I (20M) am having trouble being patient with my gf’s (20F) difficulties communicating.

(Long time follower on my other account. Sorry if I formatted incorrectly)

We’ve been dating for a year and a half. I love her very much and she has a wonderful heart. We’re silly and affectionate and most everything is great. I knew going into the relationship that she was shy and quiet. She had opened up a little in the time we were going out before deciding to go steady, but was still very quiet. At first I took this as a benefit. I’m very talkative and I often need to be reminded to take some time to be quiet, but as we are getting more serious and are growing up, Im finding that she is quiet to a fault. When something makes her upset, she will pout about it forever. I can tell she’s upset, but she denies it. I’ll keep asking her to open up until I feel like the bad guy, at which point she’ll see I’m becoming upset and start to talk. In the 6ish months of knowing communication is hard for her, we’ve reduced the time it takes from the initial upset to starting to talk from about an hour to about 30ish minutes (depending on the situation). It can be anything from her fender bender to not wanting to make a doctors appointment because of the hassle. Once I disagree, she “feels stupid.” She’s aware how much I value open communication and apologizes for not being forthcoming, but it doesn’t feel like much is changing.

TL;DR

I don’t know how to encourage my gf of 1.5 years to talk more openly about her feelings more than I already have and I don’t know how long I should spend working with her through this before we could have to be grown up and realize that even though we love each other, we may just be too different to be a happy couple in the long-term.

Submitted September 15, 2019 at 11:47PM

(Long time follower on my other account. Sorry if I formatted incorrectly)We’ve been dating for a year and a half. I love her very much and she has a wonderful heart. We’re silly and affectionate and most everything is great. I knew going into the relationship that she was shy and quiet. She had opened up a little in the time we were going out before deciding to go steady, but was still very quiet. At first I took this as a benefit. I’m very talkative and I often need to be reminded to take some time to be quiet, but as we are getting more serious and are growing up, Im finding that she is quiet to a fault. When something makes her upset, she will pout about it forever. I can tell she’s upset, but she denies it. I’ll keep asking her to open up until I feel like the bad guy, at which point she’ll see I’m becoming upset and start to talk. In the 6ish months of knowing communication is hard for her, we’ve reduced the time it takes from the initial upset to starting to talk from about an hour to about 30ish minutes (depending on the situation). It can be anything from her fender bender to not wanting to make a doctors appointment because of the hassle. Once I disagree, she “feels stupid.” She’s aware how much I value open communication and apologizes for not being forthcoming, but it doesn’t feel like much is changing.TL;DRI don’t know how to encourage my gf of 1.5 years to talk more openly about her feelings more than I already have and I don’t know how long I should spend working with her through this before we could have to be grown up and realize that even though we love each other, we may just be too different to be a happy couple in the long-term.