TLDR; I (early 30's M) brought up the topic of exclusivity to the girl I'm seeing (late 20's F) and she said she wants to keep dating explore what she likes in other people, since she came out of a 5 year relationship very recently (~9 months ago). I don't feel good about that.
We met a month ago over an app. I feel there's a great deal of compatibility and chemistry between us. We've been to around 10 dates — I lost count tbh –, big and small, some of them in each others' houses. Things got steamy multiple times.
Recently, she said she wanted to talk about the thing between us. We spoke about recently relationship history, plans with kids, and so on. She got on top of me before I could talk about exclusivity, I just went with it and didn't bring it up.
I saw her today, I breached the topic finally. Was so sure of it I started it as "do we even have to talk about exclusivity at that point". Her face made a complete 180, and explained yes, and said she's been on dates with other people in the past month, but got nowhere near intimate with any of them. As I said in TLDR, she wants to see what she likes in other people and wants to keep dating.
To be perfectly honest, this makes two of us. I did have 2 coffee dates in the same time period with other people, but it is mostly because I set those up before exclusivity crossed my mind, and went with it since I know we didn't have the "conversation". I lost pretty much all my interest to pursue other people 2 weeks ago, and given how things are progressing, it felt the right thing to do.
But now I'm lost. I exhibit anxious attachment patterns, and am going to way overthink every single text that comes in longer than expected, every single day that she's not available to see me from this point now on. Even if I'm able to force her hand succesfully on this, it feels like this is going to be a problem in the long run.
Honestly, I feel like the best way to handle this is to just stopping seeing each other until she makes her mind up about it, if she would at all. And I really really don't want to do that.
Is there a way to save this, or do I write this off as "right people, wrong time"?