I 24f don’t know how to tell my bf 26m ‘I want a break’.

TLDR; my (24f) bf (26m) of 5 years hasn’t shown any speck of growth or positive change and I don’t want to leave him but i feel like we just need space. I have no clue how to even approach it.

Okay so here is most of the details. My bf and I have had a very ‘trial and error’ relationship. Boundaries were never discussed and we just kind of played it day by day of learning about how we wanted this to go. well we met in college so i can admit i was not 100% all for him at first. i was just out of a breakup and got to college to be free so i had no regards for anyone else. but he saw thru the toughness and knew i was just trying to recover from it. not giving myself an excuse for how i made him feel, but to me, we weren’t official and i didnt think he cared about me as much as he actually did.

so fast forward year 2, we both are still ‘chatting’ with other people which made us realize we weren’t as happy as we thought, we talked about it and from there i did everything i could to get out of my college mindset but he didn’t. year 3, still going. year 4… still going and now we are here at year 5 and i can fill a page of all of the women i found and how long it was going on for. but i didn’t care. because i thought that i just wasn’t putting in enough effort still like from the beginning. i had people begging to spoil me and this and that but i blocked all of that out bc that’s the bare minimum, but the entire time, i wasn’t getting that in return.

here’s where it gets tricky. i don’t work. he pays for everything house-wise by choice. but then will use it against me when i need to get money from him bc i dont have any. or bc what i want to buy is unnecessary but if he wants it he’s getting it. financial abuse pretty much. and as im continuing to type this and edit my typos, im seeing how stupid i sound. i love him to death i really do, but i physically and mentally cannot keep doing this. i’m in so much pain that’s the other night i went out and didn’t come home. i physically couldn’t bring myself to drive home and that’s how i knew we needed space.

well the morning after the night i didn’t come home, i said it in the most kindest and blunt way that we need space. he LOST IT. crying,begging, the whole nine. so now i’m back on the guilt train of do i make it work here or do i keep pushing for a break or for some space? I don’t even know how to start the convo. we have been sitting together all day and he can tell i’m bothered but i don’t know how to bring it up that i want us to work on ourself for like two weeks or so?