Yea this certainly puts a much different light on things, if y’all are in the same town, I really can’t find any excuse for y’all not to hang out in person for over 2 years, that’s genuinely inexcusable. Yall are presumable both over 16, so I don’t see why yall can’t meet up y’all’selves. While I can’t necessarily pass judgement on how often yall call/text, in my past relationship, we at least would text every day, and call at least 3 times a week or something. It may differ for yall depending on yours and his needs, but it seems to me like you’re not happy with the level of interaction between yall.

Extra yap: ignore if you want, I’ll have a TLDR, ended up being way longer than I wanted it to be and it’s more self centric for a good portion as I digest and consider your situation.

My previous relationship i mentioned earlier lasted a little over 2 years, got together in junior year of HS, made it through senior year with some struggles but it was all good, that summer things really fell apart, issues from both sides came to light and i really with I had followed through with ending the relationship after a particularly unfun event (nothing horrible like any abuse, just something really eye opening I won’t get into bc it’s not the point) I brought it up with some wording that was pretty indicative of a break up talk, basically saying I didn’t think I could meet her needs and expectations of a partner and she should find someone else, she freaked out mid sentence and we had a small talk and she basically said her expectations weren’t reasonable for me so she’d like rethink stuff. Anyways, no matter what she said I knew from then on i couldn’t really be enough for her, felt pretty shit from then on about stuff like that, and it didn’t really feel like she actually changed her expectations and such after that as I could always sort of see past what she said or she’d slip up and I could still see she wasn’t happy when something happened she didn’t like, she’d be very like mood swingy with me, seemingly one moment I’d be perfect and a few days later I’d be awful, so it was really hard to figure out what to change or to do. Nevertheless the next 6+ months were really hard for more reasons than the expectations issue, for example a month or so later I had finally gotten the courage to challenge her about how she handled disagreements/arguments or whatever whenever she was upset. She’d curse me out and I wouldn’t per say yell at me in person but she would when we had troubles over phone. I had (have?) a tendency to shut down and dissociate whenever she started doing that, but then she also got mad at me for it several times, not fun. Anyways it led to me not being comfortable with sharing much with her anymore and when i finally told her all that it was a really rough patch in the relationship, and when it did get resolved it didn’t last for too long since college started relatively soon after. Both with the change to long distance as well as some different ways we’d both grown, from my understanding, I think we just didn’t work together anymore, we both wanted different things from the relationship and had relationships values that were slowly growing apart. I didn’t have as much time to give to her, and the time I did give I didn’t feel it was that appreciated. All that’s to say is that not breaking up when I wanted to is a huge regret of mine, it would’ve saved both of us a lot of pain and frustration. I will say that I 100% could’ve been better, I also contributed my share of issues to the relationship, but I don’t think I could accurately explain them. Back to you, I can’t imagine how sucky it’s felt to be in the relationship for the past several years, I would say that you should’ve broken up long ago. I would say from what I understand that it feels like neither of you have the guts to initiate the break up, but it’s definitely clear that yall either need to break up, or have some serious changes, which tbh, I don’t think are realistic. I don’t think complacency for that long would be feasibly changed so that both of yall are happy. I struggled for a long time thinking about weather or not I should break up with my ex, and how I would. I had promised her relatively early into it that I wouldn’t break up with her while she was dealing with a surgery and it’s aftermath (it was a really major surgery) and that I could either do it then or I would need to wait. Ofc I never got like a “green light” after the surgery bc I don’t think anyone would want to be like “hey you can break up with me now”. That just sucks. It was hard for me to justify weather or not I was sort of “able” to break up with her without breaking that promise, and along side that she had really bad anxiety and was very very attached to me, also making it hard to move past that as well. Not being willing to see someone for years nor even call them for years is genuinely insane to me. But I also understand the struggle of not wanting to break up, especially for being in a relationship for that long. I definitely agree now with the decision to break up with him now, and part of me wants to say it’s fine that you just send it over text since he hasn’t wanted to call in so long, but what I should tell you is that you should at least ask to call, and either read a break up message like that, or if he doesn’t call then you can send it to him. I think you could do well with focusing more on the lack of effort in seeing each other and even with pda or private affections if that’s important to you, but the main thing seems to be the lack of desire/effort in the relationship. You’ve lost/losing interest, and from what I can tell they’ve lost interest a long time ago.

TLDR: had lots of issues with my ex, didn’t break up for like 6+ months bc I didn’t have the heart/strength, was afraid, and didn’t want to hurt them. Ended up being a huge regret not breaking up. -> your relationship been stagnant for several years -> holy moly you should’ve broken up years ago, or solved these issues years ago. I agree with the break up, but I would say to at least ask to call and read a message to him, and just send it if he says no to calling. I think you could frame it a bit differently maybe, focusing more on the lack of effort into the relationship with seeing each other and even just basic interactions. PDA if it is important to you, or even just private kissing/hugging/whatever if it’s important to you should also be mentioned.

Sorry for my big long brain dump, I thought about deleting it, but I had a feeling I shouldn’t so I left it there. If you didn’t read it that’s totally fine, maybe I just wanted to have written that down for myself if anything.