Year and a Half After… Tempted To Ask About Starting Over

We broke up in September of 2024 after 5 years and a drawn out period of growing issues. Most of them were mine as I had let anxiety and codependency take over in the relationship as well as becoming too stagnant in my life out of fear of change instead of putting forth the effort so that we could have been able to build a life together. We also had horrifically poor communication skills so many small issues went without resolution and over a while they added up and led to her losing feelings for me. During this time I was also not someone I am proud of as I had a short temper, was overly needy and selfish, and I could imagine that I was in general incredibly draining to someone who works as hard and much as she does, while all I did was work my part time shifts and play video games instead of trying to pursue my career or go back to college like I had repeatedly said I would

We were a damn good match, loved all of the same things, same sense of humor, her family adored me (and still does) and she even introduced me to a friend group whom I consider family and cant imagine life without. As you can imagine, being in a friend group did make things very difficult after the breakup as neither of us wanted to leave nor wanted the other to feel like they should have to so we both stayed. The breakup itself was pretty clean as I was never someone who could truly be mad at her and had enough love for her that if it things got to that point of breaking up, I knew it was something serious and she was doing what she felt was right to be happy. We did agree though that we still very much wanted to be in each other’s lives, though at the time I didn’t realize how difficult that would end up being.

Moving on to the present day, Ive essentially turned myself around completely. Not long after the breakup, I got more serious about my job and started back at college. We had a brief period where we thought we could try again but it quickly showed that the root causes hadn’t yet been dealt with on my end so I also started going to therapy. Now im closer to my dream career than ever before, almost done with my degree, making decent enough money that moving out and starting a life of my own is now very much in reach, and I’m also feeling the best I’ve felt in ages mentally, physically, and emotionally, and have learned how to love myself again. It took a while to get over the initial hurt and feelings but eventually I did and after a decent period of little/no contact we have spent a lot of time since enjoying being just friends (that was something we hadn’t had before dating). We’ve also both had several attempts at dating other people with very little success.

So finally for the main point of all this, since we have been spending time together as just friends, i’ve felt like almost a build up of feelings again and a curiosity of “what if?” Admittedly not all feelings went away over this time but I have grown to be comfortable with the idea that we may not date again and thats okay, there are tons of people out there and if its not her, im sure there is someone out there. Now obviously “trying again” is not the way to go about it and in order for things to work, we would need a fresh start as the people we are now, but also im not entirely sure if that is something she would be interested in. I know she lost feelings for me initially and I understand if thats not something that could happen again. So I’ve been debating on just finding a moment and asking her plainly if she thinks that a fresh start and seeing if something is still there is something she would be open to. I firmly believe I can handle the rejection if she says no but I know I would regret it if I never asked. I haven’t done it yet cause we have both been very busy with our lives and I want to really think this through before I go through with it. I don’t want to make things weird between us but I also feel like having complete closure on that will help me moving forward, regardless of what happens.

TLDR: So is asking her if she thinks she would be interested in seeing if something is still there at some point a horrible idea or do ya’ll think it’s worth a shot if the timing feels right?