Are these his words or yours? ”He says he would rather keep me around for a long time and be intimate later than to “love ‘em and leave ‘em,” as he is currently so fond of doing.”
I don’t know what “keep you around” might mean. You call him your best friend, yet the relationship seems so unequal. Maybe that’s because you want a more intimate relationship and he doesn’t. It seems like he doesn’t want to lose your friendship. And he’s being honest about what he does want.
The problem is that you want different things. He may or may not ever want to be intimate with you, but clearly he doesn’t want to treat you as he does his other hook-ups. The question is, can he ever settle down, or is that how he sees women—as saints or whores? As sex objects or objects of adoration?
If he’s your best friend, you may want to consider leaving it at that. I’m not sure I’d “wait” for him to “sow his wild oats.” Be friends. Find someone else to get intimate with. If that’s what you want. Otherwise have fun with him but as friends, not as potential lovers.
I wonder how well you know him, though. What do you think his attitudes towards women are? How did he become your “best friend?” Does he tell you about his little affairs? Does he hide that from you? Or just keep the details to himself?
He may also not be attracted to you that way, and just be putting you off nicely. I don’t know, it sounds like there are some unspoken or miscommunicated feelings here. If he’s really your best friend, I think you should have a frank discussion with him. Don’t put him on the spot, but express your feelings and desires, and ask him if there is any chance for you. Ask him to be honest about it. Let him know if his other conquests bother you.
It’s not a good sign that you are asking a bunch of strangers to interpret his behavior for you. He’s the only one you should be talking to. Trust your gut here. If you don’t like what he’s doing, then that’s the story, and if you want to do something about it, you have to talk to him. My guess is that you believe you know what he’s doing and you don’t like being treated like that. It doesn’t matter what he thinks. What matters is what you want. It matters if you trust him.
Deal with those things—which means talking openly about all of it—and your course of action will become clearer. If you’re afraid—like you might lose him—then you have to decide if openness is worth the possibility of losing him. If you’re more afraid of losing him than having what you want—that’s an issue of self-esteem, and something else you may want to work on.
When I was in my twenties, I had a few long term lovers, and for the most part, I told them explicitly that I didn’t want to promise exclusivity. I suppose that meant I wasn’t really completely fulfilled in my relationship with them, but at the time, I wasn’t sure any one relationship could be completely fulfilling. I suspected that it wasn’t.
Later on I met someone I was willing to commit to. When I look back on those other relationships, I think I was right not to promise exclusivity. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wasn’t ready for that. In addition, I doubt if it would have been a good idea to marry those women. We surely would have ended up divorced.
I did have a problem with one woman who decided that if I was not exclusive, then she shouldn’t be either. I think she went a little overboard, because she picked up a stranger at a party for a one-time thing. My relationships were deeper than that. I always believed that I cared deeply about the people I slept with. I had a thing about believing that love was involved, and that I could love more than one person at once.
In any case, after she did that, we both had some seriously bad feelings, and had a fight I am very ashamed about. We decided to be exclusive after that, and I believe we were until we broke up.
For me, that was all about learning about relationships. What did I know? Not much. We had nothing to attach us to the community except for feelings. No property. No children. No real ties to the community. We were just there.
I was not ready to be committed to anyone until I was thirty, I think. I really didn’t understand the full implications of things in relationships until I was past thirty. I’ve been learning since then, but it seems to take me a long time to figure things out. I’ve always been a slow developer.
I like that your guy seems to be being honest. I don’t know how much insight he has into his own personality. My guess is that if he is doing this, then he really isn’t ready for a committed relationship, and if that’s what you want, he’s not the guy. Whether you want to wait for him to mature or not is up to you. You don’t have to look, but you can be open to other possibilities if they show up. However, I don’t think you should feel any more beholden to him than he does to you.
It might be better just to be friends, and leave it at that. You’ll have to find a way to deal with your feelings, and it may be that you have to stop the friendship in order to go on. It might be too painful to be friends with him. If that’s the case, then it’s probably better if you put yourself first. It’s your life. You should figure out what you want as best you can, and then go for it. You won’t always get what you want, but if you know, you’ll be able to avoid waiting for things when that waiting will cost you too much.
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