Is it time for me to move on?

Hello all,

Me (M22) and my gf (F22) have been together for almost 5 years now. In that time, we both feel like we have grown up together- we went to prom together, we graduated high school together, spent the pandemic together, started college together and have made great memories together. She is my first serious, long-time relationship. We both feel accepted, supported and loved by the other.  In this amount of time, I have been attending college, driving and have held a steady job for a while now. In the past couple years however, things between us have grown strained over these topics. I have kept trying to push my gf to follow me, to learn how to drive and to get a job. I feel like we started growing distant over this around 2 years ago. She started shutting down any time we talked about her home life (she has a bad relationship with her family). If I brought up her learning to drive or get a job, she would shut down. She also dropped out of college.

Shortly thereafter, my mother passed and I invited her to come with me to the funeral. I am and always will be eternally grateful to her for that. A few months later, she and I went to a big event together. Afterwards, she did not talk to me for 3 days. This is very unusual for us, as we talked every day leading up to that. We had an argument after she contacted me again and started saying she was just ‘drained’ and extremely low on energy, amongst other things. I ended things a few days later, but couldn’t move on. I hated my job, had lost my mom, and now my gf. It felt like my life was crumbling around me and I became very depressed. I fought to get her back after letting her go, and agreed to go to couples therapy, which was her condition for us to date again as she was hesitant to get back together. We both also went to our own personal therapists, and I made a lot of progress quickly. I processed my feelings about my mom’s passing and switched jobs to one that is much more suited for me. My gf says that she has worked through a lot with her therapist as well.
In couples therapy, the first several sessions felt to me like I was being blamed for all of the problems in the relationship. My gf and I had a couple big arguments but our therapist managed to help us work through it. In the end, we left relationship therapy in a much better place. I brought up my concerns about her, and she brought up hers about me. Our therapist helped push her towards getting a job, returning to college and learning to drive. I was shown how to approach tough conversations in ways that wouldn’t shut my gf down from tough conversations. We decided to get back together and things seemed great. She had progress with her mental health, and wasn’t ‘drained’ all of the time and I could (and have) take her to big events without worrying about whether I would hear from her after it was over. We finished with our relationship therapist. All of these events finished around March of this year.

I have occasionally brought up her learning to drive, getting a job, or taking some classes in college but every time the conversation goes no where. She will make comments about what it would be like to have money, have an apartment together, or be able to drive to where she wants, but the only progress on any of these fronts is that she has a driving session for about 30 minutes with her mom every other week or so. I’m not in a position to help her learn to drive because of my busy schedule. She has had an application to a local store filled out since February, but has never turned it in. My gf and I don’t have money for relationship therapy anymore. I feel like I’ve been waiting for over 2 years now for her to move forward.

We have also had talks about what we want to do in life, which have also been contentious topics. I want to have kids in the future and she doesn’t. I want to have a life with traveling and explorations in science,  and she wants to have a stay at home desk job in business or art. I value family very much, and she is distrusting of many people, including my family. I have had her meet them several times now, and each time things have been a rather awkward situation. She says this stems from her distrust in her own family, and she likely has a point there.

As things stand now, I’m starting to consider what life would be like with someone else. One of the lessons that I have learned in life so far is “You can’t help someone who won’t help themselves.” I am starting to feel like my gf falls into that camp, given that it seems she isn’t putting much work into anything that would progress her life. Her lack of this drive has made me question what she does during the day. I wonder what it would be like to have someone that could drive to my house on her own, someone that makes her own money and had her own goals. I feel like in those aspects I have gotten so far ahead of my gf in life. However, I am extremely nervous about moving on because of her support and love for me, and I for her. She cares about me and we fit together in personality and in the bedroom. We fit together like a glove with only 3 fingers: we fit in the bedroom, support/love for each other, and in personality, but her lack of motivation to move forward and her future ideals are those missing fingers.

TL;DR: Have had good and bad times with gf and I love her a lot, but I feel like I’m so far ahead of her now in life goals and we have different ideal futures. We fit together on everything else… Should I move on?