Dear Lily27:

You met your boyfriend Sept 2018: he was about 19 or 20, you were 21 or 22 . He later got a job offer in another country, 7 hours away by plane, and the two of you moved together to the new country in Sept 2019, a year into your relationship. At first the two of you stayed in an Airbnb studio while you looked for a job and the two of you looked for an apartment.

During that time you were alone in the studio a lot because he worked. You looked for a job and found two, the first you hated so you quit it. You were fired from the second because of the pandemic. Spending a lot of time alone, you missed your family and friends in your home country. The two of you didn’t get along, you brought up issues that were never resolved, “until things exploded again to do the whole thing over”.

You currently feel demotivated, like a failure, doubting that you want to be with your boyfriend, not feeling for him what you felt before, not feeling close to him -“The closer we are (or have to be because of the quarantine) the further we stray from each other”, and you blame and “resent him for everything.. missing my friends and family, not having a good job while he does, just being unhappy.. He never cooks, never cleans up, never does the washing… it feels like I’ve put my life on hold to take care of him here… he will never realise how much I truly love him”.

And now,  my input: the title of your thread is “Let go or keep  going?”- I vote for letting go. Seems to me that he is a nice guy, a hard working man (and this is impressive considering he is only 21!), an honest man who doesn’t like a complicated type relationship: not willing or  not equipped to dive into what he can’t fix. And he can’t fix your unhappiness or the fact that you didn’t get the job you wanted, or that you hated the job you did get.. or the pandemic, he can’t fix the pandemic.

For as long as you blame and resent him for your choice to leave your home country and move to a new country, for as long as you blame him for what is out of his control, better for his sake, that you leave him.

I am wondering: were you really happy with your family and friends back in your home country?

anita