Warlord works perfectly fine as the 'breaking point' for their relationship.
I totally disagree. In "Warlord" she was being controlled by an alien, so that doesn't count. Then based on dialogue in subsequent episodes we're supposed to believe they broke up for real but I guess we just didn't see it, or maybe what we saw was real. Sorry, that's not how I took it at all. Perhaps one could analyze it and show how it makes sense on paper, but that's no substitute for how it made me feel actually watching it unfold. It sucked. And where where was the big emotional breakdown from Neelix when Kes finally left for good in "The Gift?" Neelix was very selfish and child-like with his feelings and territorial over Kes, and to ignore all of that when Kes actually left was to ignore some potential growth for his character. There could have been some wonderfully emotional scenes with him there. In this case, they blew it.