My first time having to pursue a man due to my own faults, super confused

Hi all,

A bit of a long one, apologies

This guy and I have been seeing each other for the past two months, on a fairly early stage dating basis but he still took me on dates for the first month or so and made effort to see me every weekend. Well after, unfortunately something happened. I found out my dad cheated on my mom over the weekend before the Monday that I met him. I was obviously upset, and unfortunately took it out on him. I went pretty silent during our meet up and even though he tried to ask if everything’s okay, I didn’t answer and pulled away. Long story short, I know I was wrong, I was going through a lot and unfortunately rashly ended things with him. This was on Wednesday. By Friday I had more time to think and realized I was wrong to put those expectations on him, especially when it was so early in our dating relationship, and apologized. We agreed to start seeing each other again after he took a day to think over it.

Well since then, our dynamic is a bit different. He’s still nice to me and I don’t really see a difference in his energy towards me, but he doesn’t ask me out on dates anymore. We still see each other weekly, but its mostly at his place where we get physical, where even then he’s nice to me, cuddles me after, walks me to my place, gives a goodbye hug, etc, but I’m wondering if this is all we are to him now. Before we crossed the physical line, I asked to be exclusive, and he promptly agreed. The problem is, when I apologized for my behavior when the thing with my dad happened, I may have mentioned one too many times that we were just casual, not planned on being serious (I leave the country in Dec, which is why we agreed to just have fun, this was also around our 3rd or 4th date in the start), which is why I thought he may have taken the hint and not try to pursue me any further? I know, thats on me, but I was trying to play it cool. But I’m not sure if its that or if he’s genuinely not as interested as he was in the start. We still text, he texts me the day after we get physical, talk about our days, but its lesser compared to how it was in the start, and most importantly, he hasn’t asked me on an actual date since we “got back together” after the thing with my dad, which was around 3 weeks ago.

I decided to ask him to go to a movie instead of waiting around for him to ask me, and he wholeheartedly agreed. Even bought the tickets in advance and said we could buy snacks to sneak into the theater. Well 2 hours before we were supposed to meet, he asked if I could meet him at the theater instead of at his place as originally planned, because he was meeting his friends beforehand (this was a last minute plan), and I got really disappointed. The cinema did not have assigned seating and the time he suggested we meet could possibly cut it close. Since i was so disappointed, i asked him to refund the tickets, he then said if we can’t make the movie we can just chill at our building, when the whole point was to move past hanging at his place and actually going out, he then called me twice and i didn’t pick up, but ultimately refunded them and asked if we could reschedule. What do you make of this? Was my reaction too much? I realize I may have reacted a bit too much, but this date was important to me, it was indication that we’re not just doing this for physical purposes only, and I let those emotions get to me. I sent him a text after all of this basically explaining how I overreacted because I looked forward to tonight since we’ve really only been hanging out at your place and I liked how we used to go out when we first started seeing each other. He said its all good and that he was looking forward to it too, and that we’ll definitely do something fun next time. I couldn’t tell if he was being genuine. But since then he’s still been texting me consistently and we’re talking normally. This was Friday. Yesterday, on Monday, he asked if I’d like to have ice cream from a pint he bought and smoke a joint at his place. We did so and then watched a movie. I told him I’m too tired to have sex and he said thats fine we don’t have to. The rest of the night, he still cuddled me and held me close, we talked with my head on his chest and he kept brushing my hair and looking into my eyes, didn’t make a move, didn’t even try to kiss me, which did lead to me to believe he genuinely wanted to see me.

But what do I do now? I know I need to make it clear to him that I don’t want casual anymore, I want something more, that my feelings have changed, but I’m so scared to talk about it, scared because I don’t know how he feels about me. And I know, trust me I know that so far its all been on me and my unstable emotions, but I didn’t mean for it to get like this. I really like him. I’m thinking of waiting to see if he actually plans a date and takes me out, see if he puts in that effort, and then I can approach this subject with more confidence. Could really really use some advice.