I'm starting to question my decision.
if youre questioning your decision, and going back and forth, id really encourage you to post on the Bettering board for the time being and talk more specifically about whats going on. you can do so, even as you plan to exit the relationship. its easy to get confused by and lost in the push/pull.
its important to consider whether your girlfriend has a fear of intimacy, or if she may be expressing that she feels smothered and has a hard time dealing with what she considers to be neediness (it could also be both!). ive been there myself, many times.
a person with an insecure attachment style tends to be needy in a relationship. and the irony is that needy people are easily overwhelmed by the needs of others. if shes saying to her friends "he says he loves me too often", she may be experiencing those expressions as an obligation. similarly, a person with low self esteem may have a difficult time accepting compliments, may find expressions of love to be over the top, or obligatory, or even insincere.
when a person with an insecure attachment style has a partner who threatens to leave, they may be threatened by the prospect of that loss, and their own neediness and insecurities may return to the forefront. most people in general have a tendency to see a loved one who is planning to, or has left them, through rose colored glasses.
a person with an insecure attachment style may have difficulty seeing the entire trajectory of the relationship, and instead react (or overreact) to whats going on in the moment. simply put, your girlfriend may be more attracted, in her way, to this more detached version of you, and reacting to and compensating for that.
loving someone with an insecure attachment style is a difficult balance. there are dos and donts, but its not something you can cure or love away (and trying to do so may cause that person to resent you).
This is proving to be incredibly difficult on my emotions, because she's starting to be incredibly kind and loving, starting to idealize me like she did when we started dating.
regardless of whether you are leaning toward staying or going, its important to see this for what it is, not what you want it to be. a lot of us long for the honeymoon days of the relationship, try to return to it, and at best see fleeting glimpses of it (our partners do the same thing). those days are over.
dont over invest in idealization, that is temporary. determine whether or not the relationship is fundamentally broken, accept that it is over, grieve the loss, and detach from the words, or determine what went wrong and how (if possible) it can be resolved.