How do I bring up the “what are we?” convo without making it a “label the relationship” talk?

I’ve (F26) been seeing this guy (M25) for a while and I’m not sure what the best next step is.

We were close friends for a long time, but recently something shifted and our relationship turned into more of a flirty/romantic thing. Since then, we’ve been seeing each other fairly regularly, usually for weekends when we can. We live pretty far away from each other, so we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d probably like. There’s definitely mutual attraction, and we recently slept together for the first time. We’ve never really talked about what we are, where this is going, or what we’re both looking for.

Part of what makes me feel like it’s worth discussing is that we’ve had unprotected sex. I’m not saying that automatically means we’re in a relationship, because obviously it doesn’t. But to me, once you’re repeatedly sleeping with someone and continuing to see each other like this, I feel like it’s reasonable to know whether we’re both treating this as casual, exclusive, potentially going somewhere, etc.

At the same time, I’m worried that bringing it up could make things awkward or put unnecessary pressure on something that’s currently going well.

I’ve never really been in this kind of situation before, so I’d really appreciate some outside perspectives.

Would you bring it up, or just let things develop naturally? And if you would bring it up, how would you start the conversation without making it sound like a serious “define the relationship” talk?

If anyone is willing to hear the full situation in DMs and give me an honest, objective opinion, I’d really appreciate it. I’m pretty anxious about this and could use some perspective from someone who isn’t emotionally involved.