Question about relationship? Advice and opinions from men and women…?

So I have been dating this guy 5 months to the day today.

We have never said we were exclusively dating each other, and I haven’t been dating anyone else, but I gather that he has been dating other people. That has been okay with me as it was non-committed and I have just lived with it until two weeks ago when he said "I love you"… and that got me thinking. Well that threw me for a loop and I asked him where we stood, he said he wasn’t ready to commit but "wasn’t looking for more!" So I tried to be okay with that and really thought I was ok with it.

Yesterday we went out and had a great dinner, watched a movie, had sex and he took his dog for a walk. While he was walking the dog, his phone chimed and it was from a female saying "I don’t know if I said it last night or not, but thank you for a nice dinner. I should have kissed you…" I was so hurt because he told me he had a migraine and went to bed early on Friday night – so not only is he seeing other people the even worse thing is that he is lying to me. Now – I didn’t tell him I saw the text and I know that this is what you get when you snoop, but it was just something that told me I needed to look at that phone. No criticism…it was a womans intuition and it was right!!

So I told him I was not okay with the current arrangement of seeing other people, as I have too many emotions invested to think about him dating other women, and that if he didn’t want to commit then we could drop back to friends but there would be no more romantic involvement. This was mostly via text message – but the long and the short of it is he said it will be at least another year until he wants a committment and he hopes for the long term sake of our future I will be "ENORMOUSLY PATIENT" with him. He is recently divorced and wants some time to be "free" I guess – but if thats what he wanted why didn’t he say so? He wants me to continue as it is with romantic involvement and all and just sit back while he dates and looks around for other women. I said friends – thats all I can give under those conditions. I told him he can let me know if he can handle that and he hasn’t responded. He was really upset and crying and all when he took me home today, but he demands that I would have to be "patient" if I want to be with him long term…

I am hopelessly in love with him and he can make me laugh and smile like no one else and is great in bed but I can’t just sit back and be a doormat while he looks for "More" – Isn’t that correct? He has absolutely ripped my heart out with this, but I feel like if I let it go on any further it is just going to involve more emotions (on my part) and that it is an unhealthy way to conduct a relationship when I know he is seeing other people and maybe lying to me as well. The past 5 months have been really nice – I have met his family and some of his friends, he has met my Mother…we talked on the phone every day – sometimes for hours at a time but I let myself fall for someone when I shouldn’t have. What do I do?

Does anyone have any feedback on this? What would you do in my situation?

You’re being played, and rather well at that with the tears and all. Unless you want to relegate yourself to always being patient and in effect being the other woman, or the port in a storm then by all means stick with him