Relationship advice? In love and heartbroken, feeling very alone and scared. Very long.

So, a little more than a year ago, I met a man in one of my college classes. He was ridiculously smart and very good looking by my standards. We hit it off, and on the last day of class he ended up convincing me not to transfer schools, but that it would be good for my personal growth to stick around. I was 19, he is 15 years older than me.

This year, we became closer and closer friends. In the winter he ran out of money for his apt, and spent many weeks couching surfing with me in my apt, during which time we became very close. I told him things I've never told anyone. He became my best friend here. I liked him a lot, but he always had women around him who desperately wanted him to be "their man", which bothered him, so I was afraid to let him know my feelings because I didn't want to be one of those women. However, he eventually caught on to my very gentle flirting and hints. He told me that he didn't want to start anything with me because he was leaving town at the end of the year and didn't want to hurt me, and that he was in no position to be my boyfriend. He had by this time gotten a temporary teaching position at the school I was attending, and he said that if we had a sexual relationship it would have to be a secret because it would inappropriate for him to have such a relationship with a student (although I was not his student). This hurt but I was desperately in love with him by this point and said I didn't care at all, and I rushed in head first. He was the first sexual contact I had had with anyone, and I lost my virginity to him. I was depressed through most of my teen years and I had long thought I would never find anyone to love me or even touch me. He was a wonderful partner, always putting me first and not pressuring in any way.

Things were really great for weeks after that, some of the happiest times of my life. However a problem I had always had with him, that he made himself seem available while making plans, but would often fall through, became harder to deal with. Its hard to describe, because I've never actually thought of him as actually flaky. It was almost like he failed to understand just how important he was to me. I was really sick one week and, living alone, was really lonely and kind of scared, but he didn't want to stay at my place with me those days, saying that he had work to get done and needed alone time.

Well, the next week he and some other students/mutual friends went out of town for a conference. There, his other good friend, who he had introduced me to, told me she was struggling with her feelings for him and we got to talking, and I discovered that he had, earlier that year, been sleeping with her, but had cut it off abruptly and coldly when he received the teaching position, which was for her class. And he had also asked her to keep her relationship with him a secret. Shit hit the fan. Us two women were felt completely mislead; we throwing around theories about how maybe he had been manipulating us, and maybe he had all kinds of other women he had secretly slept with and asked not to tell. After a massive amount of trauma on everyone's part, we were able to have a conversation where he basically said that he was a completely broken person, told of of all the neglect and abuse he suffered as a child and young adult, how he had put up walls all around himself, and before she, then I, came along, he hadn't been with anyone in almost a decade. That he had no idea at all how to conduct a relationship and he had tried to put up walls and compartmentalize his life to protect himself. He said that this was absolutely the worst moment of his life, knowing how badly he had hurt two people who had been so generous to him. I was still really, really hurt, but I was able to accept his apology and explanation as sincere. For a week or more I was still somewhat suspicious of him, but eventually things got better, we started having sex again, and I trusted him again. He was still doing the thing where he would try to make plans but ultimately fail to come over. A problem seemed to be that he would go out to the bar with friends (I can't go, not 21) and get too tipsy to come over, or he would get in an argument with other girl (neither of them can communicate with each other and be too upset, or he would just say he needed alone time, which I respect, since I think he is genuinely going through a very painful period of personal growth.

Here, I have to explain something of his home life: He has, for the past 15 years or something, been dependent on his best friend, who he explained pretty much hates anyone who tries to get close to him, who he has been living with rent free with her and her husband in his hometown for ages. He explained to me that she was one of the reasons that he didn't want our relationship to be public, because she would never, ever forgive him if she found out. He says he's realized how unhealthy that relationship is, and he intends to distance himself from her, but also says "she's family" and he really depends on her, and he doesn't have the money to move out right now so he doesn't know what to do.

PERHAPS RELEVANT PART:

Come to last week. School ended, he moved out of town. The day he left, I told him I was in love with him. He said he cared for me deeply, that I was special to him, and we had a very romantic goodbye. This week, I have struggling massively with him being gone. Next year he is going to be only 300 miles away, though only for a year, and I was really hoping I might be able to be his girlfriend, or something close to it. This position of being of being more than a friend with benefits, but not a girlfriend or even a partner, is very precarious and upsetting to me, and I told him that, told him I wanted some kind of commitment. He told me straight up that he is in a state of complete crisis and cannot be anything to me right now. He says he knows how much he's hurt me this year, and how he just wants to be a positive force in my life but doesn't know if he can be. I have been very brokenhearted since he told me this, 5 days ago. Like, absolutely devastated, ruined, destroyed, defeated. He says he is also heartbroken. I felt like I had been a fool for entertaining the idea that he could be something more to me, when he had made it so clear to me before we started this that he couldn't be. We both turned out to be way more important to each other than either thought. I'm young, I want to throw caution to the wind to go be with him, but he is in the opposite position, where he is basically homeless, jobless, in debt, and has nothing to do but to go back to school, try pick up the pieces of his life and get out of the rut he's been in for so long. But, I really, really love him, and I don't know what to do about it at all. He says he will be around next year, he has promised me so, but A) I still don't know if I can believe him given his kind of bad track record regarding plans, and B) I don't know if I can have a sexual/love relationship with him while he is so far away and so busy. I don't know if I can be his friend without being in love with him, but I know how badly he needs me to be his friend right now- he really has very few friends to count on at all. And I don't think I can stand to cut him out of my life or anything, that is the last thing I want. A few of my friends have told me they think I should ditch him, but I can't stand the idea at all, he means so fucking much to me. I communicate with him unlike anyone else I have met, we have so much in common, we both see the world in the same thoughtful way, and I think we do let each other grow in a healthy way. I don't know anyone else like him. I'm not a person who is easily happy by nature, but he makes me really happy, and best of all, he encourages and facilitates my happiness and how to be a happy person.

The worst is that school is out, and almost all my friends have left town, but I have been and will continue to be stuck here for several weeks completing an unfinished school project. Since he has left town he had until today been with his ridiculous best friend almost 24/7, and had hardly been able to text, email or call me at all, because of her craziness. Luckily today he reached his hometown and said he thinks he'll be able to call more often. But I've been spending hours and hours every day working alone in the basement studio alone, hoping for some contact with him, then coming home to empty apt. Everything in this town reminds me of him. I just do not know what to do. I know if I was a different person, perhaps a smarter person, I would break off the romantic shit with him, just be his friend, and move on. They say there are other fish in the sea, but honestly I really do not believe I will find someone like him again, at least someone like him who I could become so close with. I want more than any I have ever wanted anything in my life for this relationship to work out, but I really doubt my ability to keep up this precarious emotional position for very long, waiting for him to be a person capable of loving me. I know things will be somewhat better when I get back to my hometown, but its going to be several months before I can even see him again. Until then its basically a waiting game, a terrible one.

Advice, similar stories, sympathy? This has really been the longest post ever, I wonder if anyone will get through it...Throw away because this is such a delicate thing.