My girlfriend left me last night. She has her reasons, I made a mistake and I don't blame her for that. The reason I'm writing this blog is because I dropped her off at work this morning (we've been living together for a year) and since I got home I've been cleaning the house for hours.

I understand that it's normal to want a clean house and to keep things in order to some extent. But when I clean, I will clean each dust particle I see and I'll just keep moving onto new things all over the place until I'm exhausted.I don’t know when to stop and I can’t just clean a ‘normal’ amount.

I'm blogging because I'm not cleaning because I want to make my house look nice. My motivation is actually that in some part of my mind I imagine she'll come back to me if I just clean enough. Or maybe now that I am cleaning my house, I have control over my life and my situation even though I couldn't stop her from leaving me. Maybe I can scrub away the mistakes I've made. I try so hard to be a good girlfriend to her–maybe even too hard–and then I'm too prideful and stubborn when I've made a mistake because I don't want to admit that I've done anything wrong because hurting her feelings kills me inside. It's not because I think I've done nothing wrong–I know I have–I just hate to admit that I'm the cause of her pain and unhappiness sometimes. I want to be perfect for her, which is impossible. It's hard to realize you're human, sometimes, when you just want to be the best mate and be good enough for someone else. I'm insecure. I just want to hide out in my house and clean all day. And what's more frustrating is that I know all the things I should be doing. I know I should just apologize (better/again) and try to fix the problems instead of hiding away. I know that cleaning my house won't make my girlfriend love me. What am I doing?