How to deal with planning with my (30M) girlfriend's (29F) demands?

I (30M) have been dating my (29F) girlfriend for a year and a half.

She is a shift worker, working less than 40 hours a week at irregular schedules. She might have days off during the week and work weekends, or vice versa. In between the shifts, vacation, sick days, the schedule is complete chaos in comparison to me.

On the other hand, I work a 9-5 which sometimes demands more than 40 hours a week. Before we started our relationship I had a very organized schedule with days dedicated to working out, hobbies, dating and friendships.

I had been wanting a relationship for a very long time and when we met, I totally fell for her. She is perfect in a lot of senses, but the one point of contention was the schedule - in order to meet, I had to totally forget my scheduled lifestyle and schedule my life around her shift work.

This difficult because of her needs, if we meet less than 3 times in a week, she withdraws and starts to complain that we did not see each other enough. She also plans meeting her family and friends a lot - we meet her family once every two weeks on average, and have dinner with her friends a few times a month too.

She feels the need to make plans for things weeks in advance, sometimes even longer and I need to agree to plans so far away that I would not know how busy I would be.

The truth is, I am fine with meeting less and making sure that we have proper quality time (uninterrupted by friends and family) and I feel like our relationship is too young to have such big involvement from friends and family.

On some weeks, I would have over-committed to so much time with her that I would not have time to work out, complete my chores, cook, clean or spend time with my friends and family. This is starting to burn me out and I am starting to crave alone time which I am having a hard time to secure.

Recently it has started to feel like a red flag and something I should bring up. I have tried to hint at it subtly, so as not to hurt her feelings, but she gets very defensive.

She accuses me of not being assertive enough and trying to please her (which I admit, is a part of the problem) but on the other hand, when I am assertive she becomes distant and questions whether I truly love her. I feel like we are not very compatible on this level and she should be a bit more considerate with her requests.

The trigger was that my birthday is coming up soon, and she began to pester me about planning it. She knows that I don't really like to plan too far in advance, and she went ahead and planned her day - which includes dinner with her friends, a social event with her family (which I cannot attend due to it being invite-only), and a "slot" for me to do "whatever I want" for a few hours on the day of my birthday.

I told her that her plans were fine, and if she is busy I could spend the day with my friends - she took this as me rejecting spending time with her and even questioning whether I loved her. I found this manipulative because I just had to accept her planning to show that I love her, on my birthday.

Suddenly I am starting to realize that the time we spend together is a bit one-sided and I have no control over my time. This is a difficult topic since essentially every time I subtly hint towards it, she questions my commitment and love towards the relationship.

I am fine doing my own thing, having space, but she seems to want her space and authority and mine at the same time.

The thing is, I love her and I WANT to say yes to things which make her happy. But the more I accept, the more she asks for, and she is not conscious of the fact that I have different schedule/lifestyle. She does not acknowledge that I am unfortunately a bit busier than her and making a sacrifice to keep up.

Is this behavior toxic or am I over-reacting? How do you approach planning with a partner? What could I do to stop her planning sprees? Do I need to be more assertive and how would I go about that?

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