Journal for my therapist #1

My girlfriend is always very adamant about communication and being clear, which is something I struggle with heavily. Communicating my needs, boundaries, or even things that happen between us that make me not feel great. But it feels like every time I bring things up that have bothered me, or I've misinterpret, or things she's said - it's my fault.

It's always my fault.

I'm the bad communicator. If I had said something sooner, if I had done whatever different. I'm at fault for misreading the messages because she "would never be passive aggressive" so when I bring up that it felt that way, it's my fault for feeling that way. And I understand that I'm in control of my own emotions, but when I tell her something like that, I'm not looking for an admonishment, I'm looking for a validation on how it felt. Is it always my fault no matter what? Is that reasonable?

She gets so defensive and has to be in the right always, that it means whatever went wrong was my fault. My misunderstanding, my miscommunication, my lack of understanding. It makes me feel sick sometimes to think I'm actually that bad at communicating. And I've been trying to be better about it by being more honest and open for almost a year now, but being honest only seems to make me more upset in the end. The problem in the beginning was me not wanting to tell her when things bothered me because I didn't want to be a problem or annoying, but that led to problems too. So I started being more honest, but it feels like she's telling me that I'm not allowed to be upset at things that make me upset.

No matter what: she's not at fault. And maybe that's true? But it really feels like we're both to blame sometimes or maybe occasionally it's not me and it is her? I don't know. I'm just frustrated that it feels like I'm not allowed to be upset at her because she doesn't make mistakes, but if I keep the feelings in she gets upset at me for not communicating them when I needed to.