paycheck to paycheck and my mom makes well into 6 figures and would like to treat us. My mom would attempt to try and pay for things (dinner, museum tickets etc) before I could get the check, which is where the conflict started with my partner We go out to dinner and sit at a booth, my partner and mother are sitting across from each other and I’m next to my partner and diagonal from my mother. Check comes and as the waitress was closer to my mom’s/ partner’s end of the booth, my mom has first grab at. Partner wrests it out of my mom’s hands and gives it to me and says to put it on our shared cc. I did as she asked and as we were leaving my mom thanks me for dinner. Partner doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the night and the next morning she’s bawling. I’m racking my brain asking her what I did that made her so upset, which kinda made it worse as she thought I should already know. She finally explains that I was about to just let my mom pay for dinner if she didn’t intervene, and made her look bad by not including her when my mom thanked me for dinner since it was on our joint cc. I apologize profusely, explain I didn’t really have an opportunity to try and pay the check before she grabbed it (and plan was to pretend to go to the bathroom and give the waitress my cc before she came back and picked up my mom’s), and I try to make it right. She refuses to spend any more time with my mom and I, so I explain this to my confused mother and she texts my partner thank you, acknowledging she knows that the dinner was paid for by both of us. It takes days for my partner to start speaking to me again, and I still don’t understand why it upset her to that degree Fast forward to now - my partner has been cool and distanced ever since early January. I had hoped time and perspective (her reaction was a tipping point from other built up stress that had nothing to do with me?) would earn some forgiveness, but really it’s just further hampered our communication. I shared that I got a work promotion with her and she laughed at it, and I’m afraid to share normal day to day stuff with her anymore because I don’t know what seemingly innocent thing is going to set her off. Then she complains that she has to pry any conversation out of me. I try to imagine myself in her shoes when something comes up that gets her upset, and most of the time my conclusion is I wouldn’t even notice, much less get hugely worked up about it. My sister is planning a get together with my mom for Mother’s Day, which I invited my partner to, and she said she’s still not over what happened in January and doesn’t want to be involved with family things anymore, and she was annoyed that I was upset with hearing this. Communication is clearly a problem (there’s no language barrier btw) but I’m kind of adverse to just sitting down and trying to put more words to all of this with her. I feel like I’m tripping over myself to not upset her, always treat her the way I would want to be treated and I still manage to step on landmines. Not to mention I’m not an assertive person and suck at these types of conversations, I feel like I’d try to go into this as openly as I could and she would walk all over me with things she’s already made up her mind on and nothing would get accomplished - it’d just be an invitation to allow her to tell me all my faults and get all worked up again. I physically saw my parents split up over a single disagreement about a renovation dumpster (of all things) so that experience does make me extremely hesitant to go into these discussions, as I feel like it’s lighting the fuse to blow up the relationship. I love her and want to fix this relationship but the conversation to start this feels entirely unapproachable and she treats me like I’m morally questionable. There’s never been any question of infidelity or anything like that, we definitely don’t live in the house/ drive the car/ work at the job my mommy got for me etc, and I read the other way more serious issues other people have here and are patching up relationships with - I feel like I’m in the same level of peril over a $80 restaurant check.