I dated a girl (early 20's) a bit about half a year ago, while she was on a break from her ex relationship. There's about 700 km between us, in different European countries. We chat every day all day and are having kinda serious discussions about our future, but it's all in the some unknown distant future.
She is still friends and roommate with her ex that she was in a bad relationship with for about 6 years. She loves both of us, and she currently doesn't want to be in a relationship with anyone, but she says that she'll eventually love to be with me.
My problem is that she gives me some very vague and contradictory answers to some questions, and they are sometimes opposite to her actions. For example she tells me she wants to be alone, but doesn't want to get her own apartment.
When I ask her directly some questions she either simply ignores it, or replies with a conversation ender like "ok", "if you say so" or just sad emoji. If I push harder she usually gets angry, saying that I don't ever agree with her. I've tried the approach with "I" statements but that just gets her to continue with "ok" or sad emojis, or turns the discussion about how horrible she is and why do I even want her. If I try to comfort her then the conversation completely railroads and the discussion ends. If we're talking about some specific thing that I'd love to be handled differently she tells me how everyone hates everything she does.
What doesn't help is that both her family and her ex are treating her very abusively, using direct insults to get their way and she believes that kind of talk is valid about her, i.e., her mother called her a terrible daughter because she didn't look something up online the moment mother asked her to.
How can I approach conversation with her about stuff that's relevant to me, like her future relationship with me or her ex, without her completely shutting down conversation? I would love to have some answers, whatever they are, to know if there is really some future for us or not. I would also love to get to know her reasons for doing and saying contradictory stuff.
Clarifications from comments:
We usually talk via texting, sometimes video. I tried to have a serious conversation on video too, but it got similarly shut down, with mostly silence.
If I ask her what she wants - for now or short term future, she answers that she doesn't know. I can't really visit her, especially now during quarantine, but she doesn't seem to be ready to live alone. At one point she mentioned it's a bit scary, but I can't get her to continue conversation about it.
A bit more about our relationship:
We met about two years ago, became friends in the mean time, started talking regularly. At some point it became a bit intimate and she told me there are problems in her current relationship. During that time her ex left her because she's not a good enough girlfriend for him, but gave her another chance to fix the relationship. That lasted for month or two when he left her, but they were still living together to make it easier on both of them.
We met in person 2 weeks later, spent few days together but she said it was going too fast. About a month later we met again few times in a row, had a wonderful time together, but she told me even before meeting her that she's not ready for a relationship. Before that times together she was living with her parents, her ex told her she's no longer welcome back.
During that he aproached her and asked her back, promised to change She gave him a chance for about half a year, for long it was getting worse, but then he promised to get better, but decided to end it about 3 weeks ago I only have her version of the story, but during some videocalls her mother would come and start yelling at her for what seemed to be no important reason (I don't understand her native language)
A "conclusion": I followed JenInCode's answer and made an ultimatum of sorts. We started comunicating a bit better and she's made a commitment to try to fix the problems. I understand the red flags and we spent some time talking about it, she understands her problems with anger, and we'll try making it work. Since then it did get much better even though still not perfect (but it's been few days)
I didn't look at some of the points mentioned before as serious, but now I'm looking at it much more clearly. I will still ignore the advice about giving up as long as it's getting better, but I'll be much more vigilant about the signs it isn't and stop it if it gets worse.
I don't even know if other people want conclusions like this, but I always like when I see some end to the "story" so I wrote it, mods feel free to delete it if it's not appropriate.
