30M & 27F, 3 years Formerly healthy relationship turned codependent - how do I help her and how can I leave if nothing changes?
I’ve (30M) been with my partner (27F) for about 3 years now. We had a great start to our relationship, initially friends for over a year and it naturally turned to more. A few months after we made it official, she experienced a tragic loss in her family. I did my best to support her through grief, and it ended up putting us into a codependent dynamic and one where I now feel suffocated and don’t know how to proceed.
We both have our history of mental health issues, but we know how to cope pretty well and support each other. However over 3 years being her sole channel of support is draining me. We both work full time, mon-thurs I go to the gym. After the gym, she wants a FaceTime call every day - not a problem, I loved talking to her. But it became our routine, even if there’s nothing to talk about she would rather us go through our commutes on a silent call than just listen to music or something on the drive home.
We live in separate homes due to pets and roommates, on fridays I will go to her place after work, spend Saturday at her house, then Saturday evening/Sunday morning we go to my place and spend the day there. It’s nearly 48 hours together but she still insists we get on a call Friday evening until we physically are together at her place. I can’t even have the hour drive to myself before I spend the whole weekend with her. I’m also too nervous to say I need some “me time” on the drive because when I break her expectations, she closes off and gets cold with me (responds to everything with 1 or 2 words, says “it’s fine” or just “ttyl”) and I have to apologize or make things up to her, for things like forgetting a good morning text even though I had to get up 3 hours earlier than usual and I still texted her, just didn’t say good morning.
It wasn’t always like this. We genuinely had a healthy, fun relationship but her mental health has had its ups and downs and it has been down for a while now. I suggest therapy or self care and she shuts it down because “it doesn’t work on me” (even though she has gone in the past and admits medication has helped her).
I miss those days, we used to talk about marriage and I looked forward to it. Now she is saying she wants to talk to a broker about what to expect when purchasing a home together and I just can’t shake this feeling that hitching myself to her is signing up for being miserable the rest of my life.
I want to stay with her, but I can’t keep going like this. I’m also too nervous to leave because I am scared about what she may do to herself, because she has self harm ideation and constantly says things like “I don’t want to be here anymore” or “everything is always terrible” and I just feel completely, utterly frozen. I care too much to walk away but I also can’t stand continuing like this.