I need advice

Throw away because I just want some perspective. I (19F) was dating my ex (19M) for several months. We are both in university. At the start, the relationship was great. he wasn’t cold or distant at all in the beginning. He was warm, attentive, and things felt mutual and aligned. I felt genuinely happy and secure, we shared a close knit group of friends, and we spent a lot of time together.

Over time, his effort and initiation began to dwindle. It wasn’t overnight rather, the dynamic slowly shifted into a one sided pattern where I was doing almost all the pursuing, planning, and reaching out. I didn't stay silent about it. I brought it up directly, communicated clearly, and told him what I needed in terms of baseline effort, initiation, and consistency. He acknowledged it, but nothing actually changed.

Things worsened when his university resit exams approached. For context, We both study abroad and he had traveled to stay with family while studying and waiting for the date of his exam. Whenever I gently brought up the change in his behavior, he always had an external reason ready. He said his parents extremely strict, that he couldn't use his phone around them, or that he had to hide his screen/notifications whenever they were in the same room. Communication became sparse. Whenever I reached out, I received minimal responses and excuses. I understood he had academic stress and pressure from his parents, but the issue was the asymmetry. He would leave my messages on delivered or unread for extensive periods while consistently being active on social media (Instagram, Discord) and talking in group chats. Saying that he couldn’t text me specifically because I was a girl (dating is frowned upon in our culture) and had my face in my profile picture and that we had a romantic wallpaper.

I wasn't asking for hours of phone calls during exam week, I just wanted basic consideration, a short check in, and honesty rather than excuses. It got to a point where he wouldn’t even say he loved me unless I said it first and wouldn’t compliment me when I posted something. Two days before his final resit, I was feeling completely drained from carrying the relationship and seeing zero initiative despite our past conversations, I reached my breaking point. I confronted the ongoing lack of effort and I reached out to express how hurt and isolated I felt by the constant avoidance and lack of baseline communication. Instead of reassuring me, explaining his schedule, or having a 2 minute honest conversation, he opened my messages and left me on seen for hours. During those hours of complete silence, he was visibly active online for the entire duration of which I was being ignored. Knowing he had read my vulnerable messages and deliberately chose to ignore them while being active online completely shattered my trust and hope in him and I sent a breakup text wishing him well.

When he finally responded he said that we shouldn’t rush things and that we would talk after his exam and that maybe things would be better after then. I said that I’m not going to wait on a “maybe” and stopped talking. Later on even after his exam, I’m not going to lie, I crashed out on him out of anger and sadness. I said a lot of things and called him out on his behavior in a not so nice manner which he never responded to. Later my friend (who’s our mutual friend) told me that after the exam he was not himself whatsoever. He acted extremely different from his usual self and that she couldn’t even approach him to understand his side. So I texted him asking him to tell me what’s wrong. At first, he completely brushed me off with one line answers, claiming nothing was wrong and asking why I cared so much. I told him honestly that my feelings didn’t magically disappear but that loving him was hurting me, that I had been begging for basic communication for a 2 months, and that I had to ask or initiate even a simple "I love you”.

That was when he brought up an old comment I had made during an earlier argument. Weeks prior, after enduring a prolonged period of fading effort where he rarely initiated, stopped planning things, and constantly made excuses to not see me, I had reached a breaking point. Out of pure frustration and hurt over feeling completely unvalued, I made an impulsive, messed up comment comparing his effort to my ex, mentioning how my ex used to drive four hours just to see me. I knew it was wrong and I apologized after, but it came from a place of sheer desperation because no matter how calmly I communicated my needs, nothing ever changed. During our closure conversation, he admitted that ever since I made that comment, things hadn't been the same, that it couldn't be erased, and that this was why he had been acting weird and distant. Yet when I asked if he had actually meant it when he said he loved me, he replied that he did mean it, but said he simply didn't like talking about things and bottled it up. Instead of having an honest, 20-minute conversation when it happened to tell me he was hurt so we could address it, he chose to silently build resentment, withdraw all baseline effort, and ice me out for weeks while hiding behind exam stress. When I apologized again for what I had said out of anger, acknowledged it was wrong, instead of communicating, he shut down again. And since then I hadn’t contacted him.

However I couldn’t heal, I couldn’t get over him and after a month of no contact I reached out again asking if it was really over and if that comment I made was really the reason for everything. he told me flat out that he had simply "lost interest" without pinpointing when exactly. Hearing that made me feel like my clear communication and vulnerability meant nothing. I was distressed and confused so I messaged one of his close friends in the circle asking point blank if my ex had actually lost interest while we were together and his friend’s response contradicted my ex’s words. His friend explicitly stated: "For what it's worth, he did really like you." He added: " but you really pushed him at a difficult time and broke up with him 2 days before the resit and you two were supposed to talk after." Which made me even more confused and lost.

And I really need someone to tell me, did he slowly lose interest and check out, or did he claim he "lost interest" at the end as a defensive jab because I ended things before his resit? Was I unreasonable for ending things right before his exam, given that I had already communicated my needs multiple times before exam season even started? If the intent was truly to talk things out after the resits, why did he make zero effort to reach out once the exams were over? Should I have stayed patient instead of breaking up with him?