I Messed Up And Need To Make It Up To Her

Post Reply New Topic

Hey guys,

I have mild aspergers and it oftentimes interferes with my relationship. This is especially the case when I know I should do something to surprise her or make it up to her or whatever but I'm clueless as to how to do that. The specifics of this situations are as follows:

I'm in a long-distance relationship. I live in the United States and my girlfriend lives in Australia. We're both in our late teens, and have been dating for over three years (we used to go to the same international school in Germany). Previously we would visit each other once a year, but we recently agreed to push that to twice a year now that we're both in universities.

Now I'm planning on getting a job or internship over this coming summer, when we want to do our visit. When I looked at her school schedule, I told her what made sense to me. Then we got into quite an argument over whether I should do my job/internship and have her come here for a period that could be between 11-30 days depending on her exam schedule, or whether I should defy my parents' wishes and not do a job/internship and go there for a good 3-4 weeks. In the end I asserted my plan, which she saw as me picking my internship over her. To a certain extent that's true, and I have done semi-similar things before.

I'm still not totally sure why I did that but the thought of not doing this job/internship sends me into a panic attack. I figure it has something to do with this having been the plan in my mind for X years and me not being able to cope with a short-term change. Anyways, the point is, we got into a huge fight and almost broke up. She's right that I prioritized my job over guaranteed longer visits, and I know I reeaally need to make it up to her.

I was planning on having someone deliver flowers and/or cupcakes or something - I did that for Valentine's Day once and on a couple other occasions - but I'm wondering if you guys have any other ideas for some really meaningful gestures of love that I can make to save my relationship!

Grand gestures don't fix problems.

My advice that should remain accurate so long as my assumption is correct that you guys have patched things up a bit and are no longer on the verge of breaking up: Talk to her about the situation again, validate how she feels, and reassure her that you don't care about the job more than her even though you've decided to take it. It's not like you chose the job and the implications of it would be you two not being able to see each other at all (don't say this part directly to her, btw). Don't apologize for your decision. Save the meaningful gesture or w/e for when you guys do end up seeing each other and go out of your way to make the visit special especially if it's going to be much shorter as a result of this so it feels more genuine.

There's no way to know what a meaningful gesture of love would be for you. Meaningful means it is means something special to you and/or her, you can't just grab something meaningful off the shelf so to speak.