My boyfriend and I are currently on a 6-week-long break. This was originally his idea as a result of him suddenly facing many personal issues, feeling overwhelmed, and overall admitting that he cannot handle the responsibilities of a relationship right now. He has always been a good partner to me so I trust that his intentions are sincere and that he needs this time to get his life back on track. At first I was very resistant to the idea of a break and was trying to find a way that we could navigate these issues together, offering him the support he needed, but I eventually realized that the best support I could offer was space.
On my end, this break has been a blessing in disguise as I started realizing that the relationship was consuming me. My life is equally as stressful as his and I was trying to find solace in the relationship. I realized that I was relinquishing my boundaries to avoid conflict and it caused me to become anxious all the time. For example, we had an argument where he felt I wasn’t making time for him in a period of about a week during which I had many prior commitments to friends and family. Basically, he wanted to see me and felt like I wasn’t making time for him where I could although he understood I had to keep my commitments while I felt like I just couldn’t make time for him and wanted him to be ok with that. After that, I started being super nervous whenever I’d make time with friends and just preferred to avoid it. Back then I didn’t realize to what extent my constant sacrifices would make me feel like my boyfriend isn’t doing enough and how in turn this would affect him.
As a result of that and other similar instances, this break kinda feels like a breath of fresh air. I’m seeing friends again and I feel like I’m getting myself back. I know that I have to approach the relationship better after this period and am working on being able to achieve that when the time comes. However, I find myself feeling like I want to just start from scratch with someone new. I love my boyfriend and I know he’ll be responsive to me trying to approach this relationship in a better way, but at the same time I feel so exhausted by the events of the past few months. It’s felt like a whirlwind of trying to work on the relationship while sacrificing our own well-being. It almost feels like the person I say I love is someone else and I’m still trying to work on my mentality of “if my relationship is fine and my boyfriend loves me then everything is fine”. i feel like all I can associate with him right now are the negative events of the recent past and it’s making me reluctant to want to go back to “working on the relationship” when this break is over, and instead I want to seek out more of what’s making me feel good right now. I realized that I’ve never lost myself like this in a relationship before but I can’t tell if he is also to blame, not in the sense of having acted badly but more in the sense of us fundamentally needing things from a partner that we can’t give each other. At the same time we get along so well and he’s a great person so I’m scared of losing something that could be amazing if done right. I would love some advice from anyone that might have experienced the same thing.
tl;dr an exhausting relationship could be great but I think I’m too exhausted to put the work in.
1 comment
Tell him how you’re feeling and then let him know that you would like to go on one date, see how it goes. After the date take a day or two to yourself and see if you’d like to go on another date. TREAT EACH OTHER LIKE YOU ARE BRAND NEW WHILE ON THE DATE!!