Published on 12, July, 2020
I’m recently diagnosed and have a long term partner. Over the years it’s come up a lot that I was bad at giving her the support and expression of love she needs. She always refers back to the start of the relationship when I was much better at it. It all makes a lot more sense now why I struggled, at the start I was masking and as we got closer I felt I could bring the mask down somewhat, and could start trying to support in my own way, rather then a NT way.
She’s been really supportive about my diagnosis and she’s tried to change the way she asked me for support and I think I’m doing it right, and yet she still has these feelings, so I’m clearly not, and she think’s it because I don’t care and that I’m not putting effort in. I’m really trying my best, but it just never seems to be enough.
I love her, I can’t imagine life with out her but I just can’t seem to provide what she needs and it’s just so disheartening to hear and feel like I may never be able to, because it’s just not how my brain works, it just doesn’t come naturally to me.
I understand that you love her, yet she does not completely accept you as you are. How can she hear about your diagnosis, and then still require you to be the one who supports her (and she'll just change a few words about how she asks for support from you. Is that really being supportive? Is this a one-sided relationship, that you're only there to support her and her needs?), and then she's telling you that you don't care and you're not putting in enough effort. Honestly, that doesn't sound very supportive of her at all. If someone really supports you, they don't talk to you like that. If they support you, they'll say something that's more understanding of your diagnosis "I understand that you're struggling with this, let me help you," instead of just putting you down and blaming you for not caring enough about them.
Also, almost every NT will say how things were better in the beginning of the relationship, even if they had an NT partner. It is because the first 3 months is what they call the "honeymoon phase," and from the first date to the first 3 months, everyone masks during that time because everyone naturally has insecurities about themselves that they wish to hide from others, and then after 3 months people let their guard down a bit more, but then there's more relationship disputes that occur, because the partner will notice these changes, and the partner will want to go back to that "honeymoon phase" where everything seemed better, but that was a façade, and I suppose many relationships have similar occurrences to this.
The question I'm wondering is how she is supporting you? Why is she expecting that you will provide all that she needs, and how can she live knowing that she's making you feel this bad about yourself, by actively saying bad things to you like how much you don't care about her. I guess she means that you don't care in the way she expects you to care about her, but then she's laying down all these expectations of you, and you know what, all these expectations are pure garbage, because this kind of thing creates one-sided relationships, where you're just constantly trying to live up to her expectations, trying to do many things for her, behave in the right way, stay in line, but you fall short, because of course that's not you. You need to support yourself and know your own value. And any partner who makes you feel like you're not enough for them, is not being a supportive partner.