My girlfriend told me I am greedy and selfish, am I?

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I guess I am . She hasn't had any problems for a few months now though. Back then, she ended her friendship with her best friend, saying that her best friend had a lot of bad influence on her, saying I wasn't spending enough. But she said that now that her friend's influence is out of her life, she sees things more clearer now, which is why there haven't been problems for the past few months.

Do you think it's just a reprieve though, or any reason to treat it as one?

There is a more fundamental issue in relationships than money called trust. Can you trust your partner? This may be the most common reason for marriages breaking up--someone does something to lose the trust of the other.

To answer the question, yes I do trust her. Especially after she has seemed to improve so much. She says she improved, and the situation is much better now, but I need to learn to forgive how she was before, she says.

Is that best friend really out of her life? Like the old boyfriends giving her money? What's going on with that these days?

On the "needing to forgive what she was before"...i have been told by more than one NT that i do not forgive or "let go" of wrongs done to me. I spent quite a bit of time, effort, and angst looking for deeper psychological reasons for this until i began to understand an aspie brain.

I tend to fixate and perseverate on my special interests, and also on situations that caused me pain. No matter what i do or how i try to "forgive," my brain gets stuck on something like a broken record. But...

The issue is not that i do not forgive. I have never wished any ill on anyone who has hurt me. I have never tried for revenge or wished that it would happen. I always wished to mend things and wished that we could understand each other. But in my book, "mending things" has always gone hand-in-hand with rebuilding trust. Once my trust is lost it is very, very hard to regain.

NTs seem to rebuild this trust more easily than aspies, or maybe it is not as important to them in a relationship due to their neurological makeup. Not sure about this. But, because of this, i have walked away from more than one friendship that an NT person probably would have kept. I can't decipher layers of social conduct with someone whom i am always having to try to figure out whether i can take their words at face value or not.

For a long term relationship, it is very important to be able to trust and take them at face value. My hubby has many aspie tendencies, but he is a lot more NT than i am. He seems to be the only aspie among his parents and siblings. But he was trained to be as NT as possible as a kid, and spent a lot of years trying to decipher the NT double-speak that so exhausts an aspie.

He is very direct with me, but even after 18 years of being married, at times he still attributes much more complicated motives to my words and actions than what i have--or often than what i am capable of. I trust him and am still trying to persuade him that if i said something, that i meant it at face value. I am not his parents or siblings! He trusts my family, who is full of aspies, much more than his when it comes to social interactions. He doesn't seem to read stuff into their words and actions like he does on his side of the family.

I think this trust thing is something that deserves some thought and clarification between the two of you, ironpony. There is definitely a difference in aspies and NTs when it comes to trust in relationships.

Okay thanks. But neither of us are an aspie. I am autistic, but not Asperger's.

Unless you were misdiagnosed, an autism diagnosis means that you have trouble perceiving social clues given by your partner. This usually makes it difficult, but not impossible, to have relationships. Romantic relationships can be especially difficult because much of the communication is via social clues.

Okay thanks for the input people. I am autistic and that's all I was diagnosed with, but it could be in the sense that I am not reading social things correctly.

I was out with my gf and my friend last night, and we went out for drinks. Later on in the week, me and my friend hung out alone while my gf was at work.

I didn't bring up this subject at all, my friend did. He said he noticed how I am careful with money when it comes to my gf, perhaps too careful.

He said that I don't pay for her enough when we went out he noticed. He used the night earlier in the week as an example. He said that I payed for two of her drinks, but I left her to pay for the remaining three. He said that is not what a gentlemen is suppose to do. We talked about it and I said that I thought I would pay for two, but thought that was a good gesture, but she said that I should learn to be more of a gentlemen to my gf.

He said that if a gf orders 10 drinks even, then it's the boyfriend's job to pay for 10 and he knows this from experience. He says he is just trying to help me. I told him that I understand that's how it is in the beginning of a relationship, and I still pay for other things. I offered to help her with her dental bill for example, and the last vacation we went on early this year, I payed for the whole thing, since she couldn't afford to. But is it bad not to pay for only two of the drinks if we go out and leave her to pay for the rest? Even when we go out for ice cream or something like that, I will still pay for hers, and have no objection, and have payed for her meals as well, but sometimes if she goes over two drinks, I guess I will politely have a cut off. Not on all occasions but a fair amount. But is that bad? He says it is.

But what do you think? Do I sound cheap in that way, and is he right?

Sorry, I meant to write he. He said that.

Okay, thanks for the input. My friend doesn't really have anything to do with this, I was just wondering if I was to blame here, for how my gf feels.

We went out for new years with her friends and one of her friends got a hotel room for him and his gf, at the most expensive, biggest hotel in the city where I live. I commented in a friendly way, that it must be really expensive, as we were all talking in a group. But I didn't mean that in a bad way at all.

My gf then says "Yeah, but that's good that he's not cheap or anything". And the way she kind of said it, I think she was referring to me. I mean it was a subtle tone, and I know I am autistic and I do not read things as well but I did get that feeling.

Well I could have another talk with her about how she feels about how I spend my money. We haven't fought about it in a long time, but the tone of that comment did give me a bad feeling, if I interpreted it correctly. I could have another talk but based on everything I have said so far, what do you think I should do?

I haven't read through the thread, so am only responding to the first post. Apologies if these have been answered.

The thing that jumped out to me is you mentioning you almost got engaged. Why didn't you? How did that play out? Did you talk about it but not do it? Or is it that you were getting to a point where, unbeknown to her, you were about to propose but then decided not to?

Either way, why did you decide not to?

Has your girlfriend always been this way with money, or is only recently, after the non-engagement?

Depending on the cultural background and political outlook of the daters, it may be expected of a man to pay for the first few dates, or it may be expected that the woman will go dutch from the beginning. It gets a bit complicated if we consider that, if someone is invited somewhere, the assumption is the inviter will pay but the invited may choose to contribute, and so on.

All that said, once you're together, it should be split. How the split is managed depends on all sorts of things, but it should be split. A LTR lives and dies on these matters. Being in agreement on the importance and management of money is an important part of the foundation of such.

Your mentioning the non-engagement makes me wonder if she is panicking, one way or the other.

Well aside from the money issues back then, she got mad at me for going on a trip for the career I wanted to get into which is filmmaking. In order to get into that career you have to traveling, and she said that I focused to much on my career, and she kind of made a scene about it in front of my friends and got upset. It was this plus the money issues before that got me to loose patients with her later, and I called off the engagement and said we should wait.

Normally I wouldn't call off an engagement because of that alone, but it was the issues before plus that on top, which caused me to call it off. There were also other complaints she had about me being too career focused that kept bothering her as well, prior. That was about a year ago now. After that there were some other issues like the movie ticket thing, but for the past few months it's been good with no problems, until that hotel comment came up, if that counts as one.

But was this the wrong move or anything?