I need some advice, but let me first give you some background info. I have been with my girlfriend for alomost a year now, i am 22 and she is 19. We have a very honest and open relationship w/ each other and there is realy nothing we keep from each other.i go to school about 2. 5 hrs away from where she lives (and goes to school), but we see each every weekend.whenever she is not with me she cries histerically to me on the phone, at least once a day, maybe twice, literally. i know she misses me, and i miss her, but there must be something else wrong here b/c its at the point, (2 months after crying like this every day im not w/ her) where im pulling hair out of my head, trying to get her to stop, or figure out what’s wrong.i came to 2 conclusions ( 1 of which i never really told her b/c its a touchy subject): 1) she’s on birth control, which to my knowlage affects emotions, and 2) (touchy subject), her mother passed away from breast cancer about 6 years ago, which obviously is a truamatic experinace, but she’s mature and is pretty much over it and does think of her from time to time. (around her freshman yeear of high school. ) and she hates her dad’s fiance, so i thought that maybe she has no female figure head in her family that she can relate to so she rely’s on me for that. . . . i don’t know. . . but this crying is making me crazy,i tell her i love her to death, all the time which is true, and i tell her the things she wants to hear, but its obviously not enough b/c the crying continues. . .By now, she thinks, that i think she’s crazy b/c of this, I told her already to see a psycologist or to let her emotioins out to someone, but its hard for me to hear this every day. its not good for her or me. i just want her to be happy, its hurts me to hear this all the time.i could use some advise on this matter. . . . . im sorry to take up much of your time w/ the length of my e mail, but i figured i give it a shot. . . thanks
You are so sweet to write and ask for help for your girlfriend. You have asked me to give you some idea of what may be troubling her.Without talking to your girlfriend directly I can only make some guesses. Since the crying began after you two were physically separated, we have to assume that the separation has opened up a wound in her psyche that was just barely scarred over. What could that wound be? One obvious scar is your girlfriend’s separation from her mother through death.I know that you say that she has resolved her grief. I highly doubt that this is so. For one thing, her incessant tears are like endless grieving. It is very possible that she has buried her feelings of grief over her mother, and they are resurfacing with you in the form of grieving over being separated from you.The fact that she isn’t making progress (crying less over time) indicates that she hasn’t identified the real source of her grief, hence the crying continues unabated.It is also possible that she felt emotional deprived or mistreated during her childhood, in which case the loss of her mother would create a double grief; the obvious grief being the actual loss of her mother; but the more subtle grief being the loss of all hope to ever receive the emotional feeding or nurturance that she lacked during her childhood.We would need your girlfriend’s input to fill in the blanks. She does need to talk with a therapist. Clearly she is not moving forward. She reminds me of an inconsolable orphan child who has been left to cry in a hospital ward.Someone needs to symbolically pick her up and help her to find words for her grief. Surely the separation from you is sad. What she needs to see is that this separation is merely a triggering agent. It has opened up far deeper scars that she needs to identify and heal.Point out to her that if your listening to her crying were going to help, it would have helped already. Tell her that what doesn’t get better gets worse, and she needs to get help before she gets worse.Best of luck with this tough situation.
