Xpost from r/polyamory Hey y’all I need some advice

My boyfriend (21M) and I (21F) have been seeing each other for around seven months now. We both are in college in different states and we met when he came to visit a mutual friend at my school. We really hit it off and I expressed to him from the beginning that I am non-monogamous and cannot see myself being in an exclusive relationship. After he left we continued FaceTiming and texting and it felt very natural so when he asked if I would want to visit him in his college town a couple months down the road I said yes.

Things continued to go well until over FaceTime one day I decided to check in about where he was at in our relationship (just a standard check in). He ended up telling me that he was already telling people we were dating (it had been two months of frequent phone calls at this point) and that at this point his feelings had grown and he wouldn’t feel comfortable with me sleeping with other people. I was shocked considering I communicated with him from the jump about my ideas on relationships. But he said that he misunderstood me because I did explain to him that within my open relationships I’ve had periods where it’s been closed because it worked better for both of us at the time. I think he thought that eventually I would just like him enough for me to not want to pursue other people. I also felt violated that he had been telling people I was his girlfriend before having a discussion about labels with me. He said he cared about me enough to try and make this work as an open relationship. I ended up pulling away slightly thinking that there was no way it would work out.

I then had a talk with an older woman in the community who said that I should give him a chance as long as he could come up with real reasons why non monogamy could benefit and be appealing to him. I talked to him and he came back to me with a bunch of reasons why he could see this working for him. So I decided to trust him.

We started with non disclosure with a few rules around condoms and std checks. A couple months past and things were going well and he said he wanted to be able to share our other romantic and sexual pursuits with one another. I said okay because I felt ready to take on that level of communication.

Well he didn’t talk to or hook up with anyone else in that time and the second I told him about the first person I chose to sleep with he broke down. He told me he can’t see himself being with anyone else and that it gives him severe anxiety to think of me being with anyone else. He said he’s worried I’ll find someone better than him and leave which I’ve tried to give him reassurance around many times. I asked if he wanted to go back to non disclosure and he said that would just be worse. He said he doesn’t want to limit me and that he will try to tough it out for me but I felt like that was a pretty terrible idea so I told him we should take a least a month pause and close our relationship so we can work on trust. Well that’s what we’ve done and the month is almost up and we are supposed to have a conversation soon about what we want moving forward.

The other issue is he’s recently been diagnosed bipolar II and I don’t know if this is correlated but he constantly changes his mind about whether he’s okay being open and it seems these changes line up with his manic and depressive episodes. I don’t know that I can trust that he won’t tell me he’s okay with an open relationship just to be with me.

I care about him a lot at this point but I also feel like I’m just beginning to explore my sexuality (sex with other women, group sex, kink). I honestly don’t know what to do. I feel trapped now.