Anxious and confused

So I had a crush on him and I expressed that. He did tell me he was looking for a partner (The timeline was a little unclear) We had really great and open conversations. So naturally my feelings grew stronger for him. He looked like he was interested too.

We finally had the ‘what are the intentions’ talk. Now I’m in a situation where we parted ways because he’s older and wants to get settled and married soon and I’m still trying to figure my things out. I mean I could totally see us being married later in the future and we did have great chemistry but I can’t in good conscience say that I’m ready to get married right now, when I’m not.

I do really like this guy, I think we could be great for each other and he’s absolutely amazing. He wants to stay friends and wants to meet once if possible (we had already sort of planned on meeting before this parting ways conversation and we both were excited. We’ve met before but we’re in different cities so this whole thing was mostly virtual).

I don’t know what to do about it. Will meeting him help or make things harder? On one hand I do really want to have him in my life and on the other hand I have a really huge crush on him so I don’t know if I would be able to see him getting married to someone else 🙈

Do I cut back or stop talking to him? Is this a lost cause?? Do I keep the texts going in the hopes. Does hanging around help? Is staying friends even possible? Why is everything love related so complicated. 😫