Been together 5 years, discussing engagement, but her happiness seems to disappear when we're together. Am I missing something?
My girlfriend (29F) and I (32M) have been together for almost five years and have lived together for over three. For the past six months, she's been going through spells of depression, saying she doesn't feel well. Her doctor prescribed antidepressants, but she never ended up taking them. She's going to therapy and says it's not doing anything and she's visibly annoyed on days she has to talk to her therapist.
She's an incredible partner and genuinely my best friend. That said, no relationship is perfect. I've lost my temper and raised my voice before. There have also been a handful of times, maybe three over our entire relationship, where she's gotten too drunk and been disrespectful: chatting up other guys, acting like I'm an annoyance, bringing up past hookups in front of me. When I try to address it afterward, she can't handle hearing it and somehow turns it around so I end up looking like the bad guy just for bringing it up.
We've been talking about engagement and a future timeline, which is genuinely where I see us heading. I'm trying not to read her unhappiness as a reflection of our relationship, but it's hard not to when we spend so much of our lives together.
What's been messing with my head lately is this: in the last six months alone, she has gone on trip after trip with friends, including Coachella with three other couples. Every time I call her during one of these trips, she sounds genuinely lit up and happy. I don't begrudge her having fun or spending time with her friends, but two things bother me. One, the depression seems to disappear when I'm not around. Two, for something like Coachella, I honestly expected her to say there's no way she'd go without me. Meanwhile, I took her to Europe for her birthday, and I could feel the whole time that she wasn't really into it. That one stings.
The topic of kids also feels like a wall. Any time I bring up someone we know having a baby, she visibly tenses. She also has a pattern of asking me things like "Do you think you'll be a good dad or a good husband?" right after spending time with a friend's partner. I mentioned that those questions feel hurtful given the context, and she brushed it off as a joke.
When I try to have honest conversations about the relationship and bring up something that hurt me alongside all the good, her response is usually something like "Well if you hate me so much, why are you even with me?" It makes real conversations nearly impossible. It often feels like she's the only one in the room.
Most of the time, things between us are genuinely great, and that's what makes this so confusing. I'm just not sure what to make of my gf being unhappy / unfufilled in our relationship.