u/ExpressionMany510

I just wanted to talk here about my recent breakup, because I need to vocalize how I am feeling to people who maybe experienced the same.

I ended a 2 year relationship this week. My therapist helped me understand that I had developed codependency. I always thought codependency was when two people are so enmeshed in their lives they anxious when their partner isn't there. I have never been that way in relationships; I have a secure attachment-style and I don't get anxious, jealous, or insecure about the relationship.

But over the last few months, I had been getting more and more stressed and anxious, not about the relationship, but about my partner's life. I felt the need to fix my partner's problem at the expense of myself, even though she never asked for it. And when I didn't do enough, I felt guilty because if I just sacrificed a bit more, then she wouldn't have to suffer the way that she did. I started losing patches of hair which my doctor said was from stress.

My partner made some mistakes before she met me, and she accumulated a lot of credit-card debt. She didn't have a concrete plan to pay it off, and one time she asked to borrow a few thousand dollars from me. I gave it to her as a gift, since my income is 5x what she makes and she genuinely needed this. Afterwards, I built her a budget to pay off her credit-card debt that she never followed. Since then, even though she hasn't explicitly asked, I've given her > $10K with no expectation to have it paid back. For example, her car broke and I gave her money for a down-payment on a used car, because she had $0 in her bank account. She moved in with me into my apartment and I've never charged her for rent, so she was able to save some money. But she used the money to rent a space to start a side-business that has been her dream. It was just a few hundred a month, and she hates her job so she said this makes her feel like she isn't wasting her life. We had multiple arguments about this; not that I was against her dream, but I just wanted her to pay off her 5-figure debt first. I told her I was subsidizing her business because I didn't charge her rent so she used that saved money to pay for this space.

When she moved to my studio apartment in Manhattan, we knew we needed a 1BR apartment when my lease ended. I couldn't afford a 1BR in Manhattan alone, so we were looking at places in Riverdale since her job was in Westchester and Queens / Brooklyn would make her commute way too long. I was already starting to feel a lot of stress and anxiety from the codependency, so I was starting to isolate more. None of my friends live that far north and it would take almost an hour meet up with them to hang out, so I knew I would spiral and get more and more depressed if we moved there. I never asked her to stop paying the hundreds each month she was spending to rent the space for her side-business which was making no money, but she also never offered to give that up for me so she could contribute to rent and we could live someplace that would make me happy. I told her I didn't know if I could do another year like this, and she asked me to try and if it didn't work, we could move somewhere else.

There were a lot of other things that happened, some major some minor, where I felt like her needs were put first and mine were to be negotiated around. But she was also a loving and caring partner, and I was so happy in my relationship with her. But over the last few months my stress and anxiety had been getting to be too much, and I realized that even though I care about her so much, I needed to care about me too.

I told her I couldn't do this anymore and we had to break up, and she said I was abandoning her; I really hope she was just saying that because she felt hurt, and not because that's what she believes. I took time off work and went to my parent's house in another state so she could stay in our apartment and have time to find a new place. I wish it could have been different, but I just don't know how I can get better in this relationship.