Ok, firstly please let me apologise for the masses of text, but I’ll give you all the details so you can hopefully advise me as best you can!

I am 26 and have been seeing a 22 year old for 5 months. I have never been out with a younger man in my life, but I need some advice on it please.

I met him at a music night and saw him looking at me all night and then later in the evening he made his move and we kissed. We swapped numbers and did a bit of texting and facebooking and went out for a drink again the following week. We then began dating and after a while sleeping together. We would go for drinks or him come over for dinner, or take me to dinner etc, and I thought we were becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, so after 2 months I asked him (albeit cowardly via email!) and he replied saying he liked me a lot, liked hanging out with me but that he is only 22 and doesn’t want a relationship or commitment and all he hears is his friends moaning about their relationships, but if I still wanted to see each other casually then that would be nice. I was a little bit gutted but then it was a brilliant situation. I had all the lovely parts of a relationship without any of the downsides and didn’t have to answer to anyone…however I think I feel differently recently.

Basically he is being quite full on and I’m not sure if he’s changed his mind. It has been 3 months since we had the email conversation. His behaviour has changed over the last month or so and has included such things as contacting me every day almost, ringing me all the time just to chat, telling me he missed me when we hadn’t seen each other for almost 2 weeks, spending the entire weekend at my house, complimenting me all the time, I met one of his best friends who said “I’ve heard a lot about you”, has commented about 4 times that we should go on holiday together (which I haven’t said anything about when he said it), very cuddly and kissy with me and stuff like that. Also it was his birthday recently and he invited me out for his celebrations with his very close friends (they all know each other and I would be the only one who didn’t know anyone). I couldn’t go and he has mentioned it twice to me since so I think he is quite upset that I didn’t.

We’ve got very close recently and see each other a lot, chat about a lot of stuff and we are very close to each other. He invited me over to his house for the first time (we were both off work) and I was really hungover and he looked after me a lot…made me food and tea, when I was lying on his bed he gave me a massage completely unprovoked and was gazing at me a fair bit and kissed me all the time.

But later that evening we went to the pub and when his friend called and asked who he was with he said a mate. Well, I’m not his mate…but is this how he sees me or was he saving face to his mate or maybe as he’s put himself out there a lot with me recently was he maybe trying to play it cool in front of me as if he said my name I would know that he talks about me to his mates as they would know who I was. The thing is, I know they know who I am so why call me a mate? Didn’t have to say girlfriend as I’m not but could just say my name.

Opinions on all this would be GREATLY appreciated! I don’t really want to have another massive conversation about where we are with it as if he hasn’t changed his mind it could ruin what we have, which is very special to me.