AIO For Considering Breaking Up With My Long Distance Girlfriend After She Chose Not To Visit?
Hi, everyone for context both me and my girlfriend are in college and we go to schools that are just over 5 hours apart. She and I have been together for nearly 3 years now and she is a year behind me. In our relationship, the first year we were in high school together and no major issues came up except for issues with her lack of communication.
As of last year, I moved to college which was under 30 minutes away and the difference in effort that we both put in became incredibly apparent to me. I was in school for 5 days a week and every weekend I found a way to get home and make sure we could still see each other. On the other hand, she would almost never come and visit me and in total came over around 10 times throughout the year. I also noticed her communication was also not at the level where I was comfortable to the point that I was receiving just over 6 texts per day. I was able to mentally dismiss this due to the fact she was applying for college and her parents placed a pretty harsh curfew. We ended up talking about this and while she made minor adjustments not much really changed but I learned to live with it.
I started noticing more issues during the summer however. I was working around 30 hours weekly and had a moderately packed schedule and she was working around 3 shifts a week. Despite this and the countless hours we had available, we rarely ended up together at most 3 times a week. I was incredibly disappointed by this because I booked my shifts to be available and communicated my availability to her. However, because of her sleep schedule and communication, we were not able to hang out. After another two rounds of talks we finally were able to start hanging out more consistently but at that point, it was the end of summer for her.
She ended up going to a school a bit farther than me at under 2 hours away. Despite this, I found myself at least once every week making the drive and spending the full day at her dorm with her. Now, my school started much later than hers due to me switching schools and I now attend school under 6 hours from our town. Despite this, I care for her very deeply and decided to make the trip back 3 times during the fall alone to see her. I don't expect any appreciation for this as I took this upon myself but I spent multiple hours traveling by bus at early hours of the morning to ensure I could visit her.
It is important to note that during our fall quarter we had a big argument and I understand that I was at the very least partially in the wrong. While that is not the focus of this, it was also rooted in communication and we had a discussion. I admittedly chose some harsh words essentially saying that the was treating me was close to that of a distance acquaintance. The issues with her communication hurt me as I felt that I was putting in tremendous amounts of effort in to be matched with none from her. While she never apologized, I still forgave her and chose to move on with this hoping she would get better. Following winter break, she visited me for the first time but only because my parents dropped me off.
During winter break too, I confided in her a mental health issue that I had been dealing with for a while. To my shock, instead of supporting me she threatened to break up with me because she could not be with someone who felt this way. She gave me an ultimatum and I ended up making a quick second decision to backtrack in hopes of working on myself. Following this we had another argument where I confronted her for this after talking through this with a professional and she told me that it was the way I talked to her and acted that caused her to act like that to me. She told me that she could not be expected to treat me with respect when she had felt no respect coming from me because of word choices I made. During this time too, she threatened to cancel a trip a few days before that my parents and I had worked for months to save up for and plan. While she ended up going on the trip, she was unnecessarily harsh and essentially treated me like a friend similar to how she treated my siblings.
During the rest of winter I followed a plan similar to Autumn but visited once less as the term got more difficult. Now finally this is where things catch up to the current issue. This whole thing started during Spring Break where our breaks were not aligned. Ultimately, I ended up going to a very popular place during our time and stayed there for a few days. Upon returning home, I was only with my parents for a few hours before driving all the way down to her school for the 8th time this school year to visit her. Upon reaching there, she wanted to talk and told me that she was upset that I went on the trip given the location. Now, the argument was similar to the one in fall and while the details are not entirely relevant, she told me that due to things her friends said and internal jealously that It was not okay for me to go in the future. I thought that this was ridiculous and decided to hold my ground about it trying my hardest to console her.
Following this, we went back to school and she went on Spring Break where at no point during her time did she visit me. Now for this part I agree that I am not in the right but I had had enough of the communication which prevailed throughout our reminders. During our relationship I had sent roughly 170 requests for her to just text me back in a timely manner (6 hours) or let me know if she was going to be gone. So, prior, I was in the habit of calling her basically every night but due to her communication she often would not pick up nor call back. So, I stopped calling for 2 weeks and she immediately got mad at me. She called me around 4 times during those 2 weeks and two of the times were to ask something. She told me that my lack of communication was an issue and made her feel really bad. I countered by saying that she finally understood how I felt and why I wanted a change. For context, this year, I have called her nearly 200 times and she has called me just over 25 times.
So, I told her this and she brought up stuff from old arguments we had which in my eyes is an issue as we resolved them. I told her that it was not fair because I had never done this and we mutually agreed to do this but she decided that because of my actions it was justified. Long story short, she wouldn't budge on her position and told me that my actions made her feel awful. I tried talking to her a lot to fix things and apologize but ultimately she refused to answer the phone a lot and when we finally talked she was emotionless. It was like I was talking to a robot and it felt like she was not really listening but arguing to win.
Now, I eventually relented and apologized but asked her to communicate better but things have felt off. Now last week, I sent a video to our group chat with a few other people and pointed out someone saying something incredibly silly. I called a person in a video "stupid" and she immediately texted me that I was embarrassing to call people stupid and that I should delete it. I was a little puzzled by this as I didn't know what she was talking about but relented and asked her what she meant. From there she said that it was such a turn off when I did that and equated it to me call women vile names. I was shocked at where this came from and asked her and she told me that she didn't like it when people called her that so I shouldn't call anyone that. I was a little shocked because she has had issues with me saying certain things in the past (non-offensive just word choices) but this felt controlling.
I, overwhelmed with the previous communication issues and feeling defensive jumped back saying something to the extent of what she said. I said that she could express her opinions to me but could not control what I said and also asked her how she expected me to do this if she wasn't willing to also change. She first denied that there was any correlation and then said that she felt her communication was better. When I pointed out that over the last two days she had texted me 3 times, she broke and said that she couldn't be expected to show any care for me if I wouldn't respect her wishes. At this point I was a little dumbfounded and also want to point out that her school year has ended weeks ago and she admitted she had nothing else going on during this time.
An aside: my school hosts a concert every single year and I had planned for her to come over and celebrate with me. She has had an issue with last minute planning so I let her know almost 5 weeks in advance so she could get her shifts covered for her job. Well, during this argument, she let me know that she would not be attending. She told me that she had not gotten her shifts covered due to the last argument that was 5 weeks prior. I spent 2 days working with her to get her shifts covered and things set up only for her to tell me after that she still would not be attending after I had purchased the tickets to the event. I asked her why and she told me that she had made up her mind when the argument first started and would not be happy. When asking what she meant, she essentially confirmed that she acted this way during our vacation in winter due to the argument and told me that she would act the same way during the concert. I asked her if she would be the same way with a friend of hers and she told me that it would only be around me. I asked her what she meant and she confirmed that it was voluntary in some sense and it was a deliberate choice that she made.
I spent multiple hours and days on the phone with her trying to talk things out but all she wanted to do was argue. During this time she would use these logical fallacies to try to make me admit that I had done something wrong. She told me that our relationship issues were not because of the distance but instead due to communication and my ego. I told her that if she thought so, then why did she continuously refuse to put in effort into the relationship. She told me that it was on my part to which I agreed to some extent. In the end, I could not take full blame for everything and told her I refused to be a doormat.
She told me that she would not come to the concert after I had made arrangements with my friends and family at home and at the school to provide adequate transportation and accommodations all on my dime. I told her that something in a previous argument was still true and that I felt that she was being selfish and it was unjust to cancel these plans. I ended up giving her an ultimatum and telling her that she should come and that if not I would likely end up breaking up with her. I explained that it was the culmination of all these events and how she had nothing else going on during the weekend. I told her that if she wanted to figure things out about the relationship that it was best to figure them out together. I even said we could skip the concert and talk the entire time she visited yet she still told me no and that if that was the case then I should come home to deal with it.
In the end she told me due to her stress that I have caused, she would not be going and I am planning to have the talk with her tonight or tomorrow and cut things off. Sorry for the long context, I really want to make sure that I have things right and can provide more. Please tell me, am I overreacting or justified in my want to break up and if not, could I try to have one final conversation?
TLDR: Long distance girlfriend of nearly three years I feel has neglected some of my requests to improve our relationship. We have been getting into arguments and she has in my opinion attacked me and unjustifiably been rude. As of last week, we got into an argument over my choice of words and she decided not to come visit me last minute because she was angry at me. I told her that I felt that maybe we should break up if she would pass up on an opportunity to visit me because she could not get over the argument and was not willing to resolve it.
Edit: Hi guys, sorry for my errors. I want to address two things I saw in the comments. I apologize for being quite vague, I understand that some of you wanted details before making a decision. I do want to address this to say for specific things I can provide context however, due to the nature of my situation any general detail I feel would reveal too much personal information about me because it is closely tied to me. In addition, I had to familiarize myself with the terminology of TLDR but have added one. Sorry once again I hope this can clear up and mishaps and I appreciate all of your feedback so far.