Girlfriend indecisive and oversensitive. Driving me crazy!

[lilwing]

My girlfriend and I have been together for 2 years, we are in our twenties and in an LDR. I'm from USA, she is not. We've spent about 3 out of 21 months together during our relationship and I'll be going to visit her this Summer from June 4 - August 31. We spend most of our time communicating through MSN, emails, and Skype. I'm in my last year of university studying to become a teacher, she graduated 1 year ago and is currently a high school English teacher. I am thinking about moving our relationship to the next step by giving her an engagement ring and proposing, though we wouldn't get married for another 1-2 years. I have a ring already, but I am not sure if we are ready for that yet.

 

My girlfriend admits to being really sensitive and I feel that she is overly sensitive and she overreacts often. I also feel that she is very indecisive and both of these qualities about her are causing me a lot of grief and frustration. I try to communicate with her about my feelings, but I feel like she doesn't understand me very well.

 

Our current hassle is about where to go for her vacation this Summer. She wants to travel abroad and go to either Spain, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, or Bulgaria. She agreed to pay for the vacation since I spent the same amount on a plane ticket just to come see her. We've been looking at hotels since early April. Folks, I can tell you, I've never spent this much time on any decision in my entire life and it's driving me crazy because it's over something rather trivial like vacation. We have made a 'finalized' decision, 6 times, and she couldn't stick to any of those decisions and I tried to remain adamant. Right now, we have decided to go to Turkey and maybe Bulgaria. We know what hotel we want to stay at in Bulgaria, but we are still looking at resort hotels in Turkey. I like one of the first hotels she's shown me and I told her I don't care where we stay in Turkey as long as we have a double bed, decent food, we are near the beach, and it would be nice to have a sea view. My patience is worn and she keeps looking at hotels and giving me links and I really am sick of looking at hotels. I don't know what to tell her or how to react when she changes the subject back to where to stay.

 

So I remind her of where I want to stay, and she asks me why every time, and I get pissed because I told her more than once. She asks me "What is so great about that hotel?" And then she asks me what's wrong with the hotels she is trying to show me. I get really irritated and tell her to pick the hotel herself. She calls me short-tempered and I ask her to change her attitude. And then I explain to her yet again that I am sick of wasting time on the decision and I just want to pick a place. I ask her why she is being so picky and she doesn't respond. Instead, she tells me that she is hurt (oversensitive) and calls me disapointing and the situation could easily turn into an argument... a real mountain out of a molehill.

 

I'm really sick of these moments! What is going wrong?

[Star Gazer]

We've been looking at hotels since early April. Folks, I can tell you, I've never spent this much time on any decision in my entire life and it's driving me crazy because it's over something rather trivial like vacation. We have made a 'finalized' decision, 6 times, and she couldn't stick to any of those decisions and I tried to remain adamant.

 

I'm really sick of these moments! What is going wrong?

 

What's going wrong? YOU are going wrong. Your GF isn't doing anything wrong.

 

Vacations are important to plenty of people, and many people spend longer than a month or so planning a vacation. They're expensive, and we don't all get them that all that often. So for many of us, we like them to be (as my BF teases me) "just so." Your GF sounds like one of those people. You, on the other hand, purport to "not care," but then are getting angry about the planning.

 

BF and I took nearly 3 months to plan our most recent trip, which was only to Kauai, because we kept changing what we wanted to do. We each had different ideas of which part of the globe we wanted to be one (Europe vs. South Pacific), what "feel" of a vacation we wanted (busy/active/exciting vs. vegging out/relaxing), different travel styles and different budgets (first class vs. coach) in mind. It took compromise and understanding on BOTH our parts.

 

Your GF sounds like she's trying to pick the best place for both of you, whereas you're just wanting to stay at the places YOU have shown her.

[lilwing]

What's going wrong? YOU are going wrong. Your GF isn't doing anything wrong.

 

Vacations are important to plenty of people, and many people spend longer than a month or so planning a vacation. They're expensive, and we don't all get them that all that often. So for many of us, we like them to be (as my BF teases me) "just so." Your GF sounds like one of those people. You, on the other hand, purport to "not care," but then are getting angry about the planning.

 

BF and I took nearly 3 months to plan our most recent trip, which was only to Kauai, because we kept changing what we wanted to do. We each had different ideas of which part of the globe we wanted to be one (Europe vs. South Pacific), what "feel" of a vacation we wanted (busy/active/exciting vs. vegging out/relaxing), different travel styles and different budgets (first class vs. coach) in mind. It took compromise and understanding on BOTH our parts.

 

Your GF sounds like she's trying to pick the best place for both of you, whereas you're just wanting to stay at the places YOU have shown her.

 

That's not true. We discussed what kind of vacation we want to have. I wanted to have a more adventurous kind of vacation and she wanted the more relaxing kind of vacation, at the seaside. We decided to go with the latter and go on a few tours or something. Then we discussed which countries we wanted to go to and Bulgaria and Turkey is where we decided. I do care very much about the vacation and I like to make plans myself. I feel like we're not making any progress on the hotels, though and I'm getting very frustrated about that because at the beginning of our planning, a lot of decision making was based off of the hotels we found and not the location and we looked at a lot of hotels and now I'm burnt out. I don't mind what hotel we go to as long as it has those certain facilities I listed (Which we both agreed on) All the hotels we've looked at in Turkey have good reviews, with 70+% recommendation. I don't feel like picking each one apart and would rather just pick the one with the cheapest price.