FWB to Relationship Transition

Hey guys I'm F(22) and I'm in a VERY confusing situation rn so please help me out. so in my high school years I had a tutor(M25) who taught me Math and Chemistry for two years. After I graduated high school, he was still randomly visiting my house as my family started considering him as a part of our family.

After a year of him not being my tutor anymore we both faced two very ugly breakups from our partners of that time. He was cheated on and I was in a mentally abusive relationship. So we kind of bonded over that shared painful experience and grew out of it together. I won't call it trauma bond because we genuinely recovered ourselves by helping each other talk and share what's on our mind.

We still have a really good friendship among us but after 6-7 months of our breakup with our exes, we decided to have a FWB situation because we felt safe around each other. Obviously there were more hair caressing, forehead kissing, long hugs moment and after a year of our FWB situation, we both felt we are more attached than we are admitting to be. And we both sat down yesterday to have a talk.

I raised the question and he said he wanted to ask me about this for a while but he was scared to ask as it might throw our friendship down the bus. But now he feels that we should pursue everything very carefully because he doesn't want our friendship ruined. Problem is he is graduating next year and I am starting my undergrad in a different city in October. He told me we should wait at least for my first semester to be completed to see if we still have that sort of attachments towards each other. Which is honestly a very good idea. But recently he also seems to not survive a few weeks distance as he is visiting his hometown for some event. He misses me a lot and says that he doesn't know how he can survive without me, eventually suggesting me if I can go and study abroad with him while I'll still be in my second semester. He seems genuinely scared of the fact that our life paths might be different, and we aren't even official yet.

How can I handle this situation? Do LDRs really work in the end? I wanna clarify one thing we both have huge trust on each other from both sides so the fear of getting cheated on isn't really in our mind rn. We also are very open and he doesn't judge anything I say so we're very well connected mentally. I'm just scared he won't be able to handle the distance. Any suggestions would be a great help.

TIA