I left my job to build a company with my boyfriend. The constant fighting led to our breakup.

• Early in the pandemic, I joined my boyfriend's film production company, and we grew it together.
• We began fighting a lot and felt misaligned in both our professional and our romantic relationship.

We met six months before the pandemic. I was working part time for a fashion company, and he had the bare bones of his own film-production business.

We fell in love and, within a couple of months, started working together. He insisted I'd make a great producer, and I insisted I hated producing because I studied film in college.

For the first three months of the pandemic, we quarantined together in his studio apartment while I continued working remotely. We shot a short film to keep us busy. Then that summer, I was offered a full-time position at the fashion company, but then my partner offered an irresistible proposition: "Come work with me. Let's build a business together."

I was torn, but I went with my heart; I left my job and joined him — as his producer.

Not yet a year into the relationship, we were committed to each other. We had left his place, and he had moved in with me. We talked about getting old together. We disagreed on kids — he wanted them and I didn't — but we had such a connection it seemed wasteful to walk away from each other.

We ignored the early red flags

Our unchecked, intense chemistry fueled our romantic relationship. But at work, we had arguments at every turn. Still, we thought we were headed somewhere exciting and that all we needed to do was adjust and become wiser.

When we consulted with couples who also ran businesses together, the same advice kept coming up: "You each need to stay in your lanes." But we didn't take the time to define all the lanes. For instance, I wanted to invest in creative projects, and he wanted to focus on paid work. We fought over this.

My partner attempted to diagnose our problem and called it misalignment, yet our differences were not the real issue. Our communication was broken, and a toxic pattern permeated every area of our lives. We thought we could somehow fight and reconcile our way through every disagreement.

We quickly started to grow apart

Part of the stress and instability was due to the ebb and flow of the business. We worked hard when we were busy, and then we'd go months without a job. I wanted to take advantage of the slow periods, so I turned to my writing. It became the thing that got me out of bed in the morning.

That's when my boyfriend and I started to grow apart. Over time, our mutual adoration gave way to mutual resentment, and the fights became pettier and pettier. We soon agreed we were no longer headed toward a partnership. I was working for my boyfriend, not with my boyfriend. I was OK with this since I had my own ambitions and pursued them diligently. Yet, as I spent more time on my writing, he grew unsettled. Things came to a breaking point in 2023 when the business hit its longest drought.

"I wish you were passionate about producing," he said.

By then, my quitting was overdue. I was scared to face the harsh, uncomfortable reality that we weren't a good fit — both at work and in life.

I was showing up, but my heart was not in it anymore. In hindsight, maybe I should've been truer to myself from the beginning and not have become my boyfriend's producer just because I was devoted to him.

We eventually broke up and parted ways

Resentment is treacherous. Like a crack running across a broken window, it extends until the window shatters. When you resent someone, you hold on to everything you can hold up against them. The topic of kids kept coming up, causing more friction.

After we'd worked together full time for nearly three years, I quit. He supported this, but we still held out hope for our romantic relationship. I thought: Maybe if we were a "normal" couple, if I worked a 9-to-5, if we mostly saw each other at night, we could be saved. But we were already severed. We'd been hurting for too long. We broke up a couple of months after I started my new job.

Sometimes, progress is acknowledging when something isn't working. Conflict is not a failure. It's part of what allows us to change, improve, and move on. For as long as we were trying to force alignment, in denial about having to pivot, we were failing each other.

He's now my ex, but sometimes I think back to the good times. We were strolling through New York City this winter on our last trip together. I had my arm hooked around his and kept telling him, "I think this is going to be our year."

He thinks I jinxed everything by saying that, but in a weird way, I think I was right. I just didn't know it meant we'd be going about it on our own.

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