Work Text:
Hi, Reddit. Long time lurker, first time poster. There’s no other way to start this, so please bear with me. Some of this is as confusing to you as it is to me, so I am giving as much backstory as needed.
My girlfriend works for a super secretive organization that has her under airtight NDAs. She can’t talk about her work, she can’t talk about most of her coworkers, she can’t talk about upper management. She was very upfront about how exhaustive her hours can be during crunch periods, and how little she could communicate with me while in the “Base,” as she calls it. I was okay with it, especially after we moved in together and I saw some of those paystubs. I thought I had a good job as a union electrician, but she makes about twice as much as me, including a full benefits package. I won’t lie and say it didn’t bother me, because it did, especially when I don’t even know what she does. It’s caused a few arguments, but it always boils down to she can’t talk about it, so I wouldn’t talk to her until I was done ruminating just so I wouldn’t start anything new.
Yesterday, however, she came back from a weekend-long shift, blasting music at six in the morning. It woke me up, and I won’t lie. I was in a foul mood, especially since I was up late last night cleaning the place so it wouldn’t be messy when she got back. She was singing and dancing until she saw me, and she turned the music down as I got to the kitchen. I was going to ask her to keep it down, but she beat me to the punch.
“I’m breaking up with you!” She almost sang it, drinking orange juice out of the box, which she knows I hate. I was so surprised that I stuttered, but she stuttered with me, and when I started to speak, she was able to anticipate exactly what I was going to say. As it went on, I was surprised at first, and then got more and more annoyed. But she matched me right until I was at my wits end, still grinning like it was funny, then asked if I was going to listen to what she had to say.
I realized I didn’t have a choice, so I said that I did. She listed a bunch of things off her head like she was reciting a grocery list- I’m too abrasive, too serious, I dull her spark, I’m not good in a crisis, etc. She says that I don’t understand her and what she goes through with work, and that I should be with someone who isn’t gone so much because it clearly bothers me. She said some other things about how it’s not personal, or an attack, and had such a grasp on the conversation and what I was going to say that I couldn’t even argue. She danced around and then out of the apartment, grabbing some things before I left.
I was bewildered, and watched her leave the apartment building, then get into her coworkers car, the one that I don’t like. And It’s not because I’m worried she’ll cheat on me with him, but because he’s fucking bizarre and not a good influence. The first, and only, time I met him (and her other coworkers, to be honest) was at a company barbeque. He made a little comment about eating for two, so I asked him, mostly as a joke, if he was pregnant because you never know these days with those gender warriors. But he kind of giggled and said, no, it’s for the alien symbiote latched to his spinal cord, then wandered off. Fucking weird. And he has these big glasses with the lenses popped out, which are difficult to miss, and he was always pushing them up with his finger. When I asked my girlfriend why he wears lensless glasses, she said something about the weight centering him. I asked if the alien symbiote fixed his eyesight and she side-eyed me, shrugged, and said “probably.”
I told her later, in the car, that I didn’t want her hanging around him and she rolled her eyes, which I saw as disrespectful. She said that she has to work closely with him because their two departments (which she can’t talk about) are basically the same thing so they run into each other a lot. I don’t know why I didn’t like that, but it sparked another argument. I just don’t like her working with those delusional weirdos, it can’t be safe for her, no matter how much money she makes.
This is the first time I broached the topic of her staying home before we get married. She reacted very poorly, but I don’t understand why she wants to continue. I doubt she uses her sociocultural anthropology degree in that underground bunker, and she’s always gone for long periods of time. She can't be happy with that arrangement. We have enough saved up for a house, and enough for her to take a year or two off if we have a baby. It’s basically the next step in our relationship, but she doesn’t seem to want it.
Now she wants to break up out of the blue when our relationship has been stellar, except for a few hiccups. I just want her to be happy, and I can make her happy, I know it, but she has to let me. I will admit I called her a few times and left some voicemails about how concerned I was. She was gone, after breaking up with me, with her weird coworker, and her behavior that morning was strange. I stayed up through the night, and only dozed off a few times on the couch.
In the morning, she returned, looking exhausted, threw her backpack on the ground, and asked me what the date was. No concern for me, no acknowledgment that I was clearly worried and exhausted about her. I had called off from work and she didn’t even seem to notice I shouldn’t be there. I asked her if that was all she had to say to me, but her eyes perked up and she looked excited, saying that this was new! And she asked again what the date was, then looked at her phone and did a little jump.
Then she asked me if we broke up “this time,” because "all the times bled together" and she lost count of the days she did and the days she didn’t. I told her I wanted to talk to her about it and she seemed relieved but waved me off. She thinks everything’s already been said, and she doesn’t owe me anymore, but I called bullshit. We have a whole relationship that she’s throwing away overnight, and I started to get a weird feeling about that coworker.
So I asked her about him and she said all the information is as new to him as it’s to me, he just “handles high stress situations better.” That pissed me off, so I asked her what she meant, and she dusted herself off like her standing by the coatrack was proof enough. It was infuriating. But she wouldn’t even let me speak, just skipped over to our bedroom and gathered some of her things in a backpack while I tried to argue.
Before she left again, she told me we could talk later but now she needs those cheap hashbrowns they serve at a local diner- apparently they’d been out yesterday but got a new shipment this morning. I don't know if she's going with that coworker or if she's with someone else or by herself. She took her own car.
So, reddit… am I cooked? Even if she was in a time loop, which I think she was, even if she can’t talk about it- that’s all proof that her job is dangerous and she needs to quit. And breaking up with me still came out of nowhere, she just relived the same day and didn’t experience anything new. Why would reliving one day be enough to break up? What did I even do? What could I have done, and why would she blame a version of me I can’t remember? I don’t even know what to do. We’ve had a fantastic three years together, and she’s throwing it all away. I wanted a family with this woman. I think I still do, but I don’t know where to go from here. How can I get her to see that breaking up is a huge mistake? How can I show her I’m better than that weird coworker? What can I do to salvage this?