I (F34) have been with my SO (M35) for a very long time, longer than 10 years. We live together. We love each other, and even though we're different in many ways we at least have some common agreements on what is important in life.
The past years the question of children has come up and I think that made me observe our relationship and our behaviors in a more pragmatic way. I have observed things that make me worried what the future will entail. He does a lot of chores on his own, without me needing to remind him, but usually he waits a really long time to do it and seems to just not care enough about the benefit of solving one's problems as you go.
I have a lot of issues with this way of prioritizing and I have tried bringing it up several times but the old infected arguments have taken a toll on his reaction to the issues being brought up. For example, gaming before chores. We both fall into slumps sometimes and just log out of daily life by prioritizing our hobbies non-stop. The problem is that his threshold for when something is too cluttered or too dirty is extremely high. When I stay at home, am present and feel well, I like cleaning first and relaxing later. I hate the smell of trash and I get very stressed when the counters are dirty. I come from a family of (hygienic and pedantic) hoarders so I am sensitive to clutter, but even more to actual dirt. This does not apply to my SO. He comes from a family where the countertops are usually very dirty and unkempt. Very often, he just chooses to not make an effort to clean immediately after cooking, and the glasses and plates and dishes just pile up. I usually find him gaming at any given point when I come home from a long day at work and immediately get disheartened by the smell and looks in out shared space. To make it even worse, he seems to choose gaming because he either can't think of anything better to do (even if there ARE things he could do, even together with me), or he doesn't see the problem.
I stopped cleaning a certain space of our home to see when he would do so himself. This was a year ago.
To make this even more sour, our sex life has declined severely since around six years back due to a mix of mental health issues on my part, stress, physical changes, chronic conditions and a lot of fights and disagreements. We have kept choosing the other after every fight and soldier on. I still feel like there are issues remaining that need to be brought up but it's not possible and always ends in fights.
How do you manage to find a way out of this situation?