My ex and I dated for around four and a half years starting from junior year in high school and were in a long distance relationship throughout college. A few months ago, before the start of our senior year of college, we ended up breaking up due to personal reasons–mostly that we needed to work on ourselves and focus on school/career. It was mostly mutual; we hadn’t been getting along that well over the last few months to be honest and I think it was largely due to reasons on his side–he was under a lot of personal stress and it was really just consuming him, and he said he needed to focus on himself and achieve his goals first and that he had too much on his plate at the moment. Because of this, he felt like he couldn’t be a good partner to me, or at least he wouldn’t be able to fulfill my needs in the relationship. I think he also felt like I was becoming too dependent on him for emotional support by kind of treating him like a therapist at times, which I agreed was fair of him to say. I then asked him how much time he would need for himself, and he told me that he would at least want one year to be alone. Both of us agreed that it was unfair to both of us to continue dating and we broke up.
The breakup was initially extremely tough, as we were both each other’s firsts, and I embarrassingly asked him to get back together maybe a month in, to which he replied that he just couldn’t be in a relationship right now and that he needed to focus on himself; after that, I never brought up getting back together again. I also suggested going no contact as well in the beginning at some point, but he was against it and said that he didn’t want to lose me as a friend, as we agreed to remain friends after breaking up. In the beginning, conversations were honestly quite difficult; they would either get really personal or sentimental, or very short and sporadic, but it gradually smoothed out over time after we agreed that we shouldn’t message each other so much. We still saw each other occasionally; we wouldn’t see each other that often since we go to school in different states, but since his college is close to the city where we grew up in, I would come home to visit my family and also hang out with him maybe about once or twice a month (since I went home a lot because of how miserable I felt in the first few months after breaking up). It would just be lunch or dinner; he would still pay every time (since his family is quite well-off financially) and he never expected me to pay after breaking up. He still got me a birthday present, and he had mentioned the fact that he had gotten me a birthday present several times to me leading up to my birthday; he also wished me happy birthday right on the dot at 12 AM.
Recently we hung out again, and he admitted that back then he had been super consumed with his personal goals and that he now was handling it a lot better and didn’t let them affect him as much. After talking more and catching up on everything, he said that I’ve grown a lot and that he was proud of me and I said the same to him. He and I have been texting more often, and he also sends me a lot more stuff over Instagram now. I don’t know if I’ve been reading too much into our interactions, and I’m not sure what to make of it; however, I do know that I would get back together with him if he wanted to because I truly think he’s a lot healthier mentally now and I think I’ve also done a lot of personal reflecting on my own. I just don’t know if I should be brave and ask and risk getting rejected again or wait for him to come forward and ask.