How did I get myself mixed up in this...smh in All Out of Balance

Current state:
I ended things with Chicago
I’m still dating Cali

Chicago is going through a lot. Lost two people he cared about, lost his job (laid off), roommate owes him money, and his car was towed. He is poly and had 4 partners. He wanted me in his life as a partner too. Since I’m clearly practicing non monogamy, I was open to it. However, what I wasn’t open to was the number of women he was involved with outside of his “partners”. In the past 4 months he’s been involved with at least 8 women. I’m not okay with being involved with someone whose never satisfied. There’s a difference between being attracted to or even being romantically tied to more than one person vs. finding a new infatuation every other week.

The day I ended things with him he said 2 things to me that are factual:

You’re not poly you’re ethically dating

All relationships take work friendships or otherwise, you’re telling me you don’t have the mental space to work on our relationship

I felt bad that this was the truth, but it was the truth. He did try to tell me that Cali is my boyfriend, and I quickly had to correct him, because he’s not.

Cali says and does things that do not follow the normal rules of a casual relationship. We’ve had the talk a few times about what we are. The best I can tell you is that we are dating and in an open relationship. Those are It’s weird because the few times we’ve had serious conversations about our feelings, he’s always shocked that I love him. He’ll ask me things like why, and I almost reply with why not…lol

Cali does things that make me fall for him every day, but he doesn’t love me. It’s crazy how I normally judge people by their actions, but him I need to listen to his words or else I’ll keep getting caught up. I asked him the other night if he’d be okay with us spending less time together. Mind you we normally only spend 2 maybe 3 nights apart when he’s not traveling. He says, okay if that’s what you need but that’s not what I prefer. He likes spending his nights with me, going rock climbing, heading to the gym, exploring the city to find new food and events, or just staying in and watching Netflix and YouTube. I told him I want to see him less, because with me all caught up with him I won’t meet someone new.

If I’m honest with myself, I want to give us time to see where we go. I really wish there weren’t so many things working against us:

•Unresolved relationship issues from before we met
•his job being in Cali and giving him an ultimatum to relocate back there
•he’s been applying to jobs here but hasn’t gotten an offer

He told me when we first started dating, it was even before we first kissed that he didn’t know how long he was going to be able stay here. He wanted to be honest with me before we went any further or got more involved. That was 5 months ago. This whole time I kept telling myself this isn’t serious, it’s just casual, and he doesn’t care about you in that way. We’ve now been dating for 7 months. Our relationship isn’t perfect but I’m happy. We communicate, he listens (I try to listen, but he knows I’m hard headed lol), I enjoy him in the silence, and he is simply decent and kind.

The one thing that leaves me uneasy is that I tend to hold back how I feel about him and I bite my tongue in terms of what I want for us. Since I know he doesn’t love me in return but does care about me deeply, I’ve only told him 2 or 3 times that I love him. I don’t want to add pressure for him or onto us because I feel a certain way and he doesn’t reciprocate.