u/porki9

I (25F) broke up with my long-distance boyfriend (23M) of 4 years because he refuses to work or study. Now he says he’ll change. Am I giving up on the love of my life?
I’ve been with my ex for 4 years. We’re both European but from different countries, so it has always been long distance.
When we met, I was 22 and he was 20. He was playing professional soccer at the time, but eventually got kicked out after an incident. He also dropped out of high school and has never wanted to pursue further education. His view has always been that university is pointless and that he’s “too good” for a normal job. He wanted to become an entrepreneur instead.
At the beginning, I supported this. I was a student too, so I thought we were young and would figure things out together. I believed in his ideas and genuinely thought he had potential.
I was also the one doing most of the traveling. I would visit him and stay with his family, while he never came to my country.
After graduating, I moved to Canada because living abroad had always been a dream of mine. We decided he would move there too and start a clothing brand. He had saved/raised some money and came to Canada.
This is where things really changed for me.
I was working an exhausting job just to cover our basic expenses. He, meanwhile, wasn’t working. He spent most of his time at home saying he was working on his business ideas, but there was very little actual progress. No designs, no market research, no launch plan, etc.
I was working all day and then coming home to do groceries and deal with finances, while he wasn’t cooking, cleaning, or contributing financially.
At the same time, he would want to take Ubers everywhere, go to expensive restaurants and buy things despite us being in a very precarious financial situation. I was constantly budgeting because I was terrified we’d run out of money, while he seemed to assume things would somehow work out.
Eventually I gave him some of my remaining money because I believed he was going to use it to invest in the business/pay expenses. The business never launched. He seemed to expect people would immediately love the brand, and when that didn’t happen, he basically backed away.
Eventually I ran out of money and even lost my housing situation, so we had to return to our respective countries.
That experience honestly traumatized me. I kept thinking about what would have happened if I had just focused on myself and my own life.
After returning home, I immediately started working professionally and began an MBA, despite struggling emotionally after everything that happened.
He stayed at home.
For the next two years, he continued to talk about different business ideas and projects. Every few weeks/months there would be something new. I’d tell him he needed to focus on one thing and actually execute it, which would often turn into an argument.
He also didn’t visit me for those two years. His reasoning was that he had limited money and needed to save it for his business, while I should come visit him because staying at his family home would be cheaper.
But I didn’t want to anymore.
I had started working professionally. I wanted to travel, experience life, spend some of my money and build my own future. But whenever I wanted to do those things, I’d feel guilty because I thought I was being a bad girlfriend for not putting enough effort into our relationship.
I even offered to pay for a vacation for us, but he didn’t follow through with it.
Eventually, I broke up with him.
And honestly? I felt relieved.
For the first time in years, I felt like I had complete autonomy over my own life. I didn’t have to constantly think about where we would live, how we would survive financially, whether his next idea would work, or whether I was doing enough for the relationship.
But the breakup was still incredibly painful.
For years I had convinced myself that what we had was incredibly rare. I thought our connection was almost “otherworldly.” I was terrified he would be the one who got away and that I’d regret leaving him for the rest of my life.
I also always told myself that money comes and goes and that personality matters more. He was loving, understood me in ways other people didn’t, and accepted me despite my anxiety and overthinking. I genuinely thought he was the perfect person for me.
I also blamed myself a LOT.
I thought I was too difficult, too anxious, too demanding. I kept thinking that maybe I wasn’t giving enough.
But over time, I worked very hard on myself. He seemed to do the opposite. He mostly stayed in his room and continued doing the same things.
One of the final things that really made me realize how disconnected we were was a conversation about driving. He told me that in the future he would be the one driving us everywhere.
I pointed out that he doesn’t even have a driver’s license and refuses to get one because he doesn’t have money for things like gas.
He often talks about how the world is against him and how he’s alone and nobody supports him.
Meanwhile, his parents are struggling financially, and he doesn’t work to help them. They have even offered to support him if he wants to go to school, but he refuses because he wants to pursue his own business ideas.
And now that I’ve finally ended the relationship, he’s telling me everything will change.
He says he’ll work any job. He says he’ll study. He says he’ll become a tattoo artist because he’s good at drawing. He says he’ll do whatever I want and that we simply didn’t put enough effort into the relationship.
The frustrating part is that I begged him to consider tattooing years ago, especially when we were in Canada, because I genuinely thought he could be good at it and there was a market for it.
He refused.
So now, after I’ve spent years waiting, supporting him, worrying about our future and eventually emotionally checking out, he’s suddenly promising to do all the things I wanted him to do.
And I don’t believe him anymore.
That’s the part I’m struggling with.
I don’t trust him as a partner anymore. I don’t want to postpone my life waiting for him to become the person he says he will become.
I don’t want to spend another few years hoping that this time he’ll change.
At the same time, I feel guilty. I feel like I’m abandoning him. I feel like maybe I wasn’t a good girlfriend or didn’t give the relationship enough of a chance.
He keeps telling me he can’t live without me and that he’ll do anything to get me back.
And then I start questioning myself:
Am I giving up on something incredibly important?
Was he actually the love of my life and I’m throwing it away?
Will I ever find someone who understands me and loves me the way he did?
Am I running away because relationships are hard, or am I finally accepting that our lives and values are fundamentally incompatible?
I’m exhausted. We had another conversation about all of this yesterday and I felt completely drained afterward.
Part of me still loves him and remembers everything that was special about us.
But another part of me feels an enormous sense of relief that I can finally live my own life without waiting for him.
I don’t want to hate him. I don’t even necessarily think he’s a bad person. I just don’t think I can build the life I want with him.
I’d really appreciate some outside perspective, especially from people who’ve been in situations where they loved someone but eventually realized they couldn’t build a future with them.
Am I making the right decision, or am I giving up too soon?