I [19F] have anxiety about (hypothetically) breaking up with my first boyfriend [19 M] of 6 months.

Hi r/relationships,

So I have generally been a pretty calm/happy person throughout my life and occasionally I would get rare 'sad' hours/days, but I have never had too many problems with my mental health unless it came to relationships.

Relationships were something I always avoided in high school because I always had a lot of paranoia regarding any form of it. One of the main things that I was afraid of was worrying about how I wouldn't get along with the guy I was dating and would end up having to break up with him and hurting him while also hurting myself. I had a small relationship-like fling in the summer and even then, I noticed it took up too much of my attention and my feelings would always be overwhelmingly intense. I eventually decided to to pursue this relationship as a way to "protect myself". I have also a tendency to 'cut people off' if I found that their "cons outweigh their pros", which I did to this guy. It took me a lot of guts and support from friends to begin the current relationship I have now, and for the first few months I had an amazing time with mainly good/great feelings all throughout. The guy I am with has been my friend for 6 months prior to the relationship and we get along well.

Around the third month of the relationship, my paranoia started to settle in after a Skype call we had, and I began to wonder what it would be like if we started to drift apart and possibly end our relationship, despite no indicators of a possible breakup at the time. I imagined the pain I could cause him and myself and the thoughts cycled until I got my first panic attack. Ever since then I had lived with mild to severe anxiety which would occasionally be dehabilitating. In the past few weeks I have learned to better deal with it and I am feeling myself again, but the same anxieties about breaking up still remain.

These days I have been finding that he is less communicative and doesn't try to make conversation much, and doesn't drive the conversation much when I try to talk to him. I have mentioned this to him a few times in the past politely, but today I had a more serious talk with him about it. He said he would work on it, but I found that addressing upsetting topics to him tends to make him unresponsive and uncommunicative. He tends to hide his feelings and although it seems like he has had a lot of experiences in dealing with tough stuff, he never specifically tells me anything about his past and addresses his past very vaguely/generally, which gives me a feeling that he doesn't trust me. I am always open to talking with him about myself and my past.

Sometimes because of this communication issue, I try to imagine breaking up with him. I can't seem to do it without panicking since I do believe I really like him still and cannot seem to let him go. He can be very sweet and we sometimes have great conversations and have fun hanging around each other. However, I wish that he could be more open like myself but I can't expect this kind of change overnight because that is just who he is. Furthermore, thinking about breaking up makes me internally very conflicted since I still really like him and reopens the old anxiety wounds that I have healed these past weeks. This is my first relationship and I feel like I do not understand breakups enough to allow myself to be hurt/hurt another person in such a way. I do not want to breakup with him, but I need to be okay with it at least in order for my anxiety to heal completely.

My question is: how do I overcome the fear of breaking up with someone you still really like? How do you stop caring about hurting another person and yourself? Also, any advice for dealing with his uncommunicativeness?

TLDR: uncommunicative boyfriend + personal relationship paranoia = anxiety. Considered breaking up but too scared/like him too much. How to get over being scared of first breakup?