How can a break with my (23f) boyfriend (22m) help our relationship?
My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over a year, and we’re doing 6 months of long distance ending in July. I’ll try to keep this short, but recently he’s been having doubts and a lack of confidence in our relationship. He’s been reminiscing old fights which has lead to him thinking that we may be incompatible. We generally share same values, same future goals, and many of the old fights we’ve had haven’t really been re-occurring issues, so I’m not really sure what to make of it that he’s not confident in our relationship. We almost broke up, but ultimately settled on a one week break where we will go no contact. This isn’t like a “we’re broken up so I can go see other people” type of break but I think we decided on just taking the time for ourselves to reflect Any perspectives on if having this break is a good idea? Will this actually bring us closer together or generally do breaks not end well if he’s already having doubts of us
I think there are circumstances in which breaks can definitely help a relationship. Primarily, when one or multiple people involved have individual issues that are worsening relationship issues and can be more successfully confronted when the unhealthy relationship patterns aren't drawing people back into bad habits.
This is not any of that. You've been together such little time, there's no major issues you need to separate to work on, and instead of working together to solve the issues (which is what makes a relationship last!) you're just ignoring each other instead. This just sounds like a slow break up by wishy-washy people who don't want to just commit to what they actually want.