When To Let Go of A Relationship

The Question

Me (Pisces) and my bf (Libra) have been dating for around six months. My life is, unfortunately, kind of depressing. I have a lot of internalized shame towards expressing myself and feeling sad in general, but I try to be honest with myself and where I’m at.

Recently, we’ve been going through a rough patch. He’s getting overwhelmed hearing what I’m going through, even though I’ve tried to censor myself. I can’t even crack depressing jokes (one of my coping mechanisms), and I’ve been investing in different coping mechanisms outside of sharing with him. Even with that, he is feeling overwhelmed and said that worry is starting to consume him.

I was direct with him to share how he’s feeling and he said he feels burdened. At first, I decided to try more coping mechanisms. But I realized I was doing all that I could: going to therapy, talking to my friends, crying it out, etc. So I talked to him about how it’s not selfish for him to feel burdened but it’s selfish to have me constantly put in the work to “cope” when I can’t even express how I feel without him worrying. He feels bad for what I go through but now I feel like I can’t talk to him about it anymore in any capacity.

I want this to work and I honestly have a lot of love for him. But we’re taking a break right now for our mental health. I’m trying so hard, but I can’t just not say anything about my emotional well-being, you know? I already feel guilty about that type of stuff and talking is a way of helping me cope and build self-confidence. What should I do?

Pisces, she/her/hers

The Reaction

Okay, first of all, Pisces, are we related? A depressing life? Depressing jokes? Utilizing all the best coping mechanisms and having a partner that doesn’t know how to cope themselves? Hooboy. We could be cousins. Are we cousins?

I am the nonbinary Kween of Depressing Lives (I don’t know if that’s a title I can actually hold, but if it were, I’d have been crowned in the summer of 2018). In high school, one of my best friends told me that my life couldn’t be adapted into a Lifetime movie, because it wouldn’t cover enough — it’d have to be a Lifetime mini-series, which is even more depressing when you think about how he told me that before the shit really hit the fan.

(For further reading, might I not-so-humbly suggest my award-winning essay On Fleek, where you can see my jokes-as-coping-mechanisms come to life)

Your partner is an air sign. If I know anything about astrology at all (I barely do, tbh), it’s that air signs are not very good at emotions. I mean, they feel them, but they don’t know how to respond to them or express them. I can speak to this because my moon is in Aquarius, which basically means I’m a hyper-logical robot whose feelings are all written on little index cards that I have to sort through a Rolodex to find.

Anyway, it sounds like your partner doesn’t know how to just hold space and listen to you without it impacting him. He also, to be frank, sounds like he’s lived a pretty privileged life if he feels burdened from hearing about someone with a challenging life. Woe is him. Where is the fainting couch? Does he need someone to feed him grapes when you talk to him about your challenges?

It sounds like you two have done everything right in terms of trying to find common ground, sharing space, and taking time to take care of yourselves. So, what next?

The Advice

Honestly, Pisces, I think you know what you have to do. It sounds like you and this Libra aren’t matched well emotionally, and that’s totally okay! That’s what dating is about! You deserve to have a partner who can hold space for you, support you in difficult times, and have the skills to empathize without getting overwhelmed. And your Libra boyfriend deserves…I don’t know, I’m having a hard time empathizing with someone who gets overwhelmed when someone else’s life is really hard. Like, you don’t have to live it, buddy.

(Is that rude? I don’t care. I can’t tell you how many times I had people tell me they “didn’t know how I kept going” and I was like “Thanks????”)

But a good, healthy partnership is where you can support one another and hold space for each other even when things are really hard. It doesn’t mean dumping everything on to your partner, but you stated that you’re explicitly not doing that. Hiding what you’re going through from your partner is horrible and basically suggests that your partner only wants to be your partner if you’re all puppies and rainbows and sparkles and cupcakes. Fuck that noise.

My advice is to dump him, Pisces. You two have some incompatabilities in that you are trying to make yourself — your feelings and your life — smaller so that this man can be more comfortable. You deserve better than that.