Trying to deal with a "dragon lady".

[lauscho]

Hi, new member here. I've been in desperate need of advice for quite a while now. I thought I would ask an online forum, finally, so here I am...

 

My girlfriend and I have been going through a tremendously rough patch as of late. We've been dating for almost a year (our anniversary is this coming Saturday), and things have been on-and-off okay to really rough.

 

For the first several months of our relationship, I was working a steady full-time job while she collected unemployment insurance. Things were at our best then, as I worked hard and long enough where doing all the housework was never expected in that big of a quantity from me, and it was understood that I didn't have the time to deal with a lot of little things like that. I lost my job in around May, and we were both off work. I looked frantically for a job, she did not.

 

It was around this period that things began their downward spiral. With me out of work and depressed, I had no motivation to do anything, while she has a natural inclination towards being cold and controlling. For a couple of months, I endured an almost constant barrage of nagging, freak-outs over very minor inconveniences, accusations with little to no basis... the usual stuff. One thing is that I turned back to pornography to get my sexual fix when things were starting to really suffer with her. I got caught, and she refuses to trust me with computers anymore.

 

And that's the thing. I completely understand where I went wrong. I hid and ran away in something I shouldn't have. I had no motivation to do anything around the house. I went through a massive depression and a long period where I wasn't actively looking for work anymore and everything around me started to feel like it was caving in on me. I let myself get caught up in her opinion of me. I never came up with any plans for us in that period, became incredibly meek with her (she says I always have been, but I was never really a social butterfly before I started dating her), and I have never even really took her on a date.

 

Now, many of the issues are mine and I'm willing to admit where they are. I have adult attention deficit disorder coupled with huge anxiety issues, and extreme insomnia that is actually starting to affect my short-term memory. I'm prone to mood swings and depression and I realize that that can be a huge cause of concern. I'm on medication for the ADD now, since around Christmas, I have a new job... the anxiety and insomnia have not gone away.

 

Now, in the past month or two, she's been ripping on me harder than ever. I'm very childish to her, in my decision making and in how I deal with things, she says. And while I admit that I didn't have a lot of life experience until I lived with her, I've done a hell of a lot to grow up in one year. But I get this feeling it will never be good enough for her. She is intensely hyper-critical. If I forget to put a piece of plastic wrap on food overnight, I might as well have just killed six million Jews because it's always Nuremburg with her. I've gotten "YOU F***ING IDIOT!!!" over things as minor as dusting the house and missing one shelf. She's cold and rational to a point where I'll never be "perfect enough" for her. I'm so lost on what to do. I've tried having talks with her, but they always end up escalating to fights because we're both two strong-willed people, who have their own unique ways of discussing things. I've tried doing things "her way", usually to find out that they were not, in fact, her way, and usually have them blow up in my face (like a recent attempt to get her a gift, which ended up causing an entire evening of a fight over the fact that I gave it to her while she was stressing out coming home from work, instead of backing off and giving her time to collect herself before giving her a gift), and everything has to be "perfect" to her. There's only one way in this relationship, and it's HER way. I try to stand up for myself, and it's fought tooth and nail.

 

How does a person with as many little flaws as I have deal with someone who wants to re-enact the International Criminal Tribunal every time I spill some milk?

[Emilia]

Everyone in the whole wide world has lots of minor little flaws. It's really sad that you have tried so hard and have grown so much but she still talks to you like this. Have you tried to talk to her about the lack of respect she shows you when she is swearing at you?