If my girlfriend rejects my things should I just quit trying to bring our worlds together?

I met a girl from my past just a couple of years ago. Both of us were in rather low places in life and on disability. In spite of not being a perfect match, she and I fell in love and rented an apartment together.

I do not actually intend to move in with her until we are married if it comes to that, but she needed somewhere to live (she was homeless and a victim of domestic violence)—because her standards were rather high, our apartment is really beyond what we can comfortably afford for now and exceeds my/our income.

I did / do have access to a lot of my things when I was much better off than I am today. She and I bought a few furniture items together but most of it was my things.

However, from the first few of my items I brought in, I found that she was rebuffing them. Two elegant wall display cases that looked custom made for the apartment—were by the door—my GF “didn’t want them.”

She accepted about half of the things I’ve brought over the past few months rejecting even perfectly fine, practical, even elegant and costly items that really do look good in the apartment. I need these things around me because they are a part of who I am and help me to remember and dream about the past and bring her into my world—a world which is fast disappearing. She even rejects my items and spends much-needed money on similar but inferior items.

I have done a lot for her in paying for and furnishing/decorating the apartment and most of the cost is falling on me.

For now, the last straw was this— a therapist (psychologist) explained to me why she was doing this, and this woman’s need for control and how to reason / compromise with her, which I made a few efforts at talking with her about. But one of the most expensive items I had—two Tiffany / glass candlesticks (which I’d paid $150 apiece for back in 1999) were gone from the mantle. I liked them because they were colorful, artistic, and “gay” in the original sense—and brought a carousel – like splash of color to a mantlepeice which we were trying to evoke that kind of ambiance.

Eventually she told me she had broken one of them. Well, I was fine with that, even, until I found out that she was in the act of removing them. What really irked me, however, was that she didn’t even preserve all the pieces (I can sometimes fix glass) and she had put the other one, fragile as it is with its long stem—in a plastic grocery store bag tied up like trash with a few other porcelain items, a copper alarm clock, and a few items from walmart.

This was the last straw for me and I said I was taking everything of mine out of the apartment that I knew she didn’t want—and was bringing a storage container for her to place anything and everything she didn’t want. I also took a few things of mine that she probably DID want.

She said that she didn’t want/need my “things” but only needed me (she is somewhat codependent)— I told her that my things were a part of who I am and I need that connection to my past and that I hadn’t had space to use or display these things for a long time. She said I could bring my things but she just didn’t know how she wanted the apartment to look yet (without my things its pretty bland).

To be honest I’ve now lost interest in the apartment. I am thinking about putting my things back in storage and just letting her have it. But I don’t want a “taking my toys and going home” attitude. The apartment is my home, too— a psychologist I know told me that this woman has, more-or-less- HGTV tastes—not bad and often ecclectic in a very aesthetic way but nothing really of her own—and doesn’t understand or relate to art or unusual items—regarding it as clutter or ‘nick nacks”. My tastes are more like from a Metropolitan Museum of Art gift catalogue with a generous dose of nautical seaside resort, English-American, and folk pieces. There is nothing inharmoneous about our tastes and I make sure my things and her tastes coincide or complement.

My world is fast disappearing and I need to keep a reminder about the way things once were with the hope they will be again. I accept her things. But she wants the apartment spare and boring. Unless its to pay very high prices for things we don’t need and already have.

Should I just move all my things out? Would that be mean?