I might accept a long-term relationship if I meet my dream partner, but don’t expect more from me until I explicitly say so

OK, RITB, I’m going to lay this one out bluntly: you’re not in love with him, you certainly aren’t anywhere near a point where you should be thinking about a long weekend in a cozy B&B never mind marriage and you really need to take a long deep breath and just chill out.

What you’re feeling and expecting is going to be very out of line with not just where he’s at but what he’s offering. When these two aspects start to clash – and they will, soon – you’re not going to like how it turns out.

Let’s start with the most obvious: when someone says they’re “open” to long term, that doesn’t mean that they’re looking for one necessarily or are even interested in one should the opportunity arise. They’re saying that if the right person explicaciГіn comes along, if circumstances are right and if they’re feeling it, then they’re not going to say “no” to a long-term relationship. That is very different from someone saying “Yes, I’m looking to settle down and meet my forever person”.

When someone says that they’re looking for something casual but are open to long term, what they’re saying is “I don’t want strings or commitment and that’s not going to change any time before I’ve decided I’m done being casual, on my schedule, not anyone else’s’. ”

And despite how that sounds… that’s not bad. Most folks who say that almost certainly should drop the “open to” part (because at the end of the day, they’re really not; not in any reasonable definition, anyway) but they at least know what they’re looking for and are open about it. It’s an opt-in situation. The problem is that some folks focus too much on the “long term” and don’t parse what “open to” is really saying.

It’d be one thing if you, too, were cool with something casual without the expectation of commitment, but were willing to consider something long term if it all worked out. But you’re not. You’re already looking for something he isn’t ready, willing or able to give. So right off the bat: you and he want radically different things.

That difference between what you want from him and what he wants in general are going to be in conflict. When that conflict happens, he’s not going to decide he’s done being casual, he’s going to decide he’s done being casual with you. And no, you can’t count on riding this out and hoping that you’re going to be the one he settles on when he decides to settle down. Leaving aside that I don’t think you’re going to be able to hold those feelings in for long, I think the process of trying to wait it out is going to be incredibly corrosive to you.

Your attraction to him seems to be far more predicated on how he is on paper than your actual relationship and you’re letting that fill in a whole lot of blank spaces

Then there’s the fact that a) you’ve been seeing each other for just a month and b) it’s long-distance. So I’m going to go ahead and guess that you’ve seen each other… what, three times max? That’s no time at all, even with all the texting and flirting. You know next to nothing about this guy, you don’t spend much time together and you think you’re on a different relationship track than him.