u/Enlightened-Momentum

I honestly don’t even know where to start. I’m currently in finals finishing my bachelor’s degree and last weekend my boyfriend went to a music festival with friends. He tripped acid there and came home saying he feels alive again for the first time in 8 years, which is longer than I’ve even known him. He said his spirit guide is speaking to him again, that he’s a whole new person now, and that he doesn’t know what he wants anymore.

We’ve lived together for almost 3 years. Early on, living together was rough because he had never lived away from his parents and a lot of responsibilities fell onto me. I became stressed, controlling, and resentful because I felt like I had to manage everything. I can admit I contributed to unhealthy dynamics too. I grew up in a chaotic household helping raise younger siblings, so being parentified in the relationship was really traumatic for me.

But honestly, the last year felt like things were finally getting better. We moved into a new apartment, started using a chore calendar, communicated better, laughed more, had long phone calls again where neither of us wanted to hang up, and I genuinely thought we were reconnecting. I felt like I could finally relax and stop carrying the whole relationship all the time.

At the same time, maybe it’s just because the burden switched from me to him lately. I’ve been in school and working, so he started taking on more of the household responsibilities so I could earn more money. We made that decision together because it made the most sense while I finished my degree, but now I’m wondering if he silently built resentment toward me and the routine our life became.

There were still issues. He struggled a lot with planning birthdays and anniversaries. We were supposed to celebrate our 5 year anniversary before he left for the festival and all he had to do was pick a restaurant and make a reservation. He got so wrapped up planning the festival that he never did it. Stuff like that made me feel emotionally unimportant even though I know he loved me in other ways.

I think our love languages are also just really different and I didn’t fully appreciate all the small ways he was trying to love me every day. He’s thoughtful in quiet practical ways, while I tend to look for intentionality, excitement, emotional presence, planning, anticipation. Over time I started questioning whether he truly wanted me specifically or if he just wanted the comfort of having a girlfriend and a life partner. I think the more emotionally disconnected I felt, the more I focused on the things he wasn’t doing instead of the things he was.

Now after this trip he says we’re fundamentally different people and he needs to leave to find himself. He says he feels trapped by responsibility, routine, and expectations. He keeps saying he doesn’t think he can truly become who he’s supposed to be while still being in a relationship. He also said he just wants to drift through life for a while and doesn’t feel compatible with the path I’m on with school and career plans.

But the thing is, I don’t even fully want the life he thinks I want. I only went back to school because after Covid I couldn’t find stable work with my Associates degree and I became terrified of not having financial stability or health insurance long term. Deep down I wanted a slower, more creative, adventurous life too. I wanted to travel, reconnect with nature and art, do work exchanges at hostels, maybe get a remote job someday, volunteer at music festivals. I feel like somewhere along the way we both started building our lives more around fear and survival than what actually made us feel alive.

What makes this even harder is that a few years ago I was actually the one questioning myself and whether I had lost myself in the relationship. But instead of leaving, I chose to stay and work through things with him because I believed relationships go through difficult seasons and that people can grow together. He wanted that chance from me back then and I gave it to him.

Now it feels like he’s not willing to give me that same chance. The last few days have been shocking and confusing because one moment he says maybe we could try, and the next he says he thinks he has to fully leave and give 100% of himself to finding himself because he doesn’t think he can do that while still being in a relationship.

I think what hurts the most is that some of the things he’s saying hit directly at my deepest insecurities. I already worried that my stress, expectations, school, and need for stability made me feel heavy or trapping to him. Hearing him say he feels alive again away from our life together has honestly shattered me. Part of me keeps wondering if I spent years unknowingly becoming someone that made the person I love feel emotionally suffocated.

Part of me feels like this came out of nowhere because things genuinely seemed better lately. Another part of me wonders if we both slowly lost ourselves in unhealthy roles over the years and he finally hit some kind of breaking point.

I genuinely can’t tell if this sounds like temporary post-acid clarity, a real identity crisis, burnout, depression, avoidance, or if our relationship has actually been over for longer than I realized. He’s struggled with depression for a long time and tends to emotionally dissociate and shut down instead of communicating. But I didn’t think that meant none of it was real.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? What do I even do? I still feel like deep down we want a lot of the same things out of life. I don’t understand why he feels like we have to find ourselves apart instead of together. Would a break work?