I (F20) want to break 2 months of no contact with my ex (M21). Is the relationship already lost?

Okay. This is going to be a long one. Our story starts like actually 6 years ago.

I met my ex, my first long term boyfriend who we will call Grayson, in high school. He was two years ahead of me, but I was advanced, so we were in the same English class. We quickly became a part of the same friend group that would hang out every single weekend, and I developed a lil crush on him 👀. Throughout the rest of our high school years, he was either in a relationship or I was talking to someone else, so nothing ever happened between us. Well fast forward a couple years, he goes to college, & always visits me on his breaks at home. His sophomore year, he took me to a coffee shop and said he had feelings for me. It was really God-awful timing, because I just started talking exclusively to this guy I met that semester. If Grayson had said something, literally three months earlier, I would’ve reciprocated the feelings right away. I told him that I was on the verge of dating someone else, and that I was really sorry, but I would still love for us to be friends as I still really liked him & we had a friendship of about three years. We kept talking for an hour or two more, then we said goodbye and didn’t speak to each other. For a year and a half. My relationship with the other guy ended literally like a month later. Choosing him over Grayson was a bad decision on my part that I regretted for a while.

I went into my freshman year that fall, & none of my romantic endeavors ever went anywhere. Come sophomore year, I found myself thinking about Grayson a ton, and I had thoughts about reaching out to see how he was, but I was nervous. I saw he magically posted a Snapchat story around this time, which he NEVER DOES because he literally is a social media ghost, and he was playing the PIANO. Mind you, he was never a musical person, his major was Kins & he was in ROTC. My whole major is music. I wanted to respond, but didn’t know how, so I did the only rational thing and posted a video of myself singing an original song that I wrote about him on my story. It worked somehow and he reached out and we made plans to meet up over winter break. After a few dates we realized we still had feelings for each other and we decided to make things official :)

We dated for five months long-distance. Over the course of the relationship, we started to realize that our lives and careers might not be going in the same direction. He also was very fixed on the next five years, while I tend to take things one day at a time. He graduated college in the spring, contracted to join the army as an officer. I didn’t graduate for another two years, and I’m not sure where I’m going to live afterwards, as I will have an arts degree that will require possibly a lot of moving around, and a lot of gig based work. Those conversations always sucked, because we really fell hard for each other, and it was such a great feeling to finally be together after years of friendship and hidden crushes. I’ve always said that I don’t want to be married until I’m done with school, I just think it would add a lot of responsibility on top of my course load, and I think it’s better for me to be a bit more established before I’m ready to merge my life with someone else’s. Grayson had different opinions on this, he is a very act now figure it out later personality. Toward the end of our relationship, he started mentioning marriage a ton. He started saying things about seeing us married in a year and having premarital counseling and stuff like that. I would tell him that I still have to finish my degree and we would both just kind of laugh it off. At this point, the distance was starting to take its toll on us. We found it harder to connect emotionally while we were living separate lives away from the screen. We were also getting into fights more often, about really stupid things. One time he told me he didn’t have the energy to talk to me that day, but that night was raving to me about a girl he met for the first time who he had a lovely hour long conversation with, and how he was sad that he was graduating that year cause he wouldn’t have a chance to have a deeper friendship with her throughout his time at school. Really rubbed me the wrong way, but he told me that bringing up my feelings toward the interaction made him not want to talk to me about other interactions he has with his friends. WEIRD. But, whatever, we talked through it. There were a lot of other smaller things that were pretty bad arguments, but I definitely think the distance magnified our tension.

So everything came to a halt when I visited him during his graduation week. I stayed with his family, and we had a really great time! It was the last night, he had this long conversation with his friend about OUR relationship (while I was in the other room idk it was weird to me). He talked to me about it, and how his friend offered advice that we should be married because of Grayson’s job and everything I guess. Grayson ended up asking if I would put my career on hold for his. I knew that my answer to that would be no, as my career is something I’ve been working towards since I was like eight years old, but he told me I could just wait and think about it. I told him I don’t know why I would wait to think about it if I already knew what my answer is, but me being so in love with him, not wanting to lose him, I said ok. We started talking about getting married and of course, again having the love goggles on, I said “yes! I could see us maybe getting married next year before I finish school!” Again, I still don’t think it’s smart to be married while I’m in the middle of school, and he will be stationed somewhere randomly by the military. It’s important to mention that the very next day I was leaving for the entire summer to work a really awesome job touring with a band.

So I leave, and our relationship just gets more and more strained because now he has nothing to do since he graduated, and I’m slammed with sets and rehearsals and sound checks. I remember we both went through difficult losses over the course of about a month, and it just didn’t feel like we knew how to support each other right during that since we were in completely different places, both physically and mentally. It all ended in June, about a week after our five month anniversary, when I brought up my concerns about getting married. I told him that I still wanted to wait until I graduate school, and I apologized for going back on what I said last time we talked about it. Mind you this is all over FaceTime :|. He starts agreeing with me, saying that the relationship probably won’t work with the directions we want to go in life, and how he doesn’t know if he would wait for a couple years before we could get married. Welp we solidified the break up that day, and decided not to speak to each other for a while as that was the smart thing to do.

A couple days later my grandfather passed away, and I had been keeping him updated on the situation, so I thought I would give him one final update. He sent a couple really kind messages and we didn’t talk again for a bit after that. Come July 4, I reached out to him because A) I was missing him and B) I knew that he was spending the holiday away from home and I wanted to make sure he was doing good. We exchanged some nice words, updated each other on what we’ve been doing the past month, and then left it at that. Now at this point, I was so sure that we were on good terms, and that we were on the path to maybe even being friends one day. I thought for sure that he would reach out to me on my birthday, and I may have gotten my hopes up for it. Two weeks after we spoke, my birthday rolled around, and it was like he didn’t exist. No text, no, DM‘s, no story likes, nothing. I was absolutely crushed.

It’s been a little over a month since then, and I still find myself constantly checking his social media, because I have this insane fear that he’s already talking to or with someone else. I find that I literally can’t get him off of my mind. Actually, every single day I think about him. I find myself thinking about how to reconcile our career differences, and how maybe if we could just hold on until I graduate school everything would be fine. I also just miss having him in my life. He’s actually the kindest, goofiest, strongest man that I know, and I’ve never met any guy like him. I am really scared that I’m never going to talk to him ever again. I want to reach out, if anything, just to make sure that we’re friends because I’m psyching myself into thinking he’s bitter with me after the no contact on my birthday. I miss him so much, and I know that if we got back together it wouldn’t be easy, but I also know that I would work so much harder to make the distance feel like nothing. I literally don’t know what to do. I cried over him today, and I figured it was time to get advice from strangers on the Internet, who know more about love than I do.

Do you think the relationship is over, or would we still have a shot?