Thumper

How about "I am not ready to talk about marriage now. I would like to date for awhile and see how things go."

That seems very honest and gentle to me. How you follow up on that depends on how he responds. If he starts in with more blaming, accusations, manipulations, guilt trips, poor me type of stuff he is probably not ready for a relationship IMO.

I used to confuse compassionate with giving in. Being compassionate does not mean that I cave on my needs/boundaries. Being compassionate does not mean that I give someone else what they want even if it is not what I want.

I have actually tried to take that word out of my thinking. When I am 'compassionate' I very much want to fix someone else. I want to do whatever is necessary to make them feel better and my boundaries come tumbling down. Now I use words like tender and gentle. I can be true to myself and keep my boundaries strong, yet be gentle and tender in my message. It took a lot of work for me to get to this place. I have to take time to process and think things through before hand (so I've learned to say I need to talk about this later). I need that processing time to sort it all out otherwise their discomfort/suffering very much becomes my own and I get desperate to fix it. Their discomfort is not mine. I do not need to fix it. Short gentle messages is what I stick to. Sometimes I even rehearse them.