My girlfriend asked for 1 week break
My partner 21F and myself 23M. I think some background context is important before I explain the relationship issues and I will be grateful for some opinion from others.
I’m from Hong Kong and my partner is white and quarter Asian. Since early in the relationship, her mum has been racist towards me, and honestly it has affected my mental health a lot. I’ve genuinely tried hard to make a good impression and show that I care about their family. For example, when her mum mentioned she didn’t feel safe having a random guy come help fix something, I bought her and my partner pepper spray so they could feel safer. During Black Friday, I also bought her mum an LG OLED 55-inch TV as a Christmas gift because I wanted to do something nice for her.
Despite all of that, I still feel treated like an outsider. What hurt the most was her mum assuming the worst about me — saying or implying that I’m only with her daughter for a green card and would ditch her afterwards. I’ve always told my partner I can build my own future and don’t need anyone for residency or anything like that, so hearing that really messed with me emotionally. My partner hasn’t told till 8 months later, she’s been saying that she will come around and she’s introvert.
On top of this, we’ve been arguing a lot over the past few weeks. Most arguments start from small issues, but we can never fully understand each other’s point of view. It usually becomes “agree to disagree” and then escalates. I also feel like there can be a bit of ego involved during arguments. For example, if I don’t apologise first, she usually won’t either, and when I say sorry she’ll then follow up with “I’m sorry too for…” afterwards. I’m afraid that she picked up a few of her mums bad traits.
A lot of the time she ends up crying during arguments, and then I feel horrible for even bringing up problems or speaking up about how I feel. I end up comforting her and apologising because I hate seeing her upset.
Today (Sunday), she asked for a one week break because she’s drained and tired of arguing everyday but I don’t we did argue every day just thought she’s exhausted. She said she still loves me and that she’ll come back to me after the break, but I honestly don’t understand the point of taking a break instead of working through problems together. I guess maybe I pushed her too hard trying to resolve things?
Another thing that makes this difficult for me is that we’ve been together for 1.5 years, she comes to my rental place most of the time, but I’ve only been invited to her family home for dinner about 3 times. That has also added to my feelings of frustration and not really being accepted.
I genuinely love her and want things to work, but I’m confused whether taking a break over constant arguments is healthy or if this is a sign of something deeper. Has anyone experienced something similar?