My [M30] relationship with my GF [F29] is growing increasingly toxic and emotionally abusive, we live together, I have no money, she's abandoned her goals for a career, and I don't know how to leave. How can I break up with someone who lives under the same roof as me?

I [M30] have been in a relationship with my GF [F29] for 6 years. We met in undergrad and have lived together for 3 years, and we co-lease an apt. We are both graduate students who attend the same university, and we moved to this city together to attend the same school for different programs. We're both on track to graduate this year. I am getting a degree in a STEM field that will hopefully afford me a decent job once I graduate. I have connections with potential employers and plan to use those connections and am optimistic, though nothing is certain in the job market with covid. However, as of right now I am pretty poor and living on a meager graduate student budget.

She's getting a degree in a field that has less certain job prospects, but is currently a poor graduate student just like me. Sometime last year, probably just before covid hit, she decided that she no longer wants to pursue a career at all, and began to talk frequently about how much she dislikes the thought of working or having to do a "9 to 5." She is getting an advanced degree, but has decided that once that is over, "She will just live her best life," in her words. We have had long term plans to stay in our relationship together for the long-term, and she's made it clear on several occasions that she wants me to work, and she will just pursue hobbies, interests, relax, etc.

When I have tried to gently encourage her to find an outlet for her degree, or to transition to a different field if that's what feels right, she has gotten angry and defensive. She says that her life has been very hard (her father was an alcoholic and it wasn't not a happy childhood for her and her siblings), and that she is just not cut out for work in any form. She says that any "pressure" from me or anyone else to do anything other than just "live her best life" is too stressful. She says that the idea she has to waste her life working brings on severe and overwhelming depression and negatively impacts her mental health. She has firmly and emphatically come to the conclusion that for her to work for a living will create lasting mental health problems. She has absolutely no plan for her life other than for me to support her entirely for the rest of our lives while she hangs outs at home. She openly talks about how great the day will be when I am the one working and she can just "live her best life.: This is not the person I once knew or the person I fell in love with.

In addition, although she talks frequently about me supporting her, our relationship has gotten entirely toxic in all other respects. I am criticized and verbally abused for the smallest things. She openly mocks my decision to work in my respective profession, saying things like "I am glad that you are fine living a small little office life because I couldn't bear such misery" and "People in your field are all miserable and boring." I tiptoe around our home because when she perceives me as doing something wrong, she yells at me, slams doors shut, and throws objects at the wall so hard they break. I assure you, this is not the case of me being uncaring or saying something heartless. I am talking about things like having to jump on a call with a fellow TA in the department I TA for for when she felt I was "done with school for the day" or having to stay up later to finish school work when she is ready for bed. Getting yelled at, actually screamed at for a half hour or more, has become a multiple times a week occurrence. These occurrences leave me shaken up and filled with dread and fear for days on end. To get these occurrences to stop as quickly as possible, I tend to acquiesce and apologize. I don't know what else to do, and I just don't have anywhere else to go, so I feel in those moments that the only solution is to try to restore some peace to the place I call home and that I have to live in. When she yells at me, I feel I just shut down and will do anything to make it stop. However, she shakes these occurrences off much more easily than me and can be back to fine in a matter of hours like nothing ever happened. She can go from yelling at me at the top of her lungs one minute to lovingly talking about our future together in the next minute.

I have come to the realization that we need to break up, but honestly I do not know how. We are on a lease with several months left in a city where it is very difficult to break leases. I have no money. She has no money. And she has absolutely no plan for her future, and with graduation fast approaching and having actively written off our school's career center. We both have student loans. We're in a city where she has few friends, and none she could rely on to take her in for a while. She has nowhere else to go.

I know I have painted a less than rosy picture above, but I honestly don't want to leave her in a ruinous state, but I just don't know what to do. She has rejected the concept of work itself! I also worry for my physical safety in the event I break up with her, because she is prone to throwing things made of glass and ceramic when she is angry. I obviously can't just tell her to leave the apt. We are co-leasing it and both live here. And even if I leave, I still have to keep paying rent on the apt.

I also do think my tendency to acquiesce when she yells at me is making her think things are better than they are, and she will not see this coming. But everytime I try to talk about how she is making me feel, she flips it all around to berate me for everything I am doing wrong and I am the one who should feel bad, so I have stopped sharing how I feel to prevent being yelled at more. I have tried to endure it, partly because I am poor and can't afford to keep paying rent here and new rent somewhere else, and partly because she has become so financially dependent on me and my future prospects. I just feel trapped in a toxic relationship with no way out. I could really use some advice on what to do in my situation, and how I can leave this relationship while doing the least harm to her possible.

tl;dr My relationship has become toxic, my grad student girlfriend has given up on working after university, expects to stay home and "live her best life" while I pay for everything, and she will have no means to support herself if we break up.

Submitted March 22, 2021 at 08:02PM by jfs828 https://ift.tt/3f4Yg6M