30F, my now-ex (as of 3 days ago) is 29M.

We were together for about a year and 9 months. Initially, I felt like he love bombed me and rushed to define the relationship, though I had just gotten out of something and wanted to take some more time to get to know each other.

Regardless, we were relatively happy for the first few months because we both worked similar schedules and were involved in a hobby where we could routinely spend time together. However, I was still unsure about whether to stay with him, and dealing with a number of mental health challenges related to my job, past trauma and a great deal of social and general anxiety about my future. This resulted in me flaking on a lot of plans, and we began to argue more steadily.

I initially didn’t want to be with him because his lifestyle/goals are very different from mine. My biggest pet peeves are that he is not proactive, and is sloppy/careless about taking care of himself and his space. As the relationship progressed I learned to love his compassion and the fact that he complimented my ambition and drive with a call to slow down and take care of myself too.

However, during the first year I was, admittedly, somewhat critical of him over his avoidant tendencies, urging him to do things like- go to a dermatologist and get a dandruff reducing shampoo, sign up for community college classes (a goal he had stated), find hobbies outside of the neighborhood bar, etc. I didn’t communicate in the healthiest way and he certainly didn’t take kindly to it, understandably feeling controlled. We constantly fought and our initial passion both died, but I worked hard to change my communication style (a change he’s acknowledged) though i also felt like i was fundamentally changing my own needs/desires to do so.

thus he’s also been gradually growing less and less interested in considering my needs or romancing me in any form, emotionally or otherwise. his family insulted my sister during a holiday gathering and he didn’t try to defend me, siding with his family and ignoring me for days. but we stayed to try and work it out together.

about 6 months ago, we both got a new job and i ended up moving much closer to his apartment. at this point i was committed to making things work, despite our differences, but things only continued to get worse. both of us were constantly picking fights and we kept getting into the same argument cycle over communication (omitted for brevity but see below if the details here would help). i all but stopped asking him to work on himself and he was happy to oblige, but i guess this couldn’t fix what was already broken. both of us repeatedly attempted soft breakups (where i would get upset and say we should break up, and he would agree, and then i’d talk both of us down and we’d stay together but make no lasting changes).

in the midst of all these changes, i lost my new job and have been dealing with a lot of stress which exacerbated my anxiety. he hasn’t helped in any way, emotionally and certainly not financially (still expects us to split things 50-50)

but he finally ended things last week, stating that while he loved me, he didn’t feel a trusting relationship type connection to me anymore but wanted to stay friends. i broached, and he accepted, the idea of taking a “break for friendship” where we’d take a break to create a secure base as platonic friends for the next couple months, work on ourselves (my desire for him is to find a therapist, and his for me is to find a job or at least a trajectory) and then re-examine a relationship. however, we have still been talking to each other daily.

my question is- is this a waste of my time? i’m doing this with some ambivalence over whether we’ll get back together, but he has been supportive in the past and i could definitely use the time/space to work on myself. however, im not sure whether he’s stringing me along to retain my attention and support in his life while avoiding any sort of accountability for change/improving his communication. i don’t doubt that this will resolve the cyclical fighting, and help in that sense. but i’m also not sure whether a clean no-contact breakup would be more helpful if neither of us are able to make lasting changes in our individual lives.

since the breakup, his communication has not improved, but i have stopped calling him out for it as well. not sure if he’ll feel more motivated to respect my boundary if he feels less pressured by the constant fighting.

tl;dr but the argument cycle went a bit like this- he’d make plans with me after planning to see his friends (i did not force or encourage these secondary plans, in fact i often told him to not do so) —> he’d stay late with his friends and fail to communicate a time or update me on logistics —> i would waste my evening waiting for him and get pissed off —> he’d get defensive and contemptuous in his responses to me —> we’d argue unproductively, stay low key pissed off/distrustful and avoid each other for hours/days afterwards, and then he’d ask to breakup