Hey @mhazard,
Welcome to ReachOut! Thank you for being courageous and sharing your experience. I can see how tough things have been for you with your struggles around anxiety, stress and low moods. It can be really difficult to manage these struggles while in a relationship, so it’s understandable that it has impacted your relationship with your partner. Sometimes if we are struggling to manage these factors, it can be helpful to consider seeking professional support. Are you seeing a professional for your low mood, anxiety and stress? If you are looking for one on one support, ReachOut offers free and confidential peer chat sessions that could help support you.
@mw24 made a really great suggestion around communicating how you’re feeling with your partner and discussing solutions. This can be helpful to reduce your anxiety, stress and low self-esteem, but may also help you connect on a deeper level, improving your intimacy. It is definitely daunting and overwhelming to speak about these things to a partner, but it can also be really helpful and relieving. ReachOut has an article on tackling difficult conversations that may give you some tips on how to approach this conversation with your partner, if that’s something you feel comfortable doing.
Codependency and anxiety within relationships is really common among young people, so you’re definitely not alone! There is an article about codependency that has some great advice and tips around how to change being codependent in a relationship, that could be really helpful for you. Another resource that could be interesting to read is this Weekly Wellbeing that was written by @Lily_RO, who shared their experience with anxiety in a relationship.
