Alternatively, it’s not the absence of guilt, but the presence of a more powerful emotion. Shame! The two are often conflated, and I found some of that in this article. However, they are completely different. Guilt is feeling bad about what we have said or done. Shame is feeling bad about who are. Shame is foisted upon us at a very early age. It is used as a very effective form of control, in our personal relationships and on a societal scale. It works because the human mind is all too willing to accept that we are inadequate in some way. I suspect that your girlfriend’s resistance to acknowledging her actions that were hurtful originated from her own version of this.