Frankly, I see them, or at least one of them, lingering for quite a while. They may piss and moan about how they'll just die without the other one because of emotional pain, but let's face facts, that alone doesn't kill most people.

Their whole goal is to be in their own house tended to by their fambily, of which they're even talking about paying only one. For them, there's no disadvantage in blowing up our relationship; it's not like they especially like me anyway, and the breakup would force SO into living with them, which is what I sense they want. Then they can pay him or not because hell it's a better part of a more expensive region anyway.

SO is saying that's not what he wants, that what he wants is to get a full time job when the "crisis" is over. The crisis is not going to be over just like Covid-19 was not going to be over in February. The choice for me is that if he pays up he gets the keys and he gets to keep his stuff here, but like if you're engaged there's supposed to be more than that. I'll start detaching if there's no time to the relationship.