He's still on about this whole relationship thing which just absolutely terrifies him just thinking about it. He's behaving in such as a way as if I was downright threatening him with it. Also, he moved places (by no means prohibitively far away, it just adds another half an hour or so in terms of mileage travelled) and works a new job. The reason he gave for not wanting to be in a relationship (no relationship with anyone period) was that he wants to spend the rest of the year and especially sumer carefree and with no obligations. He was afraid of telling me this because he feared I might hate him for that.
At this point, I just wanna see him again but apparently even holding hands is off-limits now because he ghosts me yet-a-fucking-gain but does respond back eventually as he did in the past but in a really abrasive, really confused kind of way. He's uncertain of wanting to meet me because he might hurt me and I myself this way.
I tell him in a relly long-winded and elaborate answert how I don't even care about being in a relationship at this point anymore, how I just wanna see him again and why I'm fine with the caveats he has and how I'm willing to put myself at risk of being hurt again.
He answers back with asking me if I was ok with being a normal friend. I give him a short "yes" as an answer but admittedly only to establish more of a willingness in him just to communicate with me somehow because really, I'm not. I change my mind to "I can't tell" as soon as I can and tell him so. This was last week and the whole question is sort of in limbo right now. He started somewhat normally talking back to me as soon as I formally went ok with a friendship and still does but it's just weird. He's being very passive, answering back infrequently although he's being apologetic. We only talk about superficial stuff like our respecitve work, his skin care routine and his stupid work-out program that's bound to fail because he's constantly both under-eating and over-training at the same time. I have again purposely avoided bringing up the topic of our relationship as to just not antagonize him in any sort of way and even told him so.
We wanna meet up next week again, possibly this week end and I absolutely wanna talk with him about the whole situation.
The last weeks have been a proverbial emotional roller coaster for me. I have never cried this much in my entire life and I've never been this frustrated. I've also felt angry and just downright insulted, culminating in fantasies of actual violence. He has treated me the way you might treat e-beggars and people who send you unsolicited dick pics on hook-up platforms, broken several promises he willingly me and really just abused me, no other words for it sadly.
The worst thing about all of this is that I still love him and could not be angry about any of this at him if he were to tell me he still loved me too. I don't even need to be in a relationship to be in love but I cannot live with no affection from him. Mere companionship falls short of that. I maybe not perfectly willing but willing nontheless to just put the whole thing on pause and try to build up the mutual trust and affection again so that we may continue where we left off because even though I just said I still love him, something I really cannot lie to myself about this even though I actively tried, this whole situation did make me think different about him Maybe taking a step back isn't such a wrong idea after all but I refuse to be friendzoned like this.
I don't think I was actually friendzoned to begin with. I'm being as cool-headed and non-delusional as I can be and I've really really thought about this. To me, this "offer" was more of a cop-out, rather than a genuine alternative for him. He wanted to buy time and peace with it because here's what you need to know about him:
He was still cutting himself last time we met (we're both in our mid 20s btw)
He was sexually assaulted in his teens
He didn't come clean about these things with his last and only boyfriend for several years. He would refuse to even be touched for several weeks when they were still together and he hurt him terribly with his behavior from what I could gather. He even told me before this whole situation that he would be anxious of entering into a relationship ever again because of how sad he felt what he made his bf put up with.
So my question here is: How do I best go about not fucking this up? I don't want a to agree to his proposition of "being a friend" and I obviously don't want to maneuver him into a position that might make him feel more uncomfortable than it absolutely need to be. I'm fine with a sorta hiatus but I absolutely wanna go back to where things were when we last met eventually. Or at least I want him to be in a scenario where he could realistically think about go to the way things were.
I have a good week to come up with something to help me turn this around. Please do contribute.