Thoughts on how he will react

Kathy, you're going around in circles chasing your own tail. if you want something, then just state that and STAY THERE. don't tell him to disregard what you said and then say something else, and go round and round. he doesn't want to be in an exclusive rship with you. Take that as a fact. it doesn't matter what you think he really feels or how he's so special or how the connection is unreal. take what he says as fact and that you will NOT have an exclusive rship with him, and act accordingly. this is like you going for a job interview and the company says no sorry, we are not hiring you, then you keep calling the company and saying different things each time. don't keep going around in circles with yourself and with him. do you really want to be with someone who already demonstrated that he is not going to be a secure and stable partner for you? 

it's more like it hurts YOU too. his feelings might not be directly hurt (he might not be crying with sadness and grief, but when you are unstable and inconsistent with what you want, it creates alot of tension and major shifts in the relationship that he also has to spend energy dealing with. this is stressful and stress coming from an emotional place hurts people. he might not be sad, but it's certainly not good for him either. and it DEFINITELY isn't good for you - that's what everyone's telling you here. what's happening now is he's reacting to you and you're reacting to his reactions, and then it's just a spiral of reactions without any real and deep intention. 

yes he has also hurt and confused you, he is also inconsistent, and you're afraid of losing him so much so that you are willing to take less than what you want for him to stay in your orbit. we've all been there! we understand you. really. nothing we're saying is a criticism of you and defending him. you have to understand that when we say to look at yourself, it is not saying that he is right/blameless and that YOU have hurt HIM. this is NOT a blame game and that because of what yu're doing, his reactions are justified. the only way to stop this confusion is to not play the game (which is you react, he reacts, you react back). 

we're just saying that as people who have gone through all that chaos and reading hundreds of posts, it's really important that you have a look at what you want and what you're doing, and see how that contributes to the dynamics  -- when you can see this more clearly, that's when it stops and you'll be able to emotionally handle it as you've said. 

As an ex-AP (at least an untriggered AP working towards secure), I think the hardest part is in seeing that it can be/is/seen as manipulative, because that is definitely not the intention. and it doubly hurts when someone calls me manipulative because i'm just trying to make it work. there's often a double trigger because there's a thought process of "i'm just doing what you want and it's still not enough, and now it's my fault for trying to make you happy -- this all tells me that i can have needs but i won't get them met and if i fight for them, i'm the one who's in the wrong because somehow I'm manipulative". the issue lies in what you're doing to fight for your needs, and that is a whole big topic in itself.

mrob, i'm saying this not to disagree with you (in fact I do agree) but in hopes that by spelling it out, other people reading this will become aware of why they're bristling at what you just wrote... because i certainly did when i read other threads before! 

when I was AP-ing, it was just natural to me to make concessions to keep my ex in my life, because sometimes you have to compromise and accommodate, and because having that person around is so so so important, even if it's not in the form I want. the tension arises from still wanting a specific form of the rship and hoping that it'll get there, but focusing on the fact that it is NOT there. it  is a very hard place to be in, particularly so because the focus on is him and on the rship, but not on yourself and your inner being. 

For me..it is instinctual....there is something I sense is wrong, I try to figure you out in order to meet your needs and bring my nervous system back in check.  It concede that it can seem like game playing, manipulation to someone who is not AP and who did not adapt the behaviors I did in order to address my insecurity...but it was/is a genuine attempt to reconnect and reduce my anxiety.  I grew up being told I was selfish whenever I expressed needs that were different from my parents...thus I learned that my needs could only be safely expressed if they were packaged in a form that met the other person's needs....and in order to that, I had to learn what those needs were/are.