Search Results: hanging out with friends

Last year I moved to a new city and starting hanging out with an acquaintance and her friends group. In this group there was the cutest boy and there was quite a spark, from his behavior I would have guessed it was mutual. However the group dynamic was very heavy, it turned out that many girls in the group were after him and in particular my acquaintance was obsessed with him. One day I noticed she overheard us talking about going for a drink just the two of us and after that she never invited me again to join the group for months. At the same time, he became very cold with me and eventually stopped replying to my messages, and I now suspect it was her who told him lies about me. Lately I had an enlightening talk with her best friend who told me that she was behaving completely crazy with him and that she was literally stalking him (picking him up at work etc) and that he was so mad at her that he left the group and ghosted everyone in it to cut ties with her completely.

I had moved on as I really thought he had stopped talking to me because I was annoying him. Recently I met a cute boy but since he’s in my life, all my brain is able to do is comparing him with this other boy and think that he was the right one. I don’t know if I should try to get back in contact with him.

We are dating 3 months, we agreed to exclusively date 1 month into seeing each other.
Around 2 months we became sexual. He's very affectionate in private. He's shy and doesn't do PDA much, but will kiss/hug/hold hands during outdoor walks/hikes.

Before the first date we both said what we want and they align pretty well: marriage, kids and committed long term. This has not changed for either.

We go on dates: morning hikes, drinks at bar, afternoon dog walks etc.
He has no family so I have not met anyone, mine is very traditional (so I can't tell them about him yet), he has casually met some of my friends. He usually comes to me and we are both on tight schedules so honestly haven't felt like sharing him with other people- so we haven't really had a double dates or hanging out with friends.

I've been to his place, mostly he comes to me, picks me up and drives me to date locations, he is good at planning thoughtful dates. He pays for all the dates, and he's a little traditional.

When I brought up "where are we going?" he said he enjoys his time with me and wants to continue seeing me, and get to know me, but didn't want labels yet, I am falling for him and was a bit hurt but given we are still relatively new it seemed fair.

To me everything we do feels like a "relationship" but we are just "exclusively dating".
What are we?