Needabreak

Something I noticed in your post was an odd use of the passive tense. As if this is all something that is happening TO YOU, from outside.

You write: "this sort of 'take over' of my life is scary." That's only half the story though. The other half is that you are LETTING it be taken over. You are not maintaining a healthy boundary.

You write: "she gets very hurt by any free time not spent together ....." but another way of looking at it is "I always choose to coddle her emotions when she says that she is feeling hurt."

You write; " I know I'm heading for the same place if something doesn't change...." Well, you see the eventual destination for yourself if "something doesn't change," so where does that leave you? Waiting passively for "something to change"?

Each use of passive tense above indicates a place where you are abdicating responsibility to yourself, and that is a form of avoidance. Like Feelinggreat, when I read your post I thought about attachment styles. From what you describe, your girlfriend appears to have an anxious preoccupied attachment style. And you would do well to read about avoidant dismissive attachment styles for yourself. If you were coming from a secure attachment, you would have left this relationship a while ago. And frankly, if you were secure, she would not have had much interest in you.

The sad sad thing about insecure attachment is that two people suffering from this (and about half the population has an insecure attachment style so it is a very common thing) are not really in a position to help each other. Rather they end up triggering the insecurity in each other so the relationship starts to follow a common and dysfunctional script, that causes a tremendous amount of pain.

You can't do much to help her with her issues, but you can help yourself. Reading about attachment theory is as good as any place to start.