KATRIN BERNDT

A Letter to the Struggling Girlfriend

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I'm a certified coach and work with grumpy girlfriends who want to dump the grump and enjoy their good relationships.

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Hey, girlfriend.

What painful fantasies is your brain forcing you to live through today? Your partner being attracted to someone else? You just not being good enough for them? Or perhaps your partner leaving you and later finding out they had been cheating all along?

Do you ever think about how easy your partner’s life must be?

I mean, we’re pretty good at making our partner’s lives harder hehe, but just in general. I don’t know about your partner but if I had to guess how often my partner thought about me cheating on him… I’d probably say like twice. During our 8-year relationship. And that was in his dreams while he was sleeping. Me? Oh, probably like 2,915 of the 2,920 days we’ve spent together.

I used to get provoked by my partner’s lack of anxiety, worry, and fear. “Am I the only one who cares enough to see all the problems and dangers and risks in this relationship?”

Maybe you can relate.

But what I want you to know, as someone who has made it out on the other side, is that you can actually learn from your partner and become a more relaxed, go-with-the-flow kind of person. Just because it’s not what you’ve been programmed to be so far in life, doesn’t mean you don’t have the power to change it going forth.

The future is unwritten.

When you struggle with anxiety, I know that doesn’t exactly calm you down. Uncertainty is usually a big part of the problem. But uncertainty doesn’t only mean that it can all go to shit. It also means that it could turn out better than you expected.

You can’t fully control what happens, you can only control your part in it. But no matter what circumstances life throws at you tomorrow, your part is the only part that truly matters. Your part is the part that controls how you feel, what you do, and what you make things mean. These are the things that define your life experience… not what happens around you.

I know how overwhelming, hopeless, and confusing it can feel. Where to start? What to do? But what if the worst-case scenario happens?

What I want to tell you with this letter is what I wish I could have told myself a couple of years ago… and that is that there will come a day when the chaos in your mind has turned into elevator music in the background of your happy life… there will come a day when that surge or jolt in your stomach when they mention another girl’s name is as dramatic and scary as a hiccup… there will come a day when you can observe your urge to engage in jealous, toxic behaviors and simply choose not to.

Would I have believed this a couple of years ago? Hm, probably not. I would have thought that it would require things from me that I wasn’t willing to do. I would have thought that it required dumbing myself down. Ignoring obvious facts. Being okay with things I didn’t want to be okay with.

Why? Because in some twisted way, in the midst of all the shame and guilt, I think I also took pride in the kind of person I was. As if the grumpiness and jealousy were a side-effect of being an intelligent, realistic, and observant person.

So in order to overcome the jealousy, anxiety, and grumpiness, I would have to let go of being a smart person and just live in a fantasy world where everything is rainbows and daisies and be completely blind to what was true in the world.

Have you ever felt this way? Maybe not. But perhaps there are other things you think this change will require of you that you aren’t willing to commit to. Changes you aren’t willing to make to be a happy, relaxed girlfriend.

But hear me when I say this — there is nothing impressive, realistic, or smart about torturing yourself and living in constant, unnecessary suffering in your good relationship. Learning how to enjoy yourself and just be happy despite the uncertainty of the future is the most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And it doesn’t require that you let go of or hide any of your strengths or positive traits.

Happy people aren’t dumber than unhappy people.

Happy people don’t pretend that bad things don’t happen.

Happy people simply choose not to add unnecessary suffering on top of the pain they are supposed to feel if something bad were to happen in their life.

So, girlfriend.

I know you’re struggling right now. I know it feels overwhelming. I know you doubt it will ever get better than this. But it can. You are just as capable as I was. You are just as capable as all my other girlfriend clients. You have everything you need inside of you to make this change.

What to do, when to do it, and how… well, that’s where I come in.

Let me help you navigate these struggles and find the way out of this grumpiness maze. All you need to do is hold on to the belief that it’s possible. As long as you believe that it’s possible for you to make these changes and you take action from that belief, you’ll be a happy, relaxed girlfriend before you know it.

Click here to read more about working with me.

xo Katrin

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