Girlfriend acting different, getting short with me, often very quiet!

[Anonymous]

Me and my girlfriend have been dating for almost a year now. It has been a wonderful relationship and an amazing summer. Unfortunately she had committed to study abroad in Germany this semester. We both agreed that our relationship was something great and that our trust for each other goes a very long way! Honestly I do trust her but something odd has been going on lately. Since we are so far apart, we obviously don't have any physical aspects to our relationship which is very hard! She has decided to come home a week early from her trip, and said that it had to do with missing home and friends and missing me!

Well that was about a month ago and she would constantly mention how she wanted to come home so badly. Well this past week, she has been acting very strangely. Usually I would always get an e-mail from her (at least one a day) and we talk on AIM for hours everyday. We have never had a hard time keeping a conversation going, and about a month ago.if someone asked, I think we could probably talk for days and never run out of things to say. Well this week, I was getting less and less e-mails from her and she was continually not online nearly as much as she usually is. And when she is online, its usually very short. Our conversations seemed to have taken a turn for the worse, she has lately been very short with me, almost angry, and when I ask if something is wrong she says nothing is. Usually we are both fueling the conversations with our input, but lately I've found it to only be me, trying very hard to get something going. She also has been a lot less "lovey" than she usually is. Almost every time we have talked in the past, she often is "spoiling" me with nice things to say but for the most part it has stopped. At the end of our conversations, she will say she loves me but it often seems very forced.

My question is.should I be worried? Is there another man in her life that she's hiding from me? Or have I just become so paranoid with the thought that its veiling what is really going on?

[Hercules]

You're definitely not being paranoid. She seems not interested now, and she's showing it in the ways teenagers in high school would, which is obviously more troubling.

Something is up. Maybe she doesn't feel the same way, and maybe she has started to like someone else (doesn't mean she's cheated on you). But then you ask, well, if she found someone else why was she so great to me when she was still on her trip. So that adds some complexity to the idea that she's found someone else.

She also seems like she's being a bit short with temper. This, combined with the obviousness that she's troubled by something, leads me to believe she's upset with you about something and she refuses to talk about it, or she's upset with herself about something and is displacing her anger on you.

I could be wrong though, but at the very least I'd say she's incredibly conflicted. Maybe you can figure out what could've happened to make her conflicted?

[Simple-Simonette]

I think you know, but are unwilling to admit to yourself what is going on. You know her better than anyone here - so what do you think? Whatever is bothering her will eventually come out and so the best you can do is just prepare for it and hope for the best.