I’m in a long distance relationship (about 5–6 months in). I’m a high school senior about to graduate, and she’s a freshman in college, we’re both 18. My girlfriend struggles with anxiety and overthinking, and I’m trying to understand if I’m in the wrong here or if this is more of her overthinking.
Today around noon, I told her I was going to go eat. I’m pretty sure I didn’t explicitly say we’d call after, but it might’ve been implied, I honestly don’t fully remember. After I went to eat, a friend called me, and I ended up hanging out and lost track of time. What I thought would be about an hour turned into around 3 hours.
When I got back and called her, she seemed off. After talking more, she admitted she felt sad because I didn’t update her that I was going to be busy longer or that I was hanging out with someone else. From her perspective, she said that if roles were reversed, she would’ve kept me updated.
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. A few weeks ago, I told her at night that I’d call her, but then a minute after, I got invited to play volleyball. I told her shortly after that I couldn’t call anymore and asked to call the next day. Later that night, I tried calling her after volleyball, but she was asleep and I woke her up, and she was upset that I changed plans and didn’t clearly communicate everything. I was kind of frustrated because I did update her, it was just after and not before.
We’ve talked about this before. She tends to want frequent updates and reassurance, while I don’t naturally think to update every time my plans change. I feel like I do communicate, just not to the level she expects.