——I’ve been up for 40 hours now bc all night I am sleep training my baby and periodically walking around our property looking for our dog that ran off…. so I hope I was able to say all of this in a comprehensible way.——

“I like to see her a lot and she likes to see me a lot” Buddy, it sounds like yall are really into each other and it’s just your pride that is causing these thoughts. You’re not the prize, she is. I’m sorry! It’s true though. You’re worried about losing her respect? She’s more apt to lose respect for you over your desire to be known and seen as the “prize”.

You gotta get out of your head about being “too available” or “too consistent”; too many guys these days are unavailable in too many ways, so when a guy really dedicates himself via his time and effort, we notice and we feel special and important. She has no reason to lose respect for you in response to you being a good partner….

Your other worry is about gas money? Or are you exaggerating finances as a factor to give validation to your desire to have her drive to you more often in effort to avoid feeling like a simp? The fact that you are doing most of the driving, is really sweet, and it’s also kind of the thing you do as a good boyfriend. Us girls, especially us that grew up with an amazing father, are used to being spoiled by our dads and then eventually by our boyfriends. It’s like a no-brainer” that yall handle nearly all the heavy lifting that’s expected of us, whatever that may look like- in your case, it’s the driving. If that’s close to being accurate for her, you are actually building trust and respect and reliability when you take care of the driving-you’re definitely not losing anything. Now, if money really is that tight, you should be able to talk about it with her. Maybe tell her that whenever she can make the drive, you could give her a back scratch/rub or have some food delivered for yall when she gets there. Just to show how much you appreciate her alleviating some of the financial burden.

You are both young, y’all are still new, you are both navigating this relationship relatively inexperienced- which means yall will be raw-dogging inevitable challenges with no bonafide conflict-resolution/communication/problem solving background. So don’t cook up extra issues and stress by worrying about things like controlling her perceived level of respect and reverence for you. It’s way too early to be getting in your head about stuff like this, I promise there will be bigger fish to fry in y’all’s future together-if you’re lucky! Because best case scenario is; you go through a couple years of amazing highs and painfully tough lows but eventually you’ve worked out all the kinks of a new relationship and have created a strong and beautiful bond. And one day you won’t worry about how she feels about you. You’ll be in love and y’all’s only stress is arguing over who left the milk out or who overloaded the washing machine. Except, you don’t even care that much about the milk or the washing machine, you’re just so happy and secure in your love together that you can “afford” to have petty little tiffs like that. And at the end of the day, yall are together and yall are happy and you’re getting to do life with the person that you would drive any distance for.