Confused and saving the relationship

[Computer Geek]

I have been with a girl for about 1 year now in a somewhat long distance relationship (2h drive apart). We havn't seen each other much the last two months due to a combination of our studies at the end of semester study/work madness and because she left to visit her home abroad for 1 month. During that time we have been texting/calling, though the last 2 weeks I was not good at keeping up with consistent calling due to the 13h time zone difference we have had with each other and the relatively busy times, including my work and her going on a mini-trip and medical tests.

 

She told me about 2 weeks ago that she went for a full medical because she hasn't been feeling right since October and wanted to get checked out. The results showed that something wasn't right and that she needed further tests to determine the cause. About 1 week ago, and a few days before she was scheduled to return from her 1 month trip, she got the results back which said she had something wrong with her ovary (once I see her and get to talk with her in more detail I'll figure out exactly what was meant since she didn't know how to translate it well). The doctor explained that she may need to have a baby as soon as possible since treatments could stop her from being able to conceive.

 

I talked with her today and it was clear to me she was in doubt of our relationship. She no longer refers to me with nicknames, doesn't reciprocate things she always used to, and expressed that she thinks we are not ready for a baby but she wants to have a baby soon. We are both students, I'm 29, she is 27, and I will be finishing my Masters within the next month or two while she still has at least 1 year left in her PhD. One comment she made to me was that she felt I am not ready to support her, and used the fact that I didn't call her much in the last 2 weeks on top of the concern that we are still both students. She said she wants to be alone to think though we will talk again tomorrow after I am done with work.

 

How should I handle this? I love her more than anything and don't want to lose her. I admit that it was a mistake that I didn't call her as much as I should have in the last two weeks, which may be weighing heavily on her mind. I've already tried to ease her mind about the fact that I am a student soon to graduate and find a job and that I am very sorry for hurting our relationship by not calling as much as I should have recently. Is it time to give her space?

[brianna1]

In my opinion, it is NOT the time to give her space. Just the opposite. She just received some very unsettling news about her health and her biological clock. Sometimes when people are confronting personal challenges like this, they push the people closest to them away when really they want to pull them closer. If you hadn't contacted her much the past two weeks, even after she received this disturbing news and might have needed to talk to you, that would certainly give her reason to be upset and doubt your support. I think the best thing that you can do is try to contact her and tell her how much you love her and want to support her. Speaking as a woman around the same age as your girlfriend, I would bet good money that she is upset about your lack of support and that the best thing you could do would be to shower her with as much love as possible.

[Computer Geek]

Thank you brianna, I am thinking I will make the 2h drive today after work in order to see her in person (she lives and studies in another city) and take her out to dinner while we talk about her health and future. I was originally going to wait until this weekend but my instincts tell me that this is something we need to do sooner rather than later. Last night after I made my post here I sent her an email with all my thoughts about how much I love her and the time we have had together, as well as my wishes to be with her through thick and thin.

[Computer Geek]

I just wanted to update this with the outcome. After telling her my feelings and nearly 2 weeks of silence from her we finally met yesterday after I insisted that I wanted to meet in person. We talked about a lot of things, but going into it I knew that the relationship was over and that's how I approached it. My goal was to get closure and to understand why the relationship was ending.

 

She gave a bunch of excuses but I ultimately got her to talk about the core issues rather than the excuses. In the end I walked away from the final meeting with her understanding where things went wrong, and no matter how much she tried to put the blame on me, I realized that it was a clear case of breakdown in communication in which both parties share the blame. Her medical diagnosis was something she already suspected for a long time because it runs in the family, and it doesn't actually change the way she lives. It is definitely something on her mind, but she still has the freedom when to choose to have a child and the condition doesn't affect her in any way different than she has been living for the last 10 years.

 

What it all boils down to is she no longer loves me, and that is all that matters. The reasons why all stem from the lack of communication. It sucks that it is over, but it seems that it was truly not meant to be if we didn't even have the basics down, which is trust that we can talk to each other about our relationship issues. Time to heal...

[Ms Darcy]

Sorry to hear the conclusion, but it was not a surprise. What country is she from, by the way? I get the sense there was a cultural gap between you as well.

[Computer Geek]

She is from China, specifically Beijing. It is interesting that you bring up culture difference as the first thing she said when we talked was that she decided after her studies she would be moving back home after her studies are finished. She wants to do this because she thinks she is better off with a traditional family than one with a foreigner. We talked about this more and after talking to her she realized that it wasn't actually the culture difference that was the problem, it was that we didn't talk about these misunderstandings when they came up.

 

One example given was that during the Olympics we were watching and cheering on TV together for Canada/China and a few times I would talk about the politics involved in the games and the comments made from different cultures. I made reference to a comment from an American TV program that said that the Chinese were "Robots who are extremely efficient and lack emotion", but I made the reference as a mocking joke of the ignorance of that program and definitely not something I believed.

 

This apparently made her genuinely upset and I had no idea because she was playfully joking with me at the time, much like her usual self, and SHE even made use of that as joke in later conversations (calling Chinese robots). The thing is, she never talked to me about this, not once did she mention it to me as something she felt was disrespectful. I only found out about this at the final meeting.

 

One sticking point was also that there were a few weeks that I was unable to make the trip to see her because I had just hurt my knee (a torn meniscus) or I was extremely busy and had deadlines to meet. She told me at the final meeting that she was upset when I didn't call her every single day during those weekends. I told her I understand that but she had every opportunity to make a trip to see me in my city instead, but she didn't. Her response was that I never asked her to, to which I responded "do I have to ask you to see me?" At the beginning of the relationship it was an automatic thing, if I couldn't go to her she would come to me as a compromise, but later in the relationship she didn't make any effort.

 

Anyway, that's some of what was said.

[Ms Darcy]

Yeah, you could sense a cultural difference there. Sorry this all happened.

[faerietale]

First off, I am sorry that this happened to you. You sound like a genuine guy.

 

Ok, I don't even know where to start but I am angry for you. It's not fair of her to not want to be in this relationship and instead of being upfront, she had to go make excuses and placed the blame on you. Clearly, you do care for her because you realized what you did wrong (I don't think you did anything wrong) and you made the effort to talk to her in person because you respected her and cared enough about her to do so.

[Computer Geek]

Thank you faerietale, you hit the nail on the head as far as I wanted things. She only finally responded to me when I sent her a message saying that I would be coming to see her no matter what, and that I hope she would find it in her heart to talk to me. She ended up responding to me saying she would travel to my city to see me. As a token of gratitude I even gave her money to pay for the trip she had to make (without her asking) when I was saying my final goodbye. She was totally dumbfounded as to why I would do that and I only said one thing in response "It's about respect and fairness."

 

Going into that meeting I also knew that it was going to be over so I brought some of her things to give to her (along with that money). She never thought to bring any of my stuff even though she was ending the relationship, and even though she knew it's quite possible I wouldn't see her again. As a goodbye I hugged her, shook her hand and said "it has been a pleasure" and left but during all of that she seemed like I was crazy to be doing/saying things like that. So in a way I kind of wonder if she even knows what respect is.

[Computer Geek]

Just a final update to this, found out today she left me for someone else and that they probably were seeing each other for a few months before. My heart is shattered and has set me completely back to square one. I'm so sad and hurt that someone I thought I could trust and love would lie to me and say all the things she did, go through all the things we did together, only to end things in such a terrible way. This feeling is unbearable and all of that nonsense about culture, medical problem, deciding to move back home, and communication is a complete lie. She was seeing someone else.