Hello all, I hate admitting it but I'm lost. My relationship is on the verge of breaking down because my girlfriend and I can't figure out how to deal with my anxiety. It's kind of redundant too considering most of my anxiety is about my relationship. I also apologize for the length ahead of time. I wanted the whole story out there so I wouldn't have to explain anything. To say our relationship has been a breeze would be a utter lie and in order to understand it I need to start at the beginning.

My girlfriend and I just celebrated our 4 year dating anniversary in August and it has been a rocky path. We're both young and met in high school, she a grade below me, and before you say we're too young or inexperienced please don't I've heard it before and it's BS. I'll try to stick to the short version of the story. I've had anxiety all my life but it wasn't diagnosed until 10 months ago. My girlfriend and I still haven't figured out how to have a successful relationship with the anxiety. About a month and a half ago things started to spiral and it has brought our relationship to the edge. She got a new job which had her working late into the night and made it difficult to see each other, her grandfather went into the hospital and nearly died, my anxiety went through the roof because she was spending so much time with to of her male friends who were anxiety triggers for me, then I lost my job, she lost her new job, got back her old job, found out her father (barely a part of her life but also gave her a half brother that she can't get time to see) was in jail awaiting trial for something so awful she wouldn't tell me, and she found out her half brother had been put in foster care half way across the country.

Her mom (We both still live at home) advised her not to talk to me until I got a new job because she might be a distraction. Her mom is also very much not my biggest fan and is constantly trying to pry us apart and my girlfriend still hasn't worked up the ability to be her own person yet. Anyways, while she wasn't talking to me she found out that all of my anxiety was stressing her out and that no matter what the situation I seemed to always make it about my anxiety. With everything going on she was understandably stressed and so am I. She decided it might be best if we didn't contact each other for a while and while I was not a fan, I tried to go along with it. She and I began talking about non-serious issues on and off about two and a half weeks into it. It was nice to talk but it stressed me out because I couldn't figure out what was going on, if we were back to normal or not. I was (and still am) hunting for a new job and she liked updates on how I was doing and I liked to here how she was doing, but we never actually discussed our issues. Then her birthday came and went. I told her I had gotten her a gift and she seemed interested in hanging out sometime but not one on one.

The day after her birthday I finally snapped. My anxiety and paranoia had built for a month and I couldn't handle it. So I asked her directly if we could talk face to face. She freaked out and said that what I did was exactly what she was talking about stressing her. I made it about my anxiety, about my issues and that's extremely emotionally draining for her. Apparently she had only been talking to me because she was trying to be my friend in the mean time between figuring stuff out and seeing me again, but that hadn't worked because I had snapped and tried confronting the issue head on. Now we're back to complete no-contact, and it's supposedly long-term which is very vague. But we haven't broken up.

This whole thing is ridiculous. We've both been under incredible stress and while I understand I do bring up my anxiety a lot it's only because I want to figure it out and move past it so we can have a successful relationship. I don't know how to explain any of that to her and she barely understands what anxiety is. I know she loves me and she's dropped a lot of hints about marriage and moving in together. I just can't figure out how to have anxiety and actively work at figuring out how to overcome it as a couple without it becoming a huge issue that nearly destroys my relationship. As it stands I can't contact her or she'll snap and break up with me and I just have to wait for her to come to me. I know if I could just sit down in a room with her and talk through it we could move past all this like we have with every other major issue in our relationship, but I can't even get her to talk much less sit down with me.

I'm all out of ideas. We love each other and I want this to work out, but I just can't figure out how.