I (23F) love my boyfriend (25M) of over 4 years, but I am not sure that I see a future anymore and I’m terrified to leave. What do I do???

Hi everyone, I really need outside perspectives because I feel stuck, scared, and confused. My boyfriend and I have been together for nearly five years. I met him when I was fresh out of highschool when I really wasn’t looking for anything. We live together, we share two cats, I’m super close with his family, and we’ve built a lot of life together… but lately I feel like things are falling apart no matter how hard I try.

Over the past few months, I have told him repeatedly that I’m unhappy. He tries for a little while, and then everything goes back to how it was until I’m upset again. I feel like I’m carrying the entire emotional weight of the relationship, and I’m just exhausted.

Here are the main issues:

• He is very codependent (fear of abandonment, loss of self, extremely attached to me)
• He doesn’t take care of himself — showering, exercising, scheduling his own appointments, making his own dinner (I work in restaurants) or just basic life responsibilities
• Our sex life is basically nonexistent or just very vanilla (he does not go down on me, and intimacy feels one-sided)
• Romance is lacking - I always initiate
• We have opposite love languages
• Come from different family dynamics
• He never plans dates or puts intentional effort into the relationship
• He puts in the bare minimum until I cry or get upset
• When we have conversations, he often argues, gets defensive, etc.
• He has no close friends, no hobbies, and spends all his free time on video games or his phone.
• He is deeply unmotivated in life in general.

I just graduated, I have a new job, and I feel like I am growing (at least trying to)… while I feel like he is staying exactly the same as he was at 20. I still love him, but I don’t feel like I have a partner. I feel like I have someone who relies on me for everything.

The part that broke me recently was a conversation about our cats. He said that if we broke up, “there’s two cats so one for each of us.” Then he said, “you can have the girl but you’re not taking the boy from me.” I told him you can’t separate bonded cats, and he just didn’t get it. He said he has the right to take one because he pays the cat insurance (he pays it because I have more bills). He made comments about how people “only think about things like that if they’re planning to leave.” It turned into a whole argument about possessions — the bed, the furniture, etc. It honestly made me feel even more distant from him & broke my heart.

I am terrified because I have no family where I live, in the middle of a lease, and I don’t want to separate the cats. I am scared of blowing up my life, but I also can’t picture a future with him the way things are right now. I feel like this is the beginning of the end???But I don’t know how to leave without everything collapsing.

If anyone has been through something similar — how did you navigate it? How do I know if ending it is the right choice? And how do I even start when we live together and share pets? Crazy how things change…I thought I was getting ready to marry this guy.

Any advice is appreciated. I just feel really lost :(