I deleted every voice note I could find because my gf said it's 'tedious'
This is going to be a long rant but please bear with it. So what happened is that I was very excited to share a few things with my gf however, currently we are doing long distance and a call isn’t possible all the time. She had already slept by the time however, I really wanted to say those things to her in the moment and didn’t want to wait till tomorrow since I felt that the excitement will be relatively less when compared to today since the events had just happened.
So I sent her a voice note. It turned out to be a long voice note but it’s not like I was expecting an instant reply the next day or she listens to the entire thing in one sitting. I was fine even if she wouldn’t be able to listen to more than 10-15 min. I was fine even if she replied to me in multiple sittings and never forced her to listen or reply. I sent her only because I wanted to, because I wanted to share things, not for her to behave a specific way for me.
All of this happened yesterday only. And now, today she started replying to me on her own accord. It was break for me at work so I started playing the voice note side by side with her so I know the context, as in to which thing specifically is she saying what she is saying. 2-5 min later I realize how is she so far ahead when I am only 5 min in? I asked her if she has been skipping through it or something and she told me that she is listening to it at 1.5x speed.
I didn’t like that. I clearly told her that it made me feel like listening to me is a chore for her and I didn’t like it at all. Why not just listen to it at a normal speed and listen to the rest later when you have time? If you don’t have time currently then don’t listen to it at all rather than burning through it. I told her all of this to which she said and I quote ‘I have an attention span issue’. Even justified listening to it at 1.5x by saying that it’s a long voice note.
Now she says the ADHD thing often, when I am talking about one thing and randomly she will start scrolling on her phone through fashion or beauty products. Later she apologizes too when I ask her why is she scrolling while talking with me. Randomly she will start telling me about some reel while something else is going on.
Anyways, she tells me multiple times that it’s because of ‘ADHD’. Today, the same thing happened. I got pissed and told her that if she always gives me this ‘reason’ then it starts becoming less of a reason and more of an excuse. You can’t say this to me every time. She didn’t like the generalization in the way that I said ‘always’ and ‘every time’. Then she felt bad got hung up over the word ‘every time’. I admit, I didn’t apologise for the generalization which is on me, but then she said something that really hit me like a truck. After saying ‘I have an attention span issue’, she said and I quote, ‘this is tedious for me’.
I felt so bad hearing that, I told her not to reply to me at all if she thinks its tedious, I don’t want it in that case. Then she tries to tell me that she wasn’t talking about how listening to me is tedious but how having to make sure to reply to every little thing in the voice note is tedious even though I don’t pressure her to. If its something that I really want a reply on then I would just point it out and ask her how she felt/what she thought about it and that’s it.
Later, she tries to tell me that the same as how she didn’t like the words ‘every time’ and ‘always’, even I am being hung up over one word. Even that felt pretty shitty to me and it felt like both of them are completely unrelated things. At that point I lost it, I justified my generalization and told her again to not reply to me at all if she thinks its ‘tedious’. I don’t want it in that case. To which she says and I quote ‘see again’, as in I am being hung up over the ‘tedious’ thing.
Then she goes on to say that ‘I find listening to voice notes tedious’ which only confirmed everything I had been feeling, I started having thoughts like ‘how could she even say something like that to me. I needed some time alone at that point so I just told her not to message or call me anymore, and to just leave. To which she says that I am not understanding it, that its not about me and she just finds listening to voice notes tedious in general. I told her that I don’t really care what she meant to say but for now the conversation is over and told her to me not message me.
Right when I think things can’t get worse than this, she says ‘wow, now who is being avoidant at one inconvenience’. I felt like my pain was minimalised. Like I had to be fine with whatever she said and it was only an ‘inconvenience’. I completely lost it in that moment and said ‘fuck you’ to her. Pointed out the things she said to me to which she says that it wasn’t about me. That she finds listening to voice notes tedious in general. It really got on my nerves when she said that because it was like she was trying to find a loophole.
In sarcasm I asked her if she is going crazy. Why is she trying to find a convenient loophole now? Then she justifies it by saying that she didn’t say ’your’ voice notes and only said ‘voice notes’, it was a general statement. But right before that, the had also said ‘this is tedious for me’ by which she was very obviously referring to my voice note only as she was listening to it while saying what she said. She kept trying to emphasize how she didn’t say ‘your’ and meant it in general.
I asked her again not to text or talk to me and that I am going. To which she agrees by pointing out the things I said to her (sarcasm and fuck you) and saying that if that is how I will talk to her then it’s better to go only. Then I tell her that there is nothing to understand over here, that you can’t keep telling me ‘ADHD’ and expect it to work, it only becomes an excuse. Already feeling pretty hurt, I even told her ‘I wish you loved me enough to not find listening to my voice notes tedious rather than saying what you said’. I even told her that I am not going to apologize for anything that I said.
She again repeats that she said that in general only and not directed towards me, asked me ‘why tf would I say that about you?’.
And I ignored that. I knew that this back and forth will keep happening so I changed the topic and told her that why does she have to consciously make sure that nothing is left to reply upon? I only want it if it comes naturally and if not then don’t reply. However, it shouldn’t be something you force yourself to do. Even told her that fine, even if it was in general only, I am in that same category right? Listening to my voice note is also tedious with every other person’s voice note.
Then she asks me that I do the same thing, as in consciously making sure to reply to everything so it’s the same thing to which I replied that I never do it consciously, whatever I feel that only I say to me, whatever comes naturally to me. So it is in fact not the same. I don’t want you to say anything if you have to force yourself to say it and then she was confused and was asking me how is it her forcing herself to do it?
This back and forth happened for a few min before I finally kept aside my phone unable to deal with all of this any longer. I want to know if I was wrong/could have done something better in this situation? Is there any way I could have navigated it better?
Thank you for reading the entire thing!