u/TestProfessional6179

Me [31m] and my fiancée [33f] have been together 8 years and I think I’m finally done.
She’s the type of person who overthinks everything and needs a ton of emotional connection, reassurance, deep conversations, quality time, etc. She’s very driven and “type A”. She works in finance and makes more money than me (despite us paying the same in rent). However she does clean, keeps the house together, decorate, and is always thinking about the future. Yeah and sure she pays more when it comes to our home- random furniture, art and food? But it’s weird because I don’t care about that stuff. Give me a working tv and a couch and I’m happy. I don’t care about art, fancy knives or patio furniture. That’s on her. But besides that. I genuinely admire her drive. She came from a poor family where it was instilled that she had to be successful and there was no fallback. She’s worked her way to the top in her company.
But I also feel like I’ve spent years being told I’m not enough.
I’m a pretty low maintenance guy. I’m calm, not jealous, not controlling, don’t start drama. If she goes out with friends I’m not gonna act possessive or insecure because I trust her. Apparently that makes her feel like I don’t care enough about losing her.
She’s told me before that she wants me to “fight for her more emotionally” and honestly I don’t even fully know what that means.
Whenever she’s upset, I try to reassure her or stay calm and somehow it always turns into me being emotionally unavailable or dismissive. At some point it felt like every conversation became about how I wasn’t validating her enough, complimenting her enough, helping enough, listening enough, reacting enough, etc.
I have started emotionally shutting down because I constantly felt criticized and like I couldn’t win. If I stayed calm during arguments, I didn’t care enough. If I pulled away because I felt drained, I was abandoning her emotionally. If I complimented her, it felt “scripted” because she’d asked for reassurance before. Now she says she feels emotionally alone in the relationship and honestly I think I do too, just in a different way.
I still love her a lot, but I feel like she wants a level of emotional intensity and constant validation that I genuinely don’t know how to provide naturally. And she probably feels like she’s begging for basic emotional connection from me.
At this point I can’t tell if we’re incompatible or if resentment just killed the relationship over time. What can I tell her to work on to save this? Because I feel like I’m done.
TL;DR: My fiancée wants a level of emotional connection I feel like I’m giving. I’m drained, and think I should end it.