Please help me

[Benji]

Ok a bit of background, been with my girlfriend who has severe dyspraxia for four and a half years now and we are both finding it tough.

I do try my hardest to be patient and understanding and for the most part I like to think I do quite well but lately we have been having a few issues.

I know when her dyspraxia comes into play for the most part but there have been issues and arguments where I think its just down to her personality and she seems to think its her dyspraxia.

For example she usually repeats herself in conversations when she cannot put across what she means and I totally understand and recognize when this is happening, but today I bought us two cinema tickets forgetting to use my student ID so it was a bit more expensive. I do this on occasion and I told her not to worry and that i would pay the extra, she kind of gave me a telling off to which I replied that id paid the extra and not to worry about it. She went on to repeat the same thing another three times with which I kind of lost my patience a little and asked her why she felt the need to keep on even though id given an answer.

Her answer was that it was her dyspraxia, now at the start of the relationship before I knew anything I would sometimes think she was making this up. But now im thinking perhaps without knowing it she is classing these instances as her dyspraxia when in fact its just her personality.

Sorry for the long post but these kinds of things are almost putting an end to our relationship.

Any advice would be great.

Thank you

Ben

[AlleyCat]

It seems as if your girlfriend has probably developed a personality trait because of her dyspraxia. It's actually very common for people with dyspraxia to develop anxiety- in my experience, this is likely to develop because of how other people respond to things someone does which are directly linked to him or her having dyspraxia. I'm not saying this has got anything to do with how you might have responded to her in the past- your girlfriend tending to get anxious about situations may well have a lot more to do with how family members and people at school might have treated her. For example, when I was very young I apparently had a happy-go-lucky personality (so perhaps that was meant to be my natural personality), but as a result of bullying and people being impatient with me because of things I couldn't help (due to having dyspraxia), by the time I reached secondary school age I'd turned into someone who worried a lot.

Going on and on about things is actually something which appears in a list of symptoms of dyspraxia in a book I've got- I know that when I do this, it's because I'm worried about something and me 'going on' about it is probably a way of externalising that. I find I'm more likely to worry about something if someone responds to a situation in an irritable way, even if the situation isn't something which I caused- for example, if my dad messes something up, he often acts in a tetchy way, which might then cause me to worry. So, although you told your girlfriend you would pay for the tickets, if you sounded cross (even though you would have been cross with yourself, rather than her), it might have triggered her into worrying and going on and on. Of course you might not have seemed cross about it at all- I'm just trying to think of a reason why your girlfriend might have acted in this way. Hope some of this makes sense.

[Benji]

It does make alot of sense actually, thank you very much.