How do you define taking a break?

Yesterday I just got the shock of my life. My my boyfriend of two years told me he thinks we should take a break. His reasoning is not that he doesn’t think we can work together. In fact it’s the opposite he believes that we can b great partners for each other and that we would work well together. But right now he feels like the relationship is just not working and we should take some time to ourselves to work on ourselves.

At first I was angry. I thought the usual maybe he just wanted to sleep around. Then I thought, maybe he’s right we have both sacrificed somethings to be in this relationship. Maybe it’s a good idea for us to have some time to develop ourselves.

But now I’m just confused, what is taking a break? How do you define that? And how can you bank on the possibility of the relationship working someday? I had always thought that taking breaks was a dumb idea either you love someone enough to work through the problems together or you don’t and you break up. Now I am not so sure, I feel like this is a break up even though he’s telling me it’s not. Any comments/advice or stories would be really appreciated. I am going out of my mind. Because I didn’t just lose my relationship I feel like I also lost my best friend.