Dealing with iciness/aloofness from new gf

rockstar

Tool-Bearing Hominid
Tool-Bearing Hominid
Joined
Feb 2, 2019
Messages
71
I’ve been having this issue with my girlfriend of 3 days (we’ve been sleeping together/seeing each other for 5 months). She’ll often get in a mood where she acts very cold/distant/aloof from me, and I’ve been having trouble navigating these situations. I’ve had a couple LTR’s before (4yr and 1yr), but for all of the other girls I’ve dated, moodiness would manifest itself as drama/picking fights, was often because they felt insecure about the relationship in some way, and usually easily fixed by reassurance. They were almost always excited/happy to see me. I feel like I’m pretty decent at relationship game in general, but having trouble with this girl.



With the new gf, sometimes when we see each other, and other times in reaction to something I say/do, she will get very cold/aloof. Not responding to things I say, or giving me one-word responses, not looking at me, turning away from me, walking away from me suddenly, walking several steps ahead of me when we’re walking together, moving away when I touch her, etc. Not in a very subtle way either. This feels frustrating sometimes.



I don’t really think I’m super reactive generally, but maybe this sort of behavior just confuses me. This is how I’d expect a girl who is just not attracted to act, or a gf that is really hurt by something and auto-rejecting. I don’t think the first is the case. She is usually pretty affectionate/sweet with me. She is usually very aware/concerned with my time/feelings/pleasure, doesn’t like to feel like she is inconveniencing me/imposing on me (she’s not entitled at all). She leaves food at my desk in my office (we’re both grad students at the same university), and puts away my dishes when she’s at my house. She initiates hanging out with me 90% of the time, and recently wants to hang out nearly every day. She's often worried that she cares a lot more about the relationship and invests more than I do. Although I do nice boyfriend-y things for her sometimes as well. I don't think she's auto-rejecting, because I just asked her to be my girlfriend.



When we first started seeing each other/sleeping together (I knew her from social circle, but we slept together the first time we hung out alone), she became very closed off and guarded after a few weeks. I told her a few sex stories and so she knew I slept around a bit, and I was seeing other girls the first couple months we were sleeping together. The whole time we’ve been seeing each other, she has tried to conceal her feelings a lot, and has been very skeptical of whether or not I felt the same. She thought I just wanted sex at first and was even surprised when I asked her to be my gf a few days ago (didn’t think I’d want to commit), despite us hanging out constantly the past 2 months, and me being very affectionate with her. I thought a lot of this behavior was coming from her insecurity about my feelings/our relationship (this was definitely bothering her a lot), but now I wonder if there’s just a personality mismatch/incompatibility or something.



My first reaction to her coldness is usually to ask her if something’s up, which is always met with a “no” or “no, why?”, and if I push it further, “relax dude” or “stop reading so much into things”. Sometimes she’ll tell me what was bothering her much later, when she cools off (usually something I said or worried about the relationship or jealous of me talking to another girl). My second reaction is that she just needs space. But she often feels like somethings bothering me or ignored if I focus on something else and give her space, even though I'm usually pretty subtle about this.



Sometimes I just don’t let it affect me much and keep talking to her/stay in a good mood. She doesn’t really laugh at any of my jokes in these moments, and this seems not to work very often although it’s usually hard for me to keep pushing this route for longer than a few minutes when she’s being super cold.



I’ve brought this up to her explicitly a few times, and sometimes she says “yeah, I was just upset about X”, other times she says she was unaware that she was coming off that way. Yesterday she said that she felt I was “very sensitive to her moods”. Whenever we have discussions about this, it seems to only bother her more, and usually doesn’t go anywhere. When we talk about this, it seems like we both get sensitive to the way each other acts, but are both often unaware that we we are making the other person feel bad. This confuses me as I feel like she gives off very strong aloof signals, while I am usually pretty warm, but can just be a little distracted sometimes. She can often be pretty challenging/bratty/teasing, but this usually doesn't bother me as much as I can just give it back to her and have fun with it. It feels excessive sometimes, but I think that I initiate it sometimes too. She feels like we sometimes get in this negative spiral of reflecting off each other in these ways.



This can be frustrating to me, because I can be pretty busy with work sometimes, and it sucks when I give her my free time only to get coldness/aloofness from her. I'm generally able to control my emotions pretty well, and can bounce back from things quickly, but when she gets in these moods, it usually takes hours for her to get out of them. With other girls, I can usually snap them out of it with humor/fun, but she seems to resist this pretty hard sometimes.



I wonder if we are just hanging out too often right now. I’ve been seeing her probably 5 days a week recently, and we spent two straight weeks together traveling over the holidays (went to see my family and did a lot of outdoor rock climbing together). It's really easy to hang out often as we have are in the same department at school, have really overlapping friend groups, and share a hobby.



What is the best way for me to handle this issue? Should I:

  • Just hang out with her less, so that we are both more excited to see each other when it happens?
  • Don't let her moods affect me, and just be lighthearted until she cheers up? (Obviously not when she's hinting about some specific issue bothering her. Might be hard for me to keep up sometimes)
  • Focus on something else until she comes to me? (Hard to do sometimes when we've specifically made plans to do something together. Often makes her feel like I'm bothered even when I'm subtle about it and don't really let it bother me)
  • Tell her I don't want to hang out when she's like this and that we should hang out when we're both excited to see each other? (I think this would usually be a bit overkill)
  • I don't think persisting in asking her what's bothering her or sitting down and discussing this topic have usually been very effective.
  • Or maybe we're just not very compatible or she's just not a great gf candidate for me. She has a lot of qualities I really like, but this issue just makes it not fun to be around her a lot of the time. At some point, maybe I should just end it and look for a better girl? She can be really kind, warm, and considerate a lot of the time, but strangely masculine sometimes.

Thanks for the help, I'd really appreciate it if someone with lots of LTR experience could chime in.
 

BigPapa

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Jan 12, 2020
Messages
601
Mate she looks like an introvert person , and introvert people act like you described when experiencing something they do not like :)

I believe you overthink things and just have to accept her for how she is .
With this type of people you have to be warm towards them even they they act aloof and cold , otherwise you will only escalate things further and feel more aggravated .

when you see that she is warm again , then you ask her what was on her mind and that you would feel better if she would share with you on the spot when going through the motions. And persist till She changes :)
 

BigPapa

Space Monkey
space monkey
Joined
Jan 12, 2020
Messages
601
Be worried about your relationship only when the sex dries or starts being rude and snappy
 

bun_pep

Rookie
Rookie
Joined
Nov 15, 2019
Messages
3
This sort of happened to me not quite long
I was chatting with this babe and everything was going pretty well. She then asked me to send her a file and then i replied her with ‘say please papi’.
She later replied me with smileys and ended it telling me how silly i am and went offline immediately. Away from my story now...
My comment on this i think there’s something that’s making her feel bitter. I don’t know, maybe she suffered sexual abuse before
What i’m trying to say here is that i don’t think the problem is from you, i think it’s either from her expectations or experiences in relationships
 
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