My boyfriend and I have been dating for 3 years, and I’m starting to wonder if we should break up.

He was a pretty terrible person to me in the start of our relationship, but has been okay for the rest of the time. He’s apologized for past things and treats me a lot better. I love him with all of my heart and he’s also one of my best friends. Recently, we’ve been fighting a lot and basically broke up twice.

I’ve been raped in the past and sexually assaulted by someone close to me, which I recently told my mom about, and since then I have a hard time wanting to have sex or have panic attacks during and after, but was okay doing it before. This has been an issue with us for a while, as he always wants to do sexual stuff, like always. And we constantly fight about it because he does not understand how I can go from being okay with having sex to not wanting to anymore. And he gets mad when I say its because of my past and I don’t really know how to fix it except with time.

He’s had an issue with me for a couple months saying that I never show him that I care about him and that I don’t love him. But we talk all day, we’re always doing stuff together, and we cuddle and all that stuff everyday. He ruined my 18th birthday by basically breaking up with me while I was at Disneyland, I cried the whole night. And since he’s not social he does not like going out to eat, hanging out with any of my family or friends, going to concerts with me, none of that. I don’t want him to feel like this is out of nowhere, and I don’t want him to do anything to himself, or drop out of school because of me. I know I shouldn’t worry about what happens and that I should do what’s best for me, but how can I not? I do love him and I do care about him, and I don’t want him to say stuff like “I knew you didn’t love me.” if we breakup. Which I know he will, because he says if we breakup then it’s because I don’t love him, or else we’d stay together. But that is not true at all. I’ll be a complete mess if we breakup.

I don’t know what to do. The other night he said some hurtful stuff to me and I don’t know what to really think about it all. We keep trying to work it out but he says if we stop sex all together then we’re definitely breaking up. But like ??? How do I feel about that?

He’s not really social and so he doesnt have a lot of friends, and says if we breakup we cant be friends or get back together in the future, even though i told him maybe ill be ready in the future. I love him so much but I don’t know if I should end things or not. I’m only 18, so I know i’m young and there’s a lot of time for me, but what if i’m supposed to be with him? Plus: I drive him to school and we have two of the same classes, AND i’m really good friends with his family that I really don’t want to lose. I’m so scared and I just can’t bring myself to break up with him. I don’t want to lose him all together. He said we can give it one more shot to make a compromise, but if we fight about it again, should I end things?