Scarleteen

I'm an 18 year old gay male and I've never been in a relationship with another man until a few months ago. I met this really cute and nice guy who seemed to show a lot of interest in me. We texted for about a month and then he texted me to meet in person one day. We did, and it was better than I could have ever imagined. We hit it off so quickly, and we even had sex. We still text nearly every single day and we see each other on weekends. We've never discussed being an "official" couple although I really would like to, but I don't want to scare him off.

Fast-forward to yesterday. I walk by his apartment on the way back to mine from dinner, and I see him with another guy through the window which is right next to his bed. I literally felt sick to my stomach. But why? We're not a couple, so he wasn't cheating, but I was still absolutely devastated. Am I not good enough for him? Did I do something wrong? Was he never into me in the first place?

I can't confront him about it for obvious reasons, but this is causing me immense emotional pain. Any advice? Literally anything will help.

Hi ilovemovies,

This sounds like a really stressful situation, but it also seems like it may be giving you some important information about your relationship with him. For starters, it's confirmed that you probably want to be exclusive with him if you two continue seeing each other. And it's also confirmed that it's time for you two to have at least a little talk about what you're each hoping for from this relationship. I really like this article as a tool for that: Supermodel: Creating & Nurturing Your Own Best Relationship Models. Too, we're happy to help you work through how to approach that conversation if that would be useful to you.

I hear you when you say you don't want to scare him off by asking to be exclusive, but at a certain point having that conversation is the kindest option for both of you. It's absolutely okay to want to be exclusive with someone, but if you don't tell them that they can't know it's what you want, and you end up continuing in a relationship structure that makes you anxious or insecure. Does that make sense?

One last thing to consider is that he may want the same thing! It doesn't sound like you saw him and this other person being intimate, just that they were in his room by his bed. That could mean they were together, but it could also mean they were a friend who was hanging out; depending on his living situation, or even just the layout of his room, hanging out on the bed might just be the way the most comfortable way of talking.