Long long long time reader and listener. I need your advice today, right now, please.

I am distraught and don't know what to do. I've been dating a man for about eight months now. He's 30 I am 32. Everything was going well. You know this whole song and dance. Then out of the blue he says "I'm struggling with this." He says this is the best relationship he's ever been in. This is the first time he's ever been able to see himself with someone for the long term. "But I need space to think about it. Can we talk in three weeks?" I was shocked and in tears but said yes.

That was last Tuesday. I waited three days but felt panicky and insecure and awful. It seemed insane to wait three weeks to... see if he wants to dump me? Or not? I kept crying at work and didn't know what to do. So Saturday morning I emailed him to say that I needed to speak with him sooner. He called the following day, Sunday, yesterday. I said that I didn't understand. He seemed sort of short and frustrated with me over the phone. I asked him to explain and he said he had nothing to say but what he had already said. I asked him to meet me in person and he said he would. Tonight at 7 pm.

I can't even describe the amount of pain I'm in. I think I need to end it? I don't think I can wait around for two weeks just hoping he'll decide to be with me. When we talked on the phone last night he sounded so cold and distant. But I think I'm in love with him. I know it hasn't been that long. But I feel happy with him. We have a rapport that I've never had with anyone else. I feel like the best version of myself when I am with him. This never happens for me. I don't understand what's going on inside his head. Why do you need to think about a good relationship?

Do I:

1. Talk to him today, break down in tears and hope he changes his mind about this weeks and weeks of time? Decides that he actually wants me?

2. Do I wait it out? I don't think this is actually a realistic option. I'll be too distracted and devastated every day. It'll ruin my work productivity and I think my affections for him will curdle. That, or I will be SO relieved if he decides he wants me, that I will put myself in an unhealthy relationship situation.

3. End it for now? Tell him I won't wait for him but that I love him, and if he wants to be in a real relationship with me, and we are both single, I would be open to that.

4. End it for good? This is cruel, this limbo. It demonstrates that he's emotionally immature and/or doesn't want me. Nothing else matters.

Thank you. I just need someone to tell me what to do here. you have the best advice. I've been reading you for... two decades? And I've been listening to you since the beginning of the Lovecast.

Really Need Your Help Before I See Him Tonight

Maybe it's time pressure... or performance anxiety induced by praise... but I'm blanking here. Your meeting, as I sit down to write this, is ninety minutes away. So I won't have time to think this through and I won't be able to take a second to reread/rethink my advice before posting to the blog... but fuck it... here we go...

I can't pick between options 1, 2, 3, or 4 with any certainty without first reading your boyfriend's mind, RNYHBISHT, and mind reading isn't one of my superpowers. But here's what I would've told you to do if your email arrived yesterday, RNYHBISHT:

Cancel the meeting. Text your boyfriend—text him so you don't go to pieces at the sound of his voice—and tell him you shouldn't have called and asked to meet. Then tell him what you told us: you love him, you think you're great together, you want to be with him. But if he doesn't know what he wants and he needs time and space to think about it, or if there's something he hasn't told you and he's gotta go on a vision quest to work up the courage to share it with you, RNYHBISHT, he should take the time, he can have his space, he can go vision questing. But he'll have to time/space/quest as a single person because you don't do holds. A relationship is either on or it's off. Emphasize—it's going to be a long text—that you're not asking for a lifetime commitment at eight months. All you're proposing suggesting is that you keep seeing each other with the understanding that it's a good relationship and it may last. (Or it may not. Just because you're crazy about him at eight months, RNYHBISHT, doesn't mean you'll be crazy about him at sixteen months. You could wind up dumping him.)

But your email didn't arrive yesterday, RNYHBISHT, it arrived ninety minutes ago. And canceling the meeting an hour before it's supposed to go down is gonna make you seem like the one who's playing games here. So here's what I'm going to advise you to do....

Go the meeting... and break up with him. Not because he's an asshole, not because he's done something terrible, but because limbo isn't for you. (It's not for Catholics anymore either.) Tell him you love him and tell him you think you're good together, RNYHBISHT, but don't tell him what he's feeling or thinking. Don't tell him that he thinks this is the best relationship he's ever been in even though he said that to you, RNYHBISHT. Because you can't read his mind either. Maybe he loves you so much it scared him and he needed three weeks off to recover from the shock. Or maybe he wanted to end it and he thought "taking a break" and then ending was the kinder way to pull the plug. You don't know what's up with him and you shouldn't pretend to.

Basically what I'm suggesting is that you go to the meeting and tell him what you're feeling—you're confused, you love him, but no limbo for you—without demanding any answers from him. Maybe he'll offer you an answer, maybe he won't, but don't go in expecting one.