All good things must come to an end :( in All other relationships

I have grown to love Lou more than any other man to date. He has only been in my life for a year. In that time he has shown me love like none other. He is tender and smart and funny and the sweetest distraction. He is always touching me, massaging me, caressing me, hugging me… . He does all that without hoping for sex in return. It’s just how he is. He is kind, he is a voice of reason when I need him to be. It pains me to let him go but the time has come.
I told him last Saturday that it has been bothering me for a while now that I am his secret. I don’t like feeling that way. I told him that I have been trying to push that feeling to the side for a while but it just keeps coming back. It has been a year and nobody in his life knows about me, I have never been in his home, and I feel like he and I have been just playing house. What we have is not real if I am a secret in his life. He felt badly when I told him about all this. He said he was going to have to bite the bullet and tell people. He apologized for it. We have talked pretty much every day since then, he has been over here and we acted like everything was fine. He took Friday off from work to take me to a Halloween party. We couldn’t go though because we are both pretty sick. I didn’t see him at all this weekend but he has been working with his family pretty much all week. He hasn’t said a word about me to anyone yet.
A part of me feels like I should give him a little bit more time. A week isn’t much time for something so big. But the other part of me feels like it’s been over a year. That part feels like if he really loves me, the sun would not have set on letting me feel this way. I know it’s hard for him, but it is what it is. Now I feel guilty about him having to do that. I don’t want him to have to tear his life apart like that. I don’t want him feeling all. He obviously loves all these people. They are important to him. I don’t want him feeling like that. But it’s also not fair to me. I deserve better than to be somebody’s secret. I don’t want to invest anymore of my heart into something that only goes so deep.
It is time to say goodbye to the man that I love. I love him. I will miss him. It will hurt. But I am strong. I will rise like the phoenix.