Hello everyone, bear with me because this is a lot to condense into one post, but I’m hoping to get some guidance.
I’ve been with my girlfriend for almost 5 years now, and she genuinely has one of the most beautiful souls of anyone I’ve ever met. But I think she may be at a point where her selflessness is starting to hurt her. For some background, her mom is no longer in the picture. Her dad is legally blind and needs help with a majority of day-to-day tasks, although he can still function independently in familiar environments. He’s a good guy and I respect him, but he’s also extremely stubborn and tends to speak without thinking, whether it’s politics, life, or just conversations in general.
Because her mom is gone and her older siblings don’t help much outside of maybe her older sister, it’s mainly just her and her 19-year-old brother taking care of the house, her dad, and her grandma with dementia who moved in about a year ago. I completely understand why she feels obligated to help, but I also think she struggles to recognize that her dad has some responsibility to get his act together too. For example, he had a chance at a healthy relationship with a really kind woman who was accommodating to his blindness and close with the family, but he ruined it through ignorant comments and lack of awareness. It feels like nobody really sets boundaries with him or pushes him to improve.
My girlfriend also struggles heavily with setting boundaries with both him and her brother. She has a strong “fine, I’ll do it myself” mentality. I want to support her, but we already have very little time together because of everything going on, on top of her commuting 2.5 hours to LA three times a week and working from home the other two days. So when we finally see each other after maybe a week and a half, a lot of the time becomes cleaning, cooking, helping around the house, or other responsibilities. It’s not that I mind helping, but I also don’t want the tiny amount of time we get together to always revolve around stress and work instead of something fulfilling for our relationship.
I’ve also noticed that the little free time she does have usually gets spent smoking, scrolling social media, or mentally checking out instead of doing things that actually fulfill her or taking care of herself. I’ve been trying to encourage her to reconnect with hobbies, interests, and parts of herself that used to make her happy because it feels like she’s losing herself while constantly taking care of everyone else. I’ve communicated this to her before. I’ve told her I’d rather have structure and communication, like planning help on one day so we can intentionally spend quality time together another day. But it still tends to become last-minute obligations or unstructured plans, and I’m left feeling like our relationship only gets attention when she has leftover time and energy.
A lot of the emotional conversations are also led by me. She’ll acknowledge what I’m saying and tell me she wants to improve communication and set boundaries, but long-term nothing really changes. It ends up feeling like I’m expected to keep adapting and accommodating without the root issues being addressed. What makes this harder is that I do understand caregiving. My family took care of my grandma with dementia for 9 years before she recently passed away, but my parents still understood I was young and needed balance, relationships, and space to grow. So I know firsthand that caregiving doesn’t automatically mean your entire life and relationship have to revolve around it.
I love my girlfriend deeply, and I know she’s trying, but I also feel emotionally exhausted from carrying so much of the communication and adjustment in our relationship for the last couple years.
Any advice or outside perspectives would genuinely help. Thank you.
As I was doom scrolling YouTube shorts last night I came upon one where Chris Williamson was quoting from Mark Manson's book, "Love Is Not Enough" and I immediately thought of you and your situation...
"When you select a partner, whether you realize it or not, you're choosing a whole lifestyle and not just the person. You're choosing their sleep schedule. You're choosing their money habits. You're choosing their stress levels. You're choosing their family drama, their levels of cleanliness, their work ethic, their coping mechanisms, All of these things will be a baseline for your daily life [with them]. If their normal is doom scrolling till 2am, avoiding all conflict, impulse spending and never exercising, guess what? You're signing up to live in that ecosystem. Love does not cancel out people's flaws. In fact, love just makes you tolerate them for longer. Most people obsess over, 'Do we have romantic chemistry?' and they completely skip, 'Can I live with this person's version of a Tuesday for the next 10 years?' The hard truth is you don't fix somebody's lifestyle from the inside. You either accept the package as they are or you walk."
Many of the participants on this forum have been married for decades, many are divorced, remarried, with partners, etc. Please accept the wisdom (and warnings) of those who have gone before you.
You need to break it off and get out and date other women and then you’ll see how unhealthy her relationship and communication style is. Five years is long enough to see it’s never gonna change and possibly get worse. You’ll be doing her a favor by leaving so that the scales on her eyes will fall off and she’ll truly see the need for boundaries — hopefully.
There are all sorts of other solutions for her Dad and Grandma’s care. Your soon to be ex GF is way too young to sacrifice her life like this. She also doesn’t care she’s asking you to do the same. Please don’t enable this set up. Don’t be a Rescuer. It hasn’t worked in 5 years. Move on and move up.
it might be best to move on. It’s not her fault, it’s just the way things are.
Is Dads blindness recent, like the last few years. Your GF could have him evaluated by the County Disabilities Dept and maybe get some training to help him be more independent.
I would not get anymore serious with this girl. She has a lot on her plate that she really needs to get rid of.
Thankfully you are still very young, so you have plenty of time to find a nice woman that will put you and your relationship first.
Time to get your head out of the sand and see this lopsided relationship for what it really is. Until you do that you'll never be truly happy.
I wish you well in finding someone that will put you first.
Her father is not a good guy; he is selfish because he should be wanting his daughter to launch and thrive in the peak years of her 20s and 30s, but instead he is keeping her homebound as his servant. He could hire help, use uber or senior transportation services, or sell his home and move himself and his mother into assisted living or another suitable situation. She doesn't need to stay.
The smoking, scrolling, and mindlessness are probably the result of stress and depression due to her feeling like she needs to be captive to her father and grandmother. (Or, just to be honest and cover the scenarios, it's possible that after five years she's grown apart from you but doesn't know how to break it off. The other scenario seems more likely, but try to evaluate realistically.)
Do you know the older siblings? Is there any possibility that they could encourage and guide her into launching free from this situation, as they have apparently done? Since she has a full-time job, it's feasible.
Unfortunately you may have to be honest and tell her that unless things change, you'll need to walk away, at least temporarily so she can realize what's at stake. I hope she'll face reality and begin to assert her independence.
Let us know how things go.
That said, you should advise her that most states have IHSS programs that pay family members to care for eligible family. Assuming everyone’s a citizen here, she could at least be drawing a check to care for these two. As for me and probably you, though, no amount of money would persuade me to take it on.
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