My 30M fiancée 31F doesn’t see the problems I see in our relationship
Desperately looking for advice here. Prefacing this by saying that my fiancée is the kindest, most loving, best person I know. She has a lot of unresolved trauma that is manifesting into our relationship and she just doesn’t see it the same way I do.
She has become extraordinarily jealous since she learned some things about my past (a long long time ago, both since she learned and when these things happened) that I do not think are a problem since I was single when these things occurred. One example is me inviting 3 female coworkers of mine to a cookout I had at my apartment complex a year before we met. These ladies all have partners and are genuinely great friends, but my fiancée doesn’t want me to interact with them at all during work. She says it makes her uncomfortable that I’ve hung out with them outside of a work setting. I am adamant that nothing romantic ever happened between us, and I stand on that. She sees every interaction I have with these ladies as “flirting” when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Part of the problem is that I am much more experienced than she is, and I believe she feels threatened by that. We live about 30 minutes outside of the city and she says she doesn’t understand why I need to go into the city, either for work, to see friends or anything else. She says it makes her uncomfortable, and I of course don’t want to do that so I’ve stopped doing these things. The problem is, now I realize that I’ve completely changed my life for the sake of her comfort. My POV is that if I’m not doing anything that is disrespectful to her or our relationship, it should be fine. I’ve brought these things up to her and have told her that I feel that her behavior is actually bordering on controlling, and she refuses to see it that way. She says I should respect and love her enough to not do things that make her uncomfortable, but I’m just trying to do normal life things like go to work and see my other friends who still live in the city. She simply does not see this as controlling, but I don’t understand how she can’t see that she is limiting what I can and cannot do for the sake of her feelings.
We have been together for years and I don’t want to throw this away. I’ve encouraged therapy to which she has said she will go, but never really does. I’m feeling like a shell of myself more and more every day. How do I get her to see that she is hurting me and that all I want is to be able to live normally without constantly fearing that I might be hurting her through these actions?