... i think he is terrified. i know he is. it feels like we are at a crossroads in our relationship - do we go deeper? or do we pull back?
... i am scared too about whether he is capable of supporting me if we were to try this, and i am scared of where it might take me, but i want to try.
... thing is i suspect (rightly or wrongly) that he will pull back from emotional pain, cut off just when we are about to make breakthrough, and stop us getting beyond that pain to the learning. i need him to be really committed.
... he obviously isnt today but i wonder if i give him time and space will he arrive at a place where he feels brave enough to try? ...
Hi vundabra / dakid.
The thing that strikes me most from the paragraphs quoted above is that you want him to commit to the ups and downs of a deep relationship and he is not there yet. It is a bit like, "do I marry this drinker and hope he stops?" Any relationship with this guy is a gamble. You might invest a whole lot of love and time and find years later that he is still a social butterfly - moving off to other flowers if things ever get rough with you.
My advice is that if you want to continue the relationship, try to get him to commit at least this far:
1) An agreement that he is not dead set against the relationship evolving into something deeper in the future. If he later changes his mind, he lets you know at once rather than stringing you along.
2) He spends at least one hour or 1/2 an hour per week exploring these ideas. In this time he could read books on polyamory, just sit down and talk with you, etc.
Rather than 2) above, you might just commit to spend 3 months or some short amount of time seeing how things go and then promise to reassess things at the end of this time.
Basically, you said that you NEED him to be something he is not now; he is afraid of becoming that new thing. It sounds like a recipe to heart break for you as far as I see things.
If you think he is honestly trying now, you might not want to push any harder or faster. Just see how things go for a little while. But my main concern is that months or years may just drift by with you waiting, waiting, waiting for him to change.
Warm regards, Rick.