my crippling relationship anxiety is driving her away

I (34 m) have been with my partner (31 f ) for twelve years. She is absolutely wonderful, kind supportive beautiful and encouraging of every aspect of my life.

I on the other hand Am a bit of a mess, long term issues with drugs, alcohol and pronography, ass well of the secondary effects these have had on my career and the significant debt. She knows about these and has supported me though all of this. I have made significant progress and am better now than I've been on probably 5 years or so.

The problem is that for as long as we have been together I have obsessively turned over and over in my head the idea of I don't know if we should be together.

It's a deeply unhealthy aspect of my poor mental health. when I was in my early 20s I was briefly in a relationship with a close friend who had a Terminal illness that was robbing her of the ability to move. It was a disaster, I freaked out and ran away, literally to the other side of the planet. I started my feelings of crushing guilt then, and I stared to have psychotic episodes.

I managed to stop smoking weed and met my current partner when I returned. This was a bad start, I was still not well, and my friend now hated me for moving on, she died not long after despising me.

Ever since then I've been eaten away by guilt and anxiety. I honestly don't believe I deserve to be happy, and I wasn't. In retrospect I needed a gap to work on myself and to grieve.

But that was over a decade ago, and things were looking up, over time I was seeming to get better and healthier. My career moved on, me and my partner got through 3 years of long distance where we were were really all we had.

7 years ago we moved in together and the drugs stated to become an issue. Again my behaviour was awful and selfish and destructive but I made some progress.

I was sober completely for 7 mounts at one point and had made significant progress. I wasn't spending all my time obsessing over weather we should break up.

Then COVID hit and things went downhill fast, my company laid off and I was lumbered with the workload, my world shrunk to my spare bedroom and the drugs came back and ate away at my life and put me in substantial debt (10k).

Things have got better, but two crucial things have not happened. I haven't asked her to marry me and I haven't remortgaged the house so she is a co owner. Next year we were planning to have kids.

I haven't done these things because whenever I think of the future this gnawing feeling of panic comes up inside me. After all this time I still haven't decided to commit inside my head, to embrace that we are together, it's going to be just us forever and that my love for her is enough, and importantly that I don't need to deserve her love, I have it.

This has come to a head since the build up to Christmas and again and again we have come close to splitting up. It has all been things I have done and said.

A few days ago she found a notebook where I had been writing my negative thoughts to I guess try and process them? I hadn't got much written but it was enough. I hadn't written much positive reasons to be together.

She almost left me then l, but she came back and gave me an opportunity to fight for her. Instead I chose to be honest, which is really far too late for that. I told her I still felt panic and I was still trapped by my anxiety.

Not surprisingly she is pretty devastated and has said that she has to make the decision and that we are breaking up.

Since this means moving to another city and thus leaving her job it's going to be pretty final. Once she tells her pearants they won't let her take me back and she will move on quickly as she wants to have kids soon. She is beautiful and fun so she won't have any issues.

I still can't say the words she wants to hear, I still can't fight for her. I'm not sure why. I think part of it is I can't lie to her anymore and the truth isn't worth her staying for. I also think I don't deserve her, she will be happier without me.

I also am reaching the point where I desperately crave a break from my own head, but it's starkly obvious I won't get that. I will be obsessing over why I couldn't step in and save the life we had built for a long time to come.

The heartbreak is worse than I ever expected. The hole inside me I've been filling unhealthy of years is so much wider and so much rawer than I ever could have know.

I see my empty pointless life stretching out in front of me and I dispair. There is no reason for what I have done, I have destroyed both of our happiness for no reason. I have been incomprehensibly selfish.

I don't know why am still even now not stopping this from happening, even when I'm not sure I can. I want to tell her I lover her too much to loose her and that I can overcome anything if it means being a part of her life. Yet when it comes to doing it my throat closes up, and the words won't come. I am terrified of promising something I can't deliver, of taking more of her life from her and of going back to the same pointless corrosive loop my thoughts have been trapped in for years.

If this was a perfect world I think I would want a break, I need to see her clearly, I need intensive therapy and to completely overcome my addictions. I need to feel worthy of her.

It doesn't work like that, she can't wait for me to feel better and I can't ask her too. I had many chances to talk to her and to work on this and I opted to bury and hide and procrastinate.

I don't know what to do now, I can't sleep, I can't eat and I can't make this right. I'm letting it happen to me as I have let everything happen to me, disengaged and disconnected. Only this time the feeling of empty horror is far far worse than the panic and anxiety I felt before.