03/16/13 - 3:46 p.m.

So, my girlfriend can still be very frustrating.

I made a spreadsheet she'd requested of all the money she has to pay down on my credit card. Then I re-did it -- this all took, like, three hours -- to factor in the payments she'd made two years ago but then told me to ignore - just so her balance would be lower. But she didn't say a word about it for a week. And then today she was all exasperated, saying I'd double-counted the interest.

She meant that she wanted to see how much she was paying down each month on the principal (and not the larger total payments, a portion of which was always consumed by that month's interest). But she couldn't say that -- she couldn't find the words. She'd start a sentence, pause, sigh -- still very clear that she was dissatisfied with the spreadsheet. But unable to tell me why...

Honestly, that's the most frustrating part. Eventually we did figure it out. Then I went back in and tried to make a spreadsheet which reflected those totals -- though that was also a little frustrating, because now I'm not trying to get the mathematically correct number so much as some other layout which would exasperate her less. I've asked myself if I'd be less upset if she'd come right out and said that -- and yeah, I probably would have. It's that feeling that she doesn't understand that's frustrating.

Maybe she does understand, and I'm giving her too little credit...

I worried that it was all coming from the same root cause. I have to tip-toe around her "money issues" -- while simultaneously trying to keep everything on track, including payments on the credit card. The payments are stressful, but her not understanding the payments just compounds it exponentially.

I think maybe she does understand, and it was just a miscommunication.