Tell Me About It: Time to part with this too-touchy girlfriend

Question:

My girlfriend is extremely oversensitive and I don't know how to broach it with her. I'm tired of walking on eggshells because she might take a joke wrong, and I find I'm no longer myself around her.

I know you will ask me to look at myself to see if I'm the problem - I'm not. This is affecting every aspect of her life, including her job and family. She is always up in arms about her mom favoring her sister (not true) or taking an innocent comment from her boss and blowing it way out of proportion. Forget making a joke - I've learned the hard way.

However, part of oversensitivity is defensiveness, so it's a bit of a Catch-22. How does one broach the subject with someone when it is sure to go badly? I don't want to dump her, but it's heading that way. Is being oversensitive so ingrained that someone can't change the behavior? Part of me thinks this is a lost cause. She's so sweet and loyal, and I feel terribly guilty that I am so close to giving up on her.

Answer: Actually, you are the problem: You're looking for reasons to stay with someone whose companionship you openly don't enjoy.

Your girlfriend is who she is. She's touchy, defensive, punitive and not receptive to reason. She is also giving you no cause to believe she wants to change, intends to change or thinks she needs to change. History says it's quite the contrary: Defensiveness is just resistance to any suggestion that she needs to change.

Breaking up with people is no fun, and it's even harder when the person you're dumping is showing signs of being vulnerable, ill, damaged or emotionally compromised in any other way. For your girlfriend to have her defenses jacked this high, and to be so resistant to holding herself accountable for anything, there has to be a fragile core indeed that she's so intent on protecting.

But you can't let pity obscure the truth: You don't love being with her, and a boyfriend who doesn't love being with her isn't what she needs to get happy, or get well, or whatever she needs to get. Even though it will be painful for her, please allow her to feel the full consequences of expecting the world to do things her way. Tell her you're through tiptoeing. Compassion demands it.