My GF (28F) and I (30M) have been together for about 2 years.
We don’t live together, but we’ve talked about it. We both live in town and the cost of living is only going up, so we could both save money if we got a place together. Although Singapore has pretty good public transportation some places are not public transport friendly my GF doesn’t drive.
This means that when we want to go somewhere out of town, I am the one driving.
Now, this doesn’t bother me too much, except my GF always seems to get motion sick when I’m driving. Because of her motion sickness, she almost always rides her bike to get around town.
She pretty much refuses to use the train or a bus, and she will only use taxis or a Grab if she really needs to. This also means that if we want to hang out together, I pretty much always need to go to her place.
The last handful of times we drove to Johor to go hiking or for whatever reason, I’ve gotten more frustrated with her getting motion sick. I don’t think I am a bad driver and I don’t drive recklessly or overly aggressive. If we are in traffic and there are a lot of starts and stops, she’s complaining. She can’t look at her phone to help with directions because it makes her motion sickness worse.
She pretty much just curls up and closes her eyes because she says it makes her feel better. But it makes me feel like more of a chauffer because I can’t even talk to her while we are driving.
I’ve asked her to take Dramamine or something similar to help ease her symptoms, but she says she’s tried it many times and it doesn’t help and sometimes even makes her feel worse. But she’s constantly criticizing my driving and telling me that I need to drive differently to not make her motion sick, but without offering any actual helpful advice on how to drive differently. And considering she doesn’t drive, I don’t think she fully grasps that I can’t just change the way I drive and expect every other car on the road to cooperate.
This past weekend she wanted to go visit some of her friends in Malaysia. It’s a little over an hour drive. I told her I really didn’t want to go because I know she will get motion sick and blame my driving and I don’t want to deal with that. She got mad at me because she felt like I wasn’t being considerate of her illness and that I am being selfish by not wanting to do something that she wants to do.
I just feel like she’s not offering me any real solutions other than “You just need to change the way you drive.” I told her it’s not enjoyable for me to drive her places because she’s not very fun to be around in the car. I told her she’s either criticizing my driving, complaining about being motion sick, or closing her eyes and not talking to me. All of which makes me feel like I’m just a driver and not a partner.
We didn’t go to see her friends and now she’s pissed at me and thinks I’m being unfair to her because she can’t control her motion sickness and that I should be more accommodating to her.
