I (25F) recently ended a nearly 2 year relationship with my boyfriend (23M) and I’m struggling a lot with guilt, anxiety and hurting someone I love.
Overall, the relationship was loving and supportive. We lived together for a while, rarely fought, genuinely enjoyed each other’s company and built a really strong bond together. He was also there for me through the hardest period of my life when my mom passed away unexpectedly a few months ago. I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through it without him.
But after losing my mom and going through a lot of other life changes at once, something shifted in me internally. I moved back home, changed jobs, lost my routine and started feeling emotionally disconnected from myself. I felt like I was surviving rather than actually processing anything properly.
At the same time, some doubts and concerns I had carried for a while started becoming louder in my head. Nothing toxic or dramatic, just a growing feeling that I needed more independence, more space to grow as my own person, and that I was emotionally exhausted trying to hold everything together.
I eventually sat him down and ended things. From his perspective it felt abrupt because I had internalized a lot of these feelings instead of fully communicating them over time.
He took it extremely hard and sent me a very emotional message afterwards about how much he loves me and wants to work through this together. Seeing how devastated he was honestly shook me and made me question myself. Bearing in mind this is my first relationship ever. We then agreed to take some space from each other so we could both reflect before having another conversation.
During that time, I genuinely reconsidered everything. I went to therapy, spoke to family, sat with my emotions properly and really tried to figure out whether this was grief, panic, emotional shutdown or something else.
The difficult thing is that although I still love him deeply and care about him enormously, the underlying feeling hasn’t changed. I still feel like I need to step away, grieve properly, rebuild myself and figure out who I am independently. Continuing the relationship just doesn’t feel right in my gut anymore, even though the love is still there.
What’s making this so hard is that he didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a genuinely good person who loved me deeply and supported me through the worst time of my life. Part of me feels immense guilt for walking away from someone like that.
At the same time, another part of me feels that if I ignore this feeling and stay anyway, I’ll only prolong both our pain and eventually end up here again later. So I need to sit him down and finally end it.
Has anyone experienced something similar where you still loved the person, they weren’t toxic, but deep down you knew you needed to leave and find yourself again? Did the guilt and anxiety settle with time? :(