GF staying over longer than agreed

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I have this issue where I need to have my personal space. I live alone and almost every single time my gf comes over, and we've agreed beforehand that she'd leave in the morning, she ends up staying the entire day and then sleeping over another night.

I've already told her how I don't like this but I don't think she realizes how much it frustrates me, because she keeps doing it over and over. I hate to constantly be put in the positution where I have to enforce the agreements we set up. I feel like she's putting me in the position where I either have to let her stay and then resent her the entire time she's over, or be a jerk and kick her out of my place. I've mostly let her stay over and she says she'll be fine if I kick her out but I seem to be learning that when a girl says something is fine that doesn't make it so. Even if she thinks it'll be fine, my instincts that something might be offensive have ended up being right. So I think it's damaging our relationship.

Also, when I take the route of letting her stay over, I'd end up resenting her during the extra time she's there and I end up not initiating sex. And the resentment kind of carries over and I feel like I need extra time the next week to make up for the time I thought I would have to myself but then the next week the same thing happens again and again and it's like this "debt" of personal time keeps growing and the bigger it gets the more frazzled I am and the less I am able to enjoy her company, even though I still do love her and want to spend time with her. I just want her to understand that I need my personal time. She said she understood this but it was apparently not the case because she kept on infringing upon the time we set aside for me to be alone.

I didn't make a big deal about this and let her stay over these times but the extent to which it bothered me probably showed in my demeanor and the fact that I didn't initiate sex. I feel like I'm being a jerk by not wanting to see her, and that it's not fair to her because she deserves to be loved and to have someone pay more attention to her and provide her more companionship than I am providing.

Is any of this common? Is this something other aspies experience too?

i must say this is the first post i have read here that i completely identify with. i am exactly the same.

my girlfriend comes over once per week, and it is agreed that she will go home the next morning. i do love tammy, but i find i have to put aside what i want to do in order to entertain her.
it is ok for one night, because i usually trawl the net for things that she is interested in, and think up things to talk about, and find songs to play for the night she is coming over.

when she comes over, i exhaust my supply of entertainment, and thankfully that is usually coincident with bed time.

the next morning, i have little to say, and i hate feeling other peoples boredom as it stifles me and i can not do anything but also feel bored until i get her home.

i never feel bored by myself, and i resent other people stifling my natural tendency to spontaneously do what i want to do. i think it is rude of me to ignore her and get on with my other stuff which she is not interested in, so i postpone doing what i want to do while she is here, and the longer it goes on, the more i feel that there is a pressure that builds within me where i feel ripped off with respect to my freedom to do as i please.

she wants to get married, but i could not even consider it because living with someone else would be hell for me. i understand what you mean by "frazzled". it is like a sleep deprivation in a way. time on my own is replenishing and very necessary for me, and the longer i am deprived of it, the more i feel all socialled out and like i am working too hard and it feels like the air around me becomes stuffy and i just want to break away into the clarity and freshness of solitude.

i am very lucky that tammy stays with me considering the fact that it will never be a normal relationship like where a couple live together and watch tv on the couch while cuddling and stuff.

that is what she wants. she wants a life together, and i tell her that maybe when i am old and have few ideas what to do, it may be possible.

sometimes she stays over for 2 nights, and the day in between is a mentally claustrophobic experience to me. it is like being closed in a box where i can not move and i just sit it through. i am sure i am not very impressive during that time.

i have said to her that she maybe should seek someone else that can give her what she wants (constant companionship), because i do not want to deprive her of a fulfilling life, but she is stuck on me and i truly do love her as well.

it is a quandary to be sure.

send her over to my place! I cant find a GF, i would be thrilled if i had a lady that wanted to hang around.

some people really take others for granted

she would not like you. you are prepared to take someone you do not know.

you just want a girl no matter who she is.

you are desperate and will take anyone.

do not misunderstand me. anyone is valuable and deserved of love, but if you just say "yeah i'll take you" without knowing her, then she will not value your acceptance of her.

tammy knows that i will work hard to give her the resources that will make her life easy.
she knows that i love her but i have impediments. she truly believes i love her and she is correct, and she would spit on your invitation for me to chuck her out in your direction.

find a girl who loves you. i can be loved even though i am severely lacking in social ability.
you seem to find it hard to be loved even though you are superior to me in social development.

maybe i am a nicer person than you who is like a customer at a butcher shop.

OP, I hope you already know this, but don't ever get married... If you can't stand being around her all the time, that is.

Chadmaster, I can't speak for Faspie, but I have exactly the same issues with personal space, and I've lost boyfriends to exactly this confusion - I don't respond this way because I don't value the other person, but because interaction with somebody doesn't come naturally to me. It takes a lot of effort on my part and I need a recharge period I can only get when I'm by myself. Otherwise I also start feeling frustrated and trapped. Add tactile integration issues where being touched too much makes me freak out, and I can be very glad to see the back of a guy even if I really care for him.

Faspie, I sympathise completely. Every time I told my last boyfriend I was having an overwhelmed sort of time and would have liked to just sit quietly with him without talking, he'd feel rejected and start singing to himself to force me to pay attention to him. I'm entering a new relationship right now and the best sign is that my new guy is sympathetic when I explain where I'm coming from.

I couldn't see a relationship working out if I couldn't get someone to acknowledge my needs, so I'd advise you to start trying different strategies to try get your girlfriend to understand. Maybe send her to this website. I've found you also have to explain to NT people that you respond in ways that they don't. Remember she can't refer to similar experiences of her own to understand you because she's never felt this way. You'll only come across as a jerk if the only way she has to contextualise your response is to compare it to something like 'I also get tired of being around people when I have to sit around my boring relatives at family reunions. Does this mean my boyfriend feels like I'm a boring relative?' You have to explain that it's an entirely different thing - I hope I'm expressing this clearly.

Good luck!

I can relate to all this, but I think the problem stems from feeling like you have to entertain someone.That could be my resistance to relationships. I guess it's optimal to be with someone you can be comfortably alone with. The idea of having to be "on" all the time is awful to consider. I do share my space with my son, but as he is an Aspie he is content to be at the computer indulging his special interest, which is military history.

I have this problem as well. It's one of the drawbacks of being in a relationship.

My GF is very understanding of my need for personal space. If I need time to myself, I just need to say so; on average, I can see my GF every other day/2-3-5 days for about a month and then I need two or three weeks to unwind and do my own thing.

I find that the time I enjoy most with my GF is when I've just come back from a break and I'm fully recharged. On the whole, I feel that the things we do together (days out/dining at resturants/theatre trips) are worth the occasional inconvenience of seeing her when I don't particularly feel like it.

OP, show your gf what you've written here. It should explain your dilemma pretty succinctly to her.

Have you tried negotiating your alone time with her? I realise that you need some alone time to recharge and your own space, like most aspies do, but maybe she also feels bit lonely because she feels that she's not spending enough time with you. My NT friends who have had girlfriends, have said that some girlfriends get upset if they only spend one day a week with them.

It's exactly the same for me. I never get bored when I'm alone. I identify with everything you said completely. What if you just ignore her during the day inbetween?

I wouldn't recommend that. Ignore a brother or a sister, but don't ignore a girlfriend.

I'd be gutted if my boyfriend didn't want to spend all his time with me.

I agree. You could also just talk to her about it. If you communicate better in written form, I think what you've written here is great...type her a note or an email or something. If you need personal space or aren't ready for spending that much time together, that's not too much to ask.

i felt like that with my first GF sometimes. I think maybe you should try to see her more often but for shorter periods of time. I guess it depends on logistics though. Good luck

I could see this becoming a problem for me too. I think the best way for us to deal with it would be to discuss the feelings and issues as they crop up, rather than letting resentment simmer. I think I have a tendency to let resentment simmer, which is bad.