u/Asleep-Lion-4988

I’m currently in a very difficult financial situation and I live in one of the richest countries in Europe. I constantly live in fear of bills, reminders, and financial pressure, and it feels like I am in a constant survival mode.

I still live with my parents and pay rent at home. My father is unemployed and my mother is a housewife, so there is no real financial safety net. To cope with that, I have even done paid studies (like cigarette testing studies) that made me physically unwell and I even ended up vomiting afterwards, because I needed to manage my situation somehow.

I also tried to encourage my boyfriend to earn something on the side, since he has been unemployed for most of our relationship. More than half of the time we’ve been together, he has not been working. I often ended up paying for almost everything when we went out (cafes, restaurants, cinemas and so on), roughly around 90% of the time.

My boyfriend and I have been together for about 1 year and 4 months.

He has expressed that he does not want to do certain jobs like Uber Eats or similar work because he feels it would not be good for his health or that he is too good for it. At the same time, he does not really take other steps to generate income, which leaves me feeling like I am carrying most of the financial responsibility in our everyday life. Mind you, we are not even engaged nor married.

The difficult part is that since being in this relationship, my financial and emotional situation has become so much worse. I have lent my boyfriend money before and paid multiple times for his groceries and spent a lot of energy trying to emotionally support and help him. I even helped him and his brother to find a new appartment together.

At the same time, I truly love him deeply, which is why this is so confusing and painful for me. He has a very gentle and loving character in many ways. We talk on the phone multiple times a day, he is affectionate, emotionally warm, and caring towards me. We have many beautiful memories together and I still feel very attached to him emotionally.

However, he struggles heavily with responsibility and stability. He is often unemployed, has unpaid bills, a debt collection record, and currently a legal fine of around CHF 2300 that he cannot pay. He talks about leaving in two months to his home country to escape the system, even though he has unresolved financial and legal issues here.

He also only told me about four months into our relationship that he regularly smokes weed, and most of his close friends smoke as well. I sometimes feel like his social environment normalizes avoiding responsibility.

I have tried to help him find solutions by looking into emergency support options and encouraging him to ask his family for help and money, but he often refuses help because he says he wants to learn through suffering.

Emotionally, I feel exhausted. A couple days ago, I cried heavily because I am scared of losing him, and during the conversation he asked me why I was so weak and told me I should be strong for the both us. He will leave this country and build us a better future in his home country. That really hurt me emotionally.

At the same time, I can see that I am slowly losing myself. Since this relationship started, I stopped dancing, which I had done for years, I can no longer afford things that once made me feel good about myself like getting my hair done, and my life mostly feels like survival, stress, fear, and trying to stay afloat.

I feel stuck because I genuinely love him and see his gentle side, but I also feel emotionally drained and unstable in this relationship -> sunk-cost fallacy

I am not asking whether I should break up or not. What I really want advice on is:

How do I emotionally detach from constantly trying to save and carry someone I deeply love, while also protecting my own mental and emotional stability?

Relationship length: 1 year and 4 months

TL;DR:
I deeply love my boyfriend because he is emotionally gentle and caring with me, but he is financially unstable, avoids responsibility, and my own life and mental health have significantly worsened during the relationship. I feel emotionally attached but also exhausted and overwhelmed, and I need advice on how to stop carrying his problems while protecting myself emotionally.

I (F25) am really frustrated with my friend (F26) and I’m seriously considering distancing myself from her.

There have been multiple occasions that made me feel used and disrespected when it comes to money and how she behaves in general.

The tipping point was two days ago. We were supposed to go out together and she basically expected that we would go with my car because her dad had taken theirs to work. She only told me this when I asked her when she would come to pick me up, and it felt like she just assumed it without properly communicating it. Mind you, we had to drive to another country to pick up some parcels she had ordered.

I told her I didn’t have much gas left and that I would need to fill it up. She then messaged me saying she would pay for it.

The moment we arrived at the gas station, she took out her phone, but when it came down to paying at the cash register, she kind of did the thing were you act like you wanna pay but don’t do it. So I ended up paying for it. After that she said she would wire me 20 bucks back, but never did. That amount wouldn’t even have covered the full tank.

Later that same day, she had forgotten some items and asked me to quickly buy them for her so she could bring her things to my car. At that point, my alarm bells went off because she was muttering under her breath that she would wire me the money back afterwards. I told her that she should go and buy them herself and that I would bring the items to the car instead. Did she buy the things she needed for herself? No, she came out of the shop with empty hands, because she most likely didn’t want to pay for the items herself.

As a thank you that day, she bought me a hair clip for 4 bucks. That felt like she was trying to set the rules in her own way and ignoring how much money she actually owed me.

Here is another example I bought Celtic salt for both of us, and she just took it without saying anything about paying or splitting it, and she never paid me back. It’s not regular table salt, it’s quite expensive compared to normal salt.

On top of that, money is tight for me and I live paycheck to paycheck. And she knows that.

It also doesn’t stop with money. She often criticizes my choices, especially when I buy cheaper stuff. If I suggest something, she usually dismisses it, but her ideas are always the ones we go with. It feels like my opinions don’t really matter.

She also often criticizes other people for buying their groceries in supermarkets instead of organic stores like she does. Recently she even told me I should just spend all my money on luxury things like bags at the beginning of the month so I would learn what it feels like to live with less money for the rest of the month, which honestly felt pretty insensitive given my situation.

Now I just feel used and disrespected overall, and I don’t really want to meet up with her anymore. At the same time, she keeps asking to hang out and doesn’t really have many other close friends, so I feel a bit guilty.

AITA for wanting to distance myself and stop hanging out with her?