My Boyfriend Is Confused About Our Relationship

Dear Ella.
My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost a year now. When we first met he was just getting out of the Military after a few years. We were both excited to be together and I was worried he might go back home like his original plan was to do, but he decided to stay and give our relationship a try and go to school out where he was originally stationed. After a few months we moved in together, it was hard at first getting used to living with each other but it was fun as well. We were both happy with the decision and had a blast cooking together and even talked about how we were both “the one” for each other. We enjoy being together and he has always treated me like a lady. Now all of the sudden, he tells me he needs time to think and figure things out and that he’s really confused.

 He says he’s going to go home for a while and see how he feels after his spring semester is finished up. I asked him if we were breaking up and he said he doesn’t know, he said he doesn’t want to leave and realize he’s made a mistake because he still cares for me and has strong feelings for me. Although he says he doesn’t want to lead me on, he has talked about me going to move back home with him and what it would be like but that he needs to go home and figure things out for a few weeks.

The thing is he’s had home sickness before and has gotten through it by going home and texting and calling me telling me he misses me and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, but before it was just home sickness and feeling like he doesn’t belong where I am from. Now it’s all of the above and staying with me in our relationship. So I’m really confused as to what he needs from me. He knows I would go with him and I love him very much. I have asked him to sleep in the other room because I don’t know how he feels about me right now and it did seem to make him sad but he agreed that it was fair to me. He says he doesn’t want to hurt me but then I find him asking me to go hang out and eat with him and he even still wants to play fight and laid with me in bed one night before I feel asleep, then retreated to his room. The main thing is he doesn’t have an answer for me and he says he just needs to think and go back to his roots and realize who he really is since the military changed so much about him. What should I do? Do I back off or hang out? I don’t want to loose him I want to give him his time an I hope he comes running back to me and asks me to go with him. This is so unlike him it’s scaring me, he has never lead me to think something was wrong in our relationship. Does he just need time to realize how much he loves me and what he’s losing.

He said “I love you” first, he has always taken the first step in our relationship and said my heart was safe with him and now he truly does seem confused and it’s killing me. What does he want from me? How can I help him through this? We still have a great time hanging out right now, just no kissing or sleeping together or telling each other we love each other. But he has moments where he hugs me really tight and kisses me on the head like he still really loves me and feels torn. He said when he feels confused he tries to picture himself 20yrs from now and see what he's doing and I said "am I there with you" and he said it's funny because part of me thinks well laugh about this someday and say we almost didn't make it. I'm so confused as to what to do, I love him so much but I don't want to hope for something that he may not want or will work out.