Welcome to Just Break Up, the podcast about love, heartbreak, and all the relationship advice you don't want to hear.

My name is Sierra de Mulder.

And I'm Sam Blackwell.

And today we're going to answer a letter from somebody whose joy seems to cause her partner pain.

But before we begin, we just want to give you our Surgeonerals warning, which is that Sierra and I are not licensed mental health practitioners.

Correct. We are not professionals. We are not trained in any of this. So please take our advice as you see fit. We're only here to offer our humble musings. So we shed some understanding and maybe some laughs about the incredibly rewarding, but mostly confusing experience that is love.

All right.

Today's letter is emotional for me.

Okay, ready?

Here we go.

It is from Empathy Fatigue, whose pronouns are she, her,

who is writing to us from the void.

I will say just a quick trigger warning for mentions of self-harm.

Yep.

Dear Sam and Sierra, my partner, she her, and I, she her, have been together for over a year.

Our mothers are from the same country,

a place that holds deep meaning for both of us as part of a diaspora.

Nine months into our relationship, we were both supposed to travel to that country separately,

but at the same time. I was going to a family wedding. She was supposed to go with her mom who had been promising to take her for years, but had never followed through on her promise due to a financial circumstance.

A couple of months before my trip, her mom canceled again.

My partner was devastated, and I held her while she cried.

I told her that she could make this trip happen for herself someday, and that now that she has a well-paying job, she told me she just wanted to be sad and that she was annoyed.

...