KATRIN BERNDT

A Grumpy Girlfriend’s Guide to a Miserable Relationship (And Zero Progress)

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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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Have you ever wondered how to make sure you stay stuck in your girlfriend grumpiness forever? How to make no progress and slowly but surely break down your good relationship? No? Hmm… well, I made you a step-by-step guide anyway.

In the last couple of days, I have been choking on all the relationship advice Instagram’s algorithm is shoving down my throat. Inner child here, childhood trauma there, attachment this, red and green flags that… I’m not even struggling in my relationship and I’m currently feeling like I’m fucked.

What I want to offer you today, is a roadmap that shows you why you’re not making progress. Why following a lot of this advice you see on social media is just covering up the real problem. There’s a good reason it isn’t working and your relationship is still strained.

Step 1: You feel bad

So you’ve noticed you’re not feeling very good in your relationship. You feel upset, anxious, doubtful, jealous, insecure, and angry a lot of the time.

To figure out why you’re feeling this way, you start scrutinizing every detail of your relationship. You observe everything your partner does and find all the explanations for your feelings in their behavior. And even if your partner isn’t the source of your feelings, they for sure aren’t doing enough to help make those feelings go away!

Now that you have an explanation as to why you feel the way you do, it’s time to find a solution.

Step 2: Identify your “needs

This one is pretty easy now that you know exactly how your partner or the relationship is contributing to or causing your negative emotions. We just need to reverse all those behaviors and make sure the triggers don’t happen.

Here’s what you NEED:

  • Your partner needs to initiate time together more often
  • Your partner needs to be interested in hearing about your anxious thoughts
  • Your partner needs to unfollow girls on social media
  • Your partner needs to help out with chores faster and more often
  • Your partner needs to make you feel loved and appreciated every day
  • Your partner needs to make you feel wanted
  • Your partner needs to be trustworthy and never lie
  • Your partner needs to stay away from females in general
  • Your partner needs to validate everything you think and feel
  • Your partner needs to communicate and listen better

Perfect. If your partner just does all of these things, all your negative emotions will go away! It’s not that much to ask for, right?

Step 3: Communicate your needs

Everyone’s favorite step! Communicating your needs to your partner, ie. telling your partner exactly what to do and how to do it in order for you to feel good. I mean, your partner is getting a play-by-play here, it shouldn’t be that difficult.

But you put in the extra effort to learn about communication, what words to use to explain to your partner what you need them to do and why, and make sure you’re very clear about why this is important to you. You might even throw in something about love languages or attachment styles while you’re at it to explain it to them. Whatever is needed to get your partner to understand that they really have to put in an effort and do these things on your list.

If your partner isn’t into it or doesn’t feel amazing about getting an instruction manual on how to act in their own home or relationship… there’s only one thing to do. Learn how to communicate better. Because if you communicate the correct way, your partner will naturally agree with you and do as you please.

And if God forbid, they don’t… red flag alert!

Step 4: Monitor your partner’s behavior

Okay, so your partner has now clearly understood what to do, how to do it, and why it’s so important to you. Your partner has full responsibility for your needs and your emotional life at this point. Fabulous. All you need to do is sit back and watch your partner do their thing!

How do we know if your partner is doing it right or not? Well, your feelings of course! If you feel good, they must be doing a good job. If you still feel bad, they’re failing.

At this point, living your own life, doing the things you want to do, and allowing your partner to live their life the way they want is out the window. This has turned into a circus where you’re the director and your partner is the need-fulfilling monkey doing the tricks.

Step 5: Find evidence for your beliefs

This is where it starts getting frustrating… You felt a little bit better in the beginning, right after communicating with your partner and them agreeing to do their best. But for some reason, it’s just not working.

No matter what your partner does, it just seems to prove your thoughts to be true:

  • They don’t love me enough
  • I’m not good enough for them
  • They want to spend time with others more than me
  • I do everything around here
  • They don’t respect me
  • Our relationship is doomed
  • This is going to spiral out of control
  • They are looking at other girls

So if you have given your partner a fool-proof guide to making you happy and fulfilling your needs, and you still feel like ass and you still find all the evidence as to why your relationship is shitty and your partner doesn’t love you… that must mean something, right?

Step 6: Repeat

Okay, time to start over.

  1. I (STILL) feel bad
  2. What are my needs? (I must have missed some!!)
  3. Communication is key (Maybe they didn’t understand?)
  4. Phew, time to sit back and relax while my partner makes me feel good
  5. FUCK, it’s not working!
  6. Repeat

And ’round and ’round we go… until you deem the relationship a failure because your partner isn’t willing or capable of meeting your needs, you can’t “communicate” well with each other, or because you just feel bad in this relationship and there’s nothing you can do to change that.

OR perhaps you keep going around on this Ferris wheel until your partner gets so fed up with constantly being policed and made responsible for your feelings in the relationship. They feel like they aren’t allowed to be themselves anymore and they decide that enough is enough.

Does this feel like what you’re doing right now?

You’re not alone. And luckily, there’s plenty of relationship advice on social media that help you identify your needs very well, communicate them to your partner very well, and then identify all the red flags in their behavior. So if you want to keep this circus going, there is no lack of people who will fan your flames, so to speak.

But if you want to get off the Ferris wheel… leave the circus… and enjoy your good relationship, this is not the way to do it.

What I offer you is a solution that you are fully in control of.
A solution that makes you feel better and allows your partner to be who they are.
A solution that doesn’t put all your power in the hands of another person.

When you feel bad, you can’t go looking outside of yourself to find the reason why. Communication is not a tool to manipulate or control your partner and get them to agree with you. Your partner can never do enough to disprove what you believe to be true, so if you don’t change your underlying beliefs (the lenses through which you view your relationship), it’ll all look the same no matter what.

You HAVE to do the internal work in order to be happy and enjoy your relationship. It doesn’t matter how much your partner LOVES and adores you and would do anything to make you happy… that is not the path to a happy, secure, and loving relationship.

When you’re ready to start, I’m ready to help you.

Click here to read about my signature 1:1 coaching program and submit your application today.

xo Katrin

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