 (Nick Galifianakis for The Post) | Adapted from an online discussion. Dear Carolyn: Recently my girlfriend and I attended a family gathering. Afterward, I was set to go to a close friend's house party. My girlfriend could have gone, but she did not want to. Which I think is fine, as we do not have to accompany each other all the time. The problem is that she did not want me to go either. She did not give a particular reason. (I should have asked but I did not.) I wanted to go to the party, all the more so because it happened to be my friend's birthday party, which I pointed out. My thought being, that made it important that I go, even aside from my desire to go. Even more than if it were just a regular party, my friend would probably be disappointed, even offended, if I did not go to their birthday party. My girlfriend responded along the lines of, "So what? Birthdays are so important that you have to go to every friend's birthday party?" I was confused. First, my girlfriend has never minimized birthdays before and second, yes, I believe celebrating a friend's birthday is an important part of maintaining friendships, especially if that person throws a party and invites you. (Again, separate from the fact that I wanted to go.) Am I missing something? Since this happened, I am starting to see other incidents, where I was set to see some friends and she, in retrospect, concocted some argument between us or other emotional situation that resulted in my staying home, because I guess I felt it would be wrong to go out if she were angry or upset, as part of a pattern. With this latest example, I can almost see that if I had not already been out at the family gathering, I would have and ended up acceding to her desire and missing the birthday party. For what it is worth, I have some homebody tendencies and would describe myself as an introvert. So in other words, I am not going out with high frequency. Are these red flags, or am I overthinking this? — Seeing a Pattern |
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