Sorry for the long post.

TLDR: He wants to be with me and considers what we have a relationship, but he doesn’t like labels and has a lot going on in his life that seem to make it difficult for him to put in the effort needed for a relationship.

We’ve been dating for 5 months. I [24F] knew he [29M] wanted to take it slow from the beginning, and I agreed to it. He’s been through a lot with past relationships and has gone through the trauma of cheating and developing trust issues.

We became exclusive by the second month, agreeing to not date or be sexually involved with anyone else. Everything was going great… Up until earlier this week.

I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I needed to ask him and tell him how I felt. I wanted to be more. We act like boyfriend and girlfriend, we are in something that basically resembles a relationship, and we’re already exclusive.. so why not call it like it is? Over the past few months, he’s opened up more to me and has told me how much he likes me and sees me in his future, so I had hope that he would feel the same way and agree.

But when I brought it up, he told me about his discomfort with labels. How he feels hes not ready to use labels, how he thinks as soon as labels are applied to a relationship, it puts pressure and ruins everything. He said he viewed what we have as a relationship, that I can even call him my boyfriend if I wanted, but he can’t call me his girlfriend yet. This confused me, but he asked me to be patient, to wait, and we would definitely revisit this topic soon. I said ok.

But I went home that day in tears. Something didn’t feel right. I was clearly not ok with this, as much as I wanted to be. I called him and told him I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page. That even if we don’t use labels, that we both take this seriously and want to make it work and want it to become long term and something real. I told him I didn’t want to be used as a temporary source of happiness and I don’t want to be dragged along, waiting for something that will never come. I asked him if he thought we were going to be ok. He said he wants us to be. We decided we needed to meet in person to talk about it.

We were suppose to meet this weekend. But things didn’t go as planned and he got wrapped up with work. There have been a few times in the past where he’s had to bail on us due to work or due to being too tired and drained from work. I didn’t see it before, but now I notice just how much he prioritizes his work and how much it affects his quality of life. He’s passionate and dedicated, and it was one of the traits that attracted me most about him. But his work drains him. It exhausts him.

But there have been numerous times where I have driven down to see him and be with him after my long exhausting 12 hour shifts. There were times when I felt emotionally and mentally drained after work, but because it was the only time we had to fit in together that week, I put in the effort and I would go to see him anyway.

And that’s the thing. Relationships are give and take. You work together to figure things out and you compromise. We haven’t met up yet to talk about this. But from the way I see it, I don’t think he’s ready to compromise.

I don’t think he’s ready for a relationship.

And I’m not sure what to do.