me (20F) and my boyfriend (21M) have been together for almost 5 years, and he is the sweetest person on this earth, and my closest friend. however, lately i’ve been feeling like i’ve changed a lot as a person since we started dating (i was 14, so makes sense lol), but he has stayed relatively the same. there’s nothing wrong with the way he is or how he treats me, just i don’t think that we are as compatible as we used to be. i also moved out of state for college this year, which added another layer of disconnect between us. he has no idea that i’ve been feeling this way. he wants to marry me, and keeps talking about moving to be closer to me within the next year. i feel absolutely horrible, because he is so kind, and doesn’t deserve any kind of pain in his life. he’s also been through a really hard past couple years, and he has told me multiple times that i am the only stable thing in his life. i feel like a monster taking that away from him, but i know i can’t string him along anymore. i have pretty much decided that it’s time to end the relationship, but he’s supposed to come visit me this weekend, and i don’t know what to do. i don’t want him to drive all the way here (8 hours each way) just for me to breakup with him, but i don’t think i can fake it the whole time — he would notice, and that doesn’t seem fair. so now i feel like i have a deadline to breakup with him before he leaves (2 days), which is just super stressful. any advice on how i can make this as gentle and pain free as possible for him would be greatly appreciated.
TLDR: i want to breakup with my super sweet boyfriend of ≈5 years, but he’s supposed to visit me out of state this weekend and i don’t know what to do.