Hi, my girlfriend and I aren’t seeing eye to eye on something I said and I wanted to know who was in the wrong.
On Sunday we had received an invite from my cousin who’s getting married. So last night, my girlfriend was telling me about how she needs to buy some stuff for the wedding. When she mentioned heels I just made a joke about how we might have to speed up our timeline because she’ll catch the bouquet. We started talking about our own plans.
To provide context, we’ve been together for two years. We love each other, we’re committed to each other, we’ve discussed our long term futures in the past and agreed we trust ourselves to know when to take the next step.
We were talking about where and how we’d want ours to be, and then as a joke she said she didn’t want to scare me, theres no pressure. I laughed too , and we kind of reiterated that we’ll know when the time has come, that we’ll know when to take the dive. Just as an example I said that yeah for me in a marriage kids are important (we’ve both discussed that we want kids), and that I’d want to be sure they were raised well. She took it the wrong way and got offended and said if I meant she wouldnt be a good mother. I said thats not what I meant just that we love each other and know we’re great for each other, and should also be clear that we’d be good as parents before we start the next chapter. She was still hung up on her interpretation of my words and went to sleep angry.
She’s been a bit cold with me all of today, and I don’t really know how else to explain what I said. So I wanted to know if I was the AH in what I said?
Info
What’s your definition of “raised well”?
I don’t know how else she should interpret “you want to make sure you’d be good parents”. That means right now you’re not sure thay you’d make good parents and that includes her.
INFO: What exactly did you say?
What did you actually mean?
This is a topic in premarital counseling. You should look into it.
More info required. What exactly did you say? And did you discuss what well raised means?
YTA. Your title is misleading. It’s not like you had a conversation about parenting styles or how you’d handle certain situations and had a disagreement. You said ‘kids are important and you’d want to make sure they were raised well’ which is obviously a given (no one goes into having children with the idea of deliberately raising them poorly, that’s asinine). Therefore, saying it to your gf suggests you think she wouldn’t raise them well, and she is rightly pissed off by the implication.
However – if your gf is broadly opposed to talking about the way you might raise a potential family then that is a different issue altogether.
INFO: You said you want to be on the same page about kids. But you never said how you disagree, or even if you disagree. Just that she was offended by what you said. You didn’t actually say she was going to be a bad mother. She may have interpreted it that way, but without knowing any info about how (or if) ye disagree on kids it’s hard to say whether or not she was just reading between the lines, or misinterpreting.
The issue at hand is poor communication and your post is weirdly specific on context for how the conversation took place but extremely vague about what was actually said and what you meant.
YTA
Your communication needs a lot of work and you can’t even take responsibility for that when your girlfriend has made it clear the way you are communicating is a problem.
Couples counseling asap. It sounds like you BOTH communicate exceedingly poorly and a therapist can help with that.
An entire backstory for how the conversation started and then no details about there actual conversation…come back here and tell us exactly what was said
“my girlfriend and I aren’t seeing eye to eye on something I said and I wanted to know who was in the wrong”
Here’s where your problem starts. Does one of you have to be wrong? Are you just trying to make sure it’s not you?
If every disagreement has to end with one person right and one person wrong, you’re not ready to get married.
True. She’s having an emotional reaction to something you said. Assuming there’s no pattern of her constantly making you walk on eggshells, you could just go hear her point of view and reassure her.
NTA for bringing up the topic, but you’ve got poor communication skills.
You would have done better to say that you want to make sure you’re both on the same page regarding parenting techniques, so there’s no confusion for you two or the potential kids.
You are not good at communicating what you actually mean. I still don’t understand what you meant to say and I read all your replies.
No wonder she is upset with you.