My (38M) fiancée (41F) is long term unemployed and it brought me to the brink of breaking up
For the last 5 years, my GF of 8 years was unemployed for almost 4 years and it did beat me to wreck of a person.
We bought a house together before that, on the assumption that we will be both working adults and will both financially contribute to the cause, which would mean we could build, repair and upgrade and generally speaking will have blast of a life.
Unfortunately she lost her job at the beginning of 2022 and worked a year since that, not counting some short term attempts that always ended in failure.
I am covering all our mandatory expenses from my salary but it means I have to constantly restrict myself because I have barely any money left for myself. I have to budget and if I want something for myself, even if it is quite small and relatively cheap thing, I have to save for it.
My logic for money was always that the point is not to be cheap and frugal, the point is to earn enough to not having to. She knew it and still it looks like this. My hobbies are expensive. My truck is expensive (bear in mind this is EU and not US, so full size truck is REALLY expensive thing to run here) but by all logic and with my salary I should be able to afford them all easily. I cant. I have to prioritize, I have to sacrifice, I have to drive cheap car or take public transportation simply because it can happen that I have no money left for gas. All while my friends are having a good life and spending left and right and its driving me mad.
It's causing me financial problems, mental problems (I had a few mental collapses already and I am basically pissed off all the time, m hobbies slowly stopped being fun and so on), physical problems (insomnia) and I also got feedback from work that my performance is dropping.
Unfortunately she is a really nice girl and I still love her. She is trying to get a job and I dont believe she did this on purpose or that her actions are fueled by any bad intentions. But after 4 years I am simply broken and can't go on like this. But on the other side, I still goddamn love her and cant imagine being without her. I am jumping between resentment and love all the time. How to solve this goddamn lock?
TL:DR For the last 5 years, my GF of 8 years was unemployed for almost 4 years and it did beat me to wreck of a person. Now I feel like I have to break up but I still love her at the same time and its tearing me apart, how to proceed?