I don’t want to be with him.... but

I met this guy on a dating app back when me and my ex were trying to make things work, and as expected, they weren’t. So I turned to the dating app to try and get over the situation. I was broken and just looking for comfort. Fast forward to now me and the guy I met on the app have been talking on and off for about a year now, he’s been super supportive of me, has always been a listening ear if I needed one.... and claims me as his girlfriend... i remember one day he just referred to me as his girl to someone in the background while we were FaceTiming and i knew I should’ve corrected him because we’d hadn’t even had that conversation yet he lived in whole other sate and we’d only been talking on the phone we never not once said lets make it official. Not to mention I was still having sex with my toxic ex 🤦🏾‍♀️😫 stupid and super selfish Ik. But it is what it is I was in a horrible head space. The way I made it seem ok in my mind was I’d tell myself “he’s all the way in New York, how do you know he’s not doing the same shit you’re doing?” Which is true there were times me and this guy would argue and we’d stop talking for weeks, and he told me he was texting other females when we first started talking so 🤷🏽‍♀️ but anyways now I’m done with my ex and I don’t think it’s fare for me to keep leading this guy on when I only got with him as an emotional buffer. Keeping him around is just more emotional baggage. I don’t want to hurt him but I also don’t want him to invest more time in this and my feelings aren’t genuinely there. I’d rather remove myself from the situation entirely. I want us to still remain friends if possible but I just can’t do the whole relationship thing anymore.