I’ll try to keep this short as possible.
I am a female college student (22F) who met a guy (25M) 5 months ago whilst completing an internship role in his home country. We clicked instantly despite a slight language barrier. On my penultimate day there he took me out on a date and afterwards one thing lead to another and we slept together. Honestly I expected him to ghost at this point and for it to end as a holiday fling but actually he told me he enjoyed our time together and made a promise to me he would come visit me in my country (not that far – 1 hour flight).
About 2 months later he came to visit me and stayed with me at my place for almost a week. We had a great time and the connection was just as strong as the first time. He again made promises he wants to see me again. It was after this visit things started escalating – he said I love you, It took me a bit longer to say it back. He would start saying ‘ I hope you haven’t been seeing other guys / sleeping with others’ I told him that’s not the case & I prefer dating exclusively. He told me from that point he was doing the same.
It has now been 5 months since that first day we met, from that time we have been texting daily and like I said there is a lot of affection and flirting. He has a relatively large social media platform partly related to his work. A few days ago he did a Q&A on instagram stories and one of the questions was “Are you in a relationship currently?”. His response was literally “No!”. Of course I called him up on it, even though I am not so sure where this could lead to it hurt me seeing that he displays himself as a single man. I asked him does he see this as a relationship or at least progressing into one, or should we accept this as a casual relationship where we can each do our own thing in our respective countries. I also told him that we would no longer be exclusive so he should stop telling me to not go out with other guys or that he loves me. His response was basically that he wants to protect me from ‘jerks’ and he doesn’t want me seeing other people as it would ‘change my personality’. For context I am in my 20s and he is only older by 3yrs, so I don’t know why he has this naive view of me. I basically told him we are nothing more than friends with benefits if he doesn’t want to be bf/gf after almost 5 months of talking. His literal response was “okay we can be a couple then because I don’t want to lose you’”
Before this he had planned to come see me again in less than 3 weeks time. He already has his tickets booked and all. I told him I don’t want to force you into this being a long distance relationship , and that it would be better to think about this & wait until he comes to visit and we can discuss once and for all in person about how to define the relationship . He agreed. Now initially I was satisfied with this arrangement, but now I’m having second thoughts. Should I have just called it quits and said we should remain friends as soon as I saw his post? I don’t know if I am unnecessarily prolonging this. If this was a regular relationship where we can see each other everyday i would not be giving him so much grace. Though, part of me feels guilty because he is honestly the one doing the heavy lifting in terms of coming to visit. He pays for all his travel expenses, our dates etc. The only thing I have to offer is allowing him to stay at my place. As I said, I am a broke college student who likely wouldn’t be able to fund visiting his country to see him again until I graduate in summer. Am I right to be making these demands? We haven’t necessarily even talked about how a long distance relationship would work so I feel I am just adding more pressure on the situation.
Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks in advance
Tl;dr – Asking if he would consider us in a relationship even though we are long distance